The Anti-Case Method: Herbert Wechsler and the Political History of the Criminal Law Course

This article is the first to recover the dramatic transformation in criminal law teaching away from the case method and towards a more open-ended philosophical approach in the 1930s. It makes three contributions. One, it shows how Columbia Law Professor Herbert Wechsler revolutionized the teaching of criminal law by de-emphasizing cases and including a variety of non-case related material in his 1940 text Criminal Law and Its Administration. Two, it reveals that at least part of Wechsler\u27s intention behind transforming criminal law teaching was to undermine Langdell\u27s case method, which he blamed for producing a closed-system view of the law that contributed to the destruction of the first half of the New Deal. Three, it shows that Wechsler\u27s text inspired an entire generation of law teachers who believed that criminal law should be taught as a liberal arts course, precisely so that law students would not become criminal lawyers. The legal academy\u27s disdain for criminal practice, this article concludes, allowed scholars like Wechsler to introduce innovations in criminal law teaching that became a subsequent model for law teaching generally in the United States during the latter half of the Twentieth Century

Freedom and Prison: Putting Structuralism Back into Structural Inequality

Critics of structural racism frequently miss structuralism as a field of historical inquiry. This essay reviews the rise of structuralism as a mode of historical analysis and applies it to the mass incarceration debate in the United States, arguing that it enriches the work of prevailing scholars in the field

[Dis]integration: Second-Order Diversity and Schools

This article challenges the prevailing definition of diversity in schools. Borrowing from legal theorist Heather Gerken, it argues that diversity is best understood not simply as a rationale for creating integrated spaces, but also [dis]integrated ones, places where minority students and faculty can occupy majority positions, and are able to exercise majority control. Such spaces serve legitimate pedagogical goals that are different from those associated with statistical integration, and therefore warrant consideration by courts tasked with reviewing the use of race in university admissions

To Corral and Control The Ghetto : Stop, Frisk, and the Geography of Freedom

While criminal law scholar Michelle Alexander has shown that stop and frisks often serve as the gateway into the criminal justice system for young men of color, she occludes the complex forces that led to their rise. This article seeks to identify those forces, relating the rise of stop and frisk rules to liberal politics, Cold War concerns, and spatial dynamics. To illustrate, this article will proceed in three parts. Part I will demonstrate how Mapp v. Ohio coincided with judicial frustration at police intrusions into private, intimate space-including private thought-precisely at a time when the United States sought to distinguish itself from totalitarian thought control regimes during the Cold War. Part II will show how the Court\u27s effort to prevent thought control and guard intimate space in Mapp engendered an unanticipated public effect, leading police both to lie about arrests and to use more violent means for procuring evidence from suspects on the street. Finally, Part III will show how such street-level tensions played out at the local and national levels, interiorizing liberty in ways that allowed for a narrative of expanding freedoms amidst a climate of increased police control

The Anti-Case Method: Herbert Wechsler and the Political History of the Criminal Law Course

This article is the first to recover the dramatic transformation in criminal law teaching away from the case method and towards a more open-ended philosophical approach in the 1930s. It makes three contributions. One, it shows how Columbia Law Professor Herbert Wechsler revolutionized the teaching of criminal law by de-emphasizing cases and including a variety of non-case related material in his 1940 text Criminal Law and Its Administration. Two, it reveals that at least part of Wechsler\u27s intention behind transforming criminal law teaching was to undermine Langdell\u27s case method, which he blamed for producing a closed-system view of the law that contributed to the destruction of the first half of the New Deal. Three, it shows that Wechsler\u27s text inspired an entire generation of law teachers who believed that criminal law should be taught as a liberal arts course, precisely so that law students would not become criminal lawyers. The legal academy\u27s disdain for criminal practice, this article concludes, allowed scholars like Wechsler to introduce innovations in criminal law teaching that became a subsequent model for law teaching generally in the United States during the latter half of the Twentieth Century