The two Criminal Justice books that generated the best class discussions:
still trying to wrap
July 8th, 2010 § 0
my historian's head around this commercial.
with George Washington in a Dodge.
Assault and Battery + Witchcraft?
July 6th, 2010 § 0
I just found a really interesting case from the early 19th century in Portland, Maine in involving a brouhaha and a bruja.
I'll read it a bit more carefully, but it's posted here so you can take a look yourself.
Rothman v Hirsch
February 18th, 2010 § 0
An interesting argument in today’s class on the birth of the prison. Lots of students agreed with Hirsch’s attack on Rothman’s Discovery of the Asylum.
I asked them, what would the historiography of penal reform look like if every one’s book was like Hirsch’s or Rothman’s – they came to see that we all benefit from their different approaches. We’re going to be checking in on lots of other historians that have thrown their hats into the penal reform ring: Meranze, Ignatieff, Foucault, McLennan… I’ll post from time to time to show how the battle royale unfolds.
I asked them, what would the historiography of penal reform look like if every one’s book was like Hirsch’s or Rothman’s – they came to see that we all benefit from their different approaches. We’re going to be checking in on lots of other historians that have thrown their hats into the penal reform ring: Meranze, Ignatieff, Foucault, McLennan… I’ll post from time to time to show how the battle royale unfolds.
submitted my article yesterday
February 9th, 2010 § 0
"Privatizing the Public, Americanizing the Law"
It begins…
" Assault is a commonplace crime with uncommon interpretive power. It lives on the periphery of American legal historiography, and yet, owing to the ubiquity of small-scale violence, it has for centuries been a perennial and pesky weed threatening to overwhelm courts everywhere. Perched between private and public, criminal and civil, and imbued with issues of governance and the rule of law, assault cannot longer be ignored." For the rest, you'll have to read it when it comes out. But, dear reader, you'll be the first to know when that is.
" Assault is a commonplace crime with uncommon interpretive power. It lives on the periphery of American legal historiography, and yet, owing to the ubiquity of small-scale violence, it has for centuries been a perennial and pesky weed threatening to overwhelm courts everywhere. Perched between private and public, criminal and civil, and imbued with issues of governance and the rule of law, assault cannot longer be ignored." For the rest, you'll have to read it when it comes out. But, dear reader, you'll be the first to know when that is.
I Eureka’ed too soon
February 4th, 2010 § 0
The books I posted didn't end up here…
Lawrence Friedman, Crime And Punishment In American History
Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History
Michael Meranze, Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760-1835
David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum (New Lines in Criminology)
Edward Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century American South
Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Rebecca McLennan, Crisis of Imprisonment
so until I figure out hyperlinks, here they are…
Enjoy!
Eureka!
February 4th, 2010 § 0
I've figured out how to blog with email from posterous, so here it goes.
I'm currently teaching a class on Law and Order in American History at the New School.
Here are the texts that I've had the student's buy. I'll report occasionally on how the discussion has been going.
But essentially, the colonial era style of punishment (shaming, branding, torture, etc) was a little jarring.
Needless to say, when I asked them how they'd maintain law and order in a colonial town with no real police or regular court, they were somewhat more sympathetic to the stocks.
I'm currently teaching a class on Law and Order in American History at the New School.
Here are the texts that I've had the student's buy. I'll report occasionally on how the discussion has been going.
But essentially, the colonial era style of punishment (shaming, branding, torture, etc) was a little jarring.
Needless to say, when I asked them how they'd maintain law and order in a colonial town with no real police or regular court, they were somewhat more sympathetic to the stocks.
The Letter to the New Yorker on Jill Lepore’s Murder Article
December 24th, 2009 § 1
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2009/12/07/091207mama_mail1
Here is the text:
Jill Lepore, in her article on the murder rate in the United States, cites the scholars Monkkonen and Roth, who have brought us closer to answering an important question: why do Americans kill? (A Critic at Large, November 9th). Building on their research, I have tracked the historical occurrence of assault and battery in New York. After 1800, American courts moved away from the traditional means of handling assault, whereby a magistrate issued bonds of good behavior which involved families and neighbors in preventing future violence, and a speedy (albeit more severe) approach to assaults became the norm. Courts dismissed complaints in droves. Americans no longer feared jail time or punishment for minor assaults, and the courts focussed their energies on murders, rapes, and robberies. Yet murder often arises from assaults that turn deadly. As long as we live in a country where violent confrontation goes unpunished and, indeed, is often celebrated, we will have a homicide rate that befits our belligerence.
Joshua Stein
Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow
The New School for Social Research
Brooklyn, N.Y.
This holiday season, I’m going to…
December 24th, 2009 § 0
finish my article entitled “Privatizing the Public, Americanizing the Law”
and read the new Gordon Wood.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
