Advanced Criminal Law

The intensity of the current debates over criminal law and criminal justice policy is at an unusually high level, with strong and conflicting positions being staked out in the areas of race and crime, policing, incarceration and sentencing, drug policy, and guns. We will be discussing these topics with a mixture of doctrinal analysis of key issues, review of secondary commentaries on key aspects of criminal justice policy, and analysis of empirical papers that illuminate important elements relevant to these legal and policy debates. Elements used in grading: Grading will be based on attendance, class participation, one-to-two-page response papers to readings, and three six-page papers on topics distilled from each of the three three-week blocks in the course.