In early March, when it became clear that the COVID-19 pandemic would force Georgetown University to suspend on-campus classes and activities -- at least temporarily -- Georgetown Law’s faculty and staff pivoted quickly.
“Just as our recent wars have mostly been against those who are poor, those who can easily be demonized and viewed as ‘other’ by the average American — so too, our criminal law has tended to be enforced primarily and disproportionately against the poor and people of color,” said Professor Rosa Brooks, who was installed as Georgetown Law’s inaugural Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Policy on March 20.
Sandra Bland, who died in prison after being arrested for a traffic violation. Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old shot and killed by police during a raid. Renisha McBride, shot and killed by a homeowner when she knocked on the door of a house. Black women in America have lost their lives, and have been subjected to other horrific injustices, just as men have been. Yet America does not often remember their names.
Almost half of all African American men have been arrested by age 23. One in three have a felony conviction. More than 500,000 are currently incarcerated. Professor Paul Butler knows this, because as a former federal prosecutor, it was his job to lock up black men. But Butler, a black man, is well aware that his own resume (which also includes Georgetown Law professor and a J.D. from Harvard) hasn’t insulated him from police bias.
When James Forman Jr., a former Georgetown Law and current Yale Law faculty member, was working as a public defender in Washington, D.C., in the 1990s, he represented a 15-year-old client named Brandon who had pled guilty to gun and marijuana possession. Forman was requesting probation; the prosecutor wanted Brandon sent to Oak Hill, D.C.’s now-notorious juvenile facility. The judge chose Oak Hill — to Forman’s fury. The same racial injustice that motivated him to become a public defender, he realized, was being used to lock his client away.
It was the latest roll call for 18 Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department officers and civilian personnel participating in a pioneering Georgetown Law-MPD joint fellowship program — and the first for 26 more set to walk the new beat.
In 1776, as British forces were landing in New York during the Revolutionary War, Harvard University moved classes to Concord, Massachusetts, and Yale moved to Hartford County.
Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. Walter Scott. Freddie Gray. Sam DuBose. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. Terence Crutcher.
“[These] are just some of the names on a long list of unarmed black boys and men who were killed by police officers…
Sonja Sohn, who played a Baltimore police detective in the HBO series “The Wire,” spent a lot of time filming in that city. After Freddie Gray died from the injuries he received in police custody in 2015, Sohn wanted to do something to help the community…
For the 50th anniversary of the landmark 1967 Supreme Court decision, Georgetown Law Professor Sheryll Cashin has published Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy (Beacon Press).
Loving v. Virginia, popularized in…
Paul Butler, the Albert Brick Professor at Georgetown Law, is in the spotlight with a book published by The New Press on July 11. We sat down with Butler, a former federal prosecutor with scholarly expertise in criminal law and racial justice, to discuss…
