Diversity Readings Related to First-Year Courses

This page is part of a guide with readings about issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability in traditional first-year courses.

The first-year Criminal Law course focuses on substantive law, rather than criminal procedure; this guide does as well. Still, it has a few entries on procedural topics. The guide is very selective because the literature in this area is vast.

For Washington studies and selected national studies, see:

David Cole, Two Systems of Criminal Justice, in The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, 410-433 (David Kairys ed., 3d ed. 1998), [catalog record]

Angela J. Davis, Prosecution and Race: The Power and Privilege of Discretion, 67 Fordham L. Rev. 13-68 (1998), [HeinOnline]

Nancy S. Erickson & Mary Ann Lamanna, Sex-Bias Topics in the Criminal Law Course: A Survey of Criminal Law Professors, 24 U. Mich. J. L. Reform 189 (1990), [HeinOnline]

Nancy S. Erickson with the assistance of Nadine Taub, Final Report: Sex Bias in the Teaching of Criminal Law, 42 Rutgers L. Rev. 309 (1990), [HeinOnline] (297-page report based on reviews of casebooks and surveys of professors)

Henry F. Fradella, Stephen S. Owen & Tod W. Burke, Integrating Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues into the Undergraduate Criminal Justice Curriculum, 20 J. Crim. J. Educ. 127-156 (2009), [HeinOnline]

Amy H. Kastely, Out of the Whiteness: On Raced Codes and White Race Consciousness in Some Tort, Criminal, and Contract Law, 63 U. Cin. L. Rev. 269-315 (1994), [HeinOnline]

Cynthia Lee, Race and the Criminal Law Curriculum, in The Oxford Handbook of Race and Law in the United States (Devon Carbado, Emily Houh & Khiara M. Bridges eds., 2022), [link to ebook (UW)]

Teri McMurtry-Chubb, The Codification of Racism: Blacks, Criminal Sentencing, and the Legacy of Slavery in Georgia, 31 T. Marshall L. Rev. 139 (2005), [HeinOnline], [SSRN]

Melissa Morgan, Teaching Gender as a Core Value: The Softer Side of Criminal Law, 36 Okla. City U. L. Rev. 525-29 (2011), [HeinOnline]

Various Authors, Race Trials Symposium, 91 N.C. L. Rev. No. 5 (June 2013),[ HeinOnline]. Includes:

• Anthony V. Alfieri, Keynote: "He Is the Darkey with the Glasses on": Race Trials Revisited ... 1497
• Richard Delgado, Precious Knowledge: State Bans on Ethnic Studies, Book Traffickers (Librotraficantes), and a New Type of Race Trial . . . 1513
• Cynthia Lee, Making Race Salient: Trayvon Martin and Implicit Bias in a Not Yet Post-Racial Society . . . 1555
• Kevin R. Johnson & Joanna E. Cuevas Ingram, Anatomy of a Modern-Day Lynching: The Relationship Between Hate Crimes Against Latina/os and the Debate Over Immigration Reform . . . 1613
• Gabriel J. Chin, Cindy Hwang Chiang & Shirley S. Park, The Lost Brown v. Board of Education of Immigration Law . . . 1657
• Ariela Gross & Alejandro de la Fuente, Slaves, Free Blacks, and Race in the Legal Regimes of Cuba, Louisiana, and Virginia: A Comparison . . . 1699
• Martha S. Jones, Hughes v. Jackson: Race and Rights Beyond Dred Scott . . . 1757
• Steven Lubet, Execution in Virginia, 1859: The Trials of Green and Copeland . . . 1785
• Alfred L.Brophy, The Nat Turner Trials . . . 1817

Jeffrie G. Murphy, Bias Crimes: What do Haters Deserve?, 11 Crim. Just. Ethics 20-23 (1992), HeinOnline 

Lu-in Wang, Recognizing Opportunistic Bias Crimes, 80 B, U.L. Rev. 1399-1436 (2000), HeinOnline

Bide Akande, Implicit Bias and Clients: An Overview, 18 Com. & Bus. Litig. 14-19 (2016), HeinOnline 

Fatima E. Marouf, Implicit Bias and Immigration Courts, 32 Immigr. & Nat'lity L. Rev. 775-808 (2011), HeinOnline 

Katherine Judson, Bias, Subjectivity, and Wrongful Convictions, 50 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 779-794 (2017), HeinOnline 

Laura R. McNeal, Managing Our Blind Spot: The Role of Bias in the School-to-Prison Pipeline, 48 Ariz. St. L.J. 283-312 (2016), HeinOnline

Richard H. McAdams, Present Bias and Criminal Law, 2011 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1607-632 (2011), HeinOnline 

Note: The first-year course addresses substantive criminal law rather than criminal procedure. So this list also focuses on substantive criminal law, but it does include some criminal procedure materials.

Drug Policy, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 918-933 (2018), HeinOnline  

David C. Baldus et al., McCleskey v. Kemp (1987): Denial, Avoidance, and the Legitimization of Racial Discrimination in the Administration of the Death Penalty, in Death Penalty Stories 229-275 (John H. Blume & Jordan M. Steiker eds., 2009), Reference Area KF9227.C2 D43 2009 

Paul Butler, Racially Based Jury Nullification: Black Power in the Criminal Justice System, 105 Yale L.J. 677-725 (1995), HeinOnline, excerpted in Critical Race Theory: The cutting Edge 194-203 (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 2d ed. 2000), Classified Stacks KF4755.C75 2000

Sheri Lynn Johnson, Confessions, Criminals and Community, 26 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 327-411 (1991), HeinOnline

Michael J. Klarman, The Racial Origins of Modern Criminal Procedure, 99 Mich. L. Rev. 48-97 (2000), HeinOnline, SSRN 

Tracey Maclin, Race and the Fourth Amendment, 51 Vand. L. Rev. 333-393 (1998), HeinOnline

Richard Delgado, "Rotten Social Background": Should the Criminal Law Recognize a Defense of Severe Environmental Deprivation?, 3 Law & Ineq. 9-90 (1985), HeinOnline 

Cynthia Lee, The Gay Panic Defense, 42 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 471-566 (2008), HeinOnline, LexisNexis, SSRN, Westlaw

Cynthia Kwei Yung Lee, Race and Self-Defense: Toward a Normative Conception of Reasonableness, 81 Minn. L. Rev. 367-500 (1996), HeinOnline, excerpted in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge 204-210 (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 2d ed. 2000), Classified Stacks KF4755.C75 2000 

Elizabeth Schneider, Battered Women Who Kill Their Abusers in Legal Responses to Domestic Violence, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 1574-1597 (1993), HeinOnline

Michael A. Smyth, Queers and Provocateurs: Hegemony, Ideology and the "Homosexual Advance" Defense, 40 Law & Soc'y Rev. 903-930 (2006), FindArticles.com (free), HeinOnline, LexisNexis, Westlaw

Susan S. Kuo, Culture Clash: Teaching Cultural Defenses in the Criminal Law Classroom, 48 St. Louis L.J. 1297-1311 (2004), HeinOnline

Dania Bardavid et al., Domestic Violence, 17 Geo. J. Gender & L. 211-246 (2016), HeinOnline 

Farrah Champagne, Prosecuting Domestic Violence Cases,16 Crim. Litig. 2-6 (2015), HeinOnline 

Leigh Goodmark, Should Domestic Violence Be Decriminalized?, 40 Harv. Women's L.J. 53-114 (2017), HeinOnline 

 

Hilly McGahan & Brandi Ries, Understanding Domestic Violence, 40 Mont. Law. 14-16 (2015), HeinOnline

Elizabeth M. Schneider, Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking, 23 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 243-246 (2002), HeinOnline

Kathleen Waits, The Criminal Justice System's Response to Battering: Understanding the Problem, Forging the Solutions, 60 Wash. L. Rev. 267-330 (1985), HeinOnline (excerpted in Feminist Jurisprudence 188-209 (Patricia Smith ed. 1993), Classified Stack K644.Z9 F457 1993)

Brian Srubar, Breaking Bad Policy: Shifting U.S. Counter-Drug Policy, Eliminating Safe Havens, and Facilitating International Cooperation, 37 Hous. J. Int'l L. 197-234 (2015), HeinOnline 

Conor Craft, Lessons from the Law: Designing a More Effective Policy for Suppressing Performance-Enhancing Drug use in Major League Baseball, 22 Sports Law. J. 27-78 (2015), HeinOnline 

Dorothy E. Roberts, Punishing Drug Addicts Who Have Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and the Right of Privacy, 104 Harv. L. Rev. 1419-1482 (1991), HeinOnline

Dwight L. Greene, Abusive Prosecutors: Gender, Race & Class Discretion and the Prosecution of Drug-Addicted Mothers, 39 Buff. L. Ref. 737-802 (1991), HeinOnline

Dwight L. Greene, Drug Decriminalization: A Chorus in Need of Masterrap's Voice, 18 Hofstra L. Rev. 457-500 (1990), HeinOnline

John A. Powell; Eileen B. Hershenov, Hostage to the Drug War: The National Purse, the Constitution and the Black Community, 24 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 557-616 (1991), HeinOnline

Mark A. R. Kleiman, High Stakes: The Future of U.S. Drug Policy, 96 Foreign Aff. 130-139 (2017), HeinOnline 

See also "Judges & Juries" section in Civil Procedure guide.

 

Jody Armour, Where Bias Lives in the Criminal Law and Its Processes: How Judges and Jurors Socially Construct Black Criminals, 45 Am. J. Crim. L. 203 (2018), HeinOnline

 

Thomas Ward Frampton, The Jim Crow Jury, 71 Vand. L. Rev. 1593 (2018), Vanderbilt site, SSRN (examining over 13,000 peremptory challenges and 199 nonunanimous verdicts iun Louisiana).

 

Jack Carnegie, Juvenile Justice, 78 Tex. B.J. 866, 869 (2015) HeinOnline 

Kathryn Monahan et al., Juvenile Justice Policy and Practice: A Developmental Perspective, 44 Crime & Just. 577, 619 (2015) HeinOnline 

Christopher Slobogin, Risk Assessment and Risk Management in Juvenile Justice, 27 Crim. Just. 10,18 (2013) HeinOnline 

Vesla M. Weaver et al., The Great Decoupling: The Disconnection Between Criminal Offending and Experience of Arrest Across Two Cohorts, RSF, Feb. 2019, at 89. From the abstract:

Our study explores the arrest experiences of two generational cohorts—those entering adulthood on either side of a large shift in American policing. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 and 1997), we find a stark increase in arrest odds among the later generation at every level of offending, suggesting a decoupling between contact with the justice system and criminal conduct. Furthermore, this decoupling became racially inflected. Blacks had a much higher probability of arrest at the start of the twenty-first century than both blacks of the generation prior and whites of the same generation. The criminal justice system, we argue, slipped from one in which arrest was low and strongly linked to offending to one where a substantial share of Americans experienced arrest without committing a crime.

David Weisburd, Does Hot Spots Policing Inevitably Lead to Unfair and Abusive Police Practices, or Can We Maximize Both Fairness and Effectiveness in the New Proactive Policing?, 2016 U. Chi. Legal F. 661-690 (2016), HeinOnline

Howard Spivak; Maureen McGough & Nancy Rodriguez, Using Science to Advance the Police Profession, 40 S. Ill. U. L.J. 457-474 (2016) HeinOnline

​Franklin E. Zimring, How Many Killings by Police?, 2016 U. Chi. Legal F. 691-710 (2016), HeinOnline 

Carlos Torres; Azadeh Shahshahani & Tye Tavaras, Indiscriminate Power: Racial Profiling and Surveillance since 9/11, 18 U. Pa. J.L. & Soc. Change 283-310 (2015), HeinOnline 

David Harris, Racial Profiling, in Reforming Criminal Justice: Policing 117-145 (Erick Luna ed., 2017), SSRN

James Forman Jr., Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow, 87 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 21-69 (2012), HeinOnline 

Peter DeAngelis, Racial Profiling and the Presumption of Innocence, 43 Neth. J. Legal. Phil. 43-58 (2014)  HeinOnline

Michele Alexandre, Girls Gone Wild and Rape Law: Revising the Contractual Concept of Consent & (and) Ensuring an Unbiased Application of Reasonable Doubt When the Victim is Non-Traditional,  17 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 41-80 (2009), [HeinOnline]

Joshua Dressler, Criminal Law, Moral Theory, and Feminism: Some Reflections on the Subject and on the Fun (and Value) of Courting Controversy, 48 St. Louis U. L.J. 1143-166 (2004), [HeinOnline]

N. Jeremi Duru, The Central Park Five, the Scottsboro Boys, and the Myth of the Bestial Black Man, 25 Cardozo L. Rev. 1315 (2004), [HeinOnline]

Courtney Fraser, From Ladies First to Asking for it: Benevolent Sexism in the Maintenance of Rape Culture, 103 Calif. L. Rev. 141-203 (2015), [HeinOnline]

Susan Estrich, Teaching Rape Law, 102 Yale L. J. 509-20 (1992), [HeinOnline]

Aya Gruber, Rape, Feminism, and the War on Crime, 84 Wash. L. Rev. 581,-660 (2009), HeinOnline

Michelle Oberman, Getting Past Legal Analysis or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Teaching Rape, 45 Creighton L. Rev. 799 (2012), HeinOnline.

Lois Pineau, Date Rape: A Feminist Analysis, 8 Law & Phil. 217, 243 (1989), JSTOR, excerpted in Applications of Feminist Legal Theory to Women's Lives: Sex, Violence, Work, and Reproduction 484-494 (D. Kelly Weisberg ed., 1996), Classified Stacks K349.A67 1996 

James J. Tomkovicz, On Teaching Rape: Reasons, Risks, and Rewards, 102 Yale L. J. 481-508 (1992), HeinOnline

Jennifer Wriggins, Rape, Racism, and the Law, 6 Harv. Women's L.J. 103 (1983), U. Maine repository