12th Annual Wiley A. Branton Symposium

I presented my paper Restoring Community Dignity Following Police Misconduct, which will appear in the Howard Law Journal as part of the symposium issue. The paper's central claim is that police misconduct enacts a form of dignity taking as officers act against the body or assets of the victim without a legitimate public interest, while dehumanizing them. Our current remedies do not account for this and therefore must be increased.

Information about Howard Law School's Wiley A. Branton Symposium can be found at: http://www.law.howard.edu/1970

Restoring Community Dignity Following Police Misconduct

Forthcoming, 59 Howard Law Journal  (2016).

Several highly publicized encounters between police officers and African Americans have exposed patterns of police-initiated violence and, often, deeply racist law enforcement. With each new encounter, citizens and politicians are left wondering how to heal the rifts between minority groups on the one hand, and local communities and law enforcement on the other hand. The two most common solutions involve awarding large sums to the victims or their families via the tort system, or having the Department of Justice launch one of its rare investigations into local police practices. Neither of these solutions recognizes that racially motivated police brutality fundamentally harms the dignity of targeted individuals and groups. I draw on existing American and international practices of community involvement and dignity restoration to offer new remedies that recognize the growing legal salience of “dignity” and which can better redress harms caused by police misconduct.

OIEAHC-SEA Chicago Conference

On 20 June 2015 I chaired a panel, “Smuggling almost with impunity”: Caribbean Provisioning, Commerce, and Contraband during the American War of Independence. The panel participants were Tessa Murphy (History), Geneviève Godbout (Anthropology), and Christopher P. Todd (History) all of the University of Chicago. Their papers examined the effects of the American Revolution on the internal and external trade of Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Antigua, Dominica, Granada, and St. Vincent. Each of the papers demonstrate how the American war exacerbated existing challenges in the islands providing certain groups (Caribs and slaves) an opportunity and impetus to seek greater independence from the empire. The war also created problems for planters, slaves, and other island residents by disrupting the flow of food stuffs and other essential goods to the islands.

Interview on Online Teaching

The Department of History at the University of Chicago did a write up of an interviews Adrian De Gifis and I gave them regarding our experience in online teaching. The article is available on the department's website: https://history.uchicago.edu/news/online-form-fits-function

Law and Society Association Annual Meeting - Seattle 2015

I presented a paper, "Dignity Takings in the Criminal Law of Seventeenth-Century England and the Massachusetts Bay Colony," as part of the panel: Dignity Takings & Dignity Restoration: New Socio-Legal Contributions to the Constitutional Takings Literature.

Abstract:


When does a punishment for crime cross from being a legitimate goal of the state to a dignity taking? From the Norman Conquest until the middle of the eighteenth-century, the Common Law provided that in addition to execution, the property of convicted felons or traitors was forfeited to the crown and their blood corrupted so that their heirs could not inherit. I argue this is a clear instance of dignity takings.  The colonists who traveled to Massachusetts Bay wanted a fresh start and so sought to create a model society based on Biblical law. Using around 6,000 criminal cases from 1630 to 1684 this paper argues that a different form of dignity takings ensued.  The use of “scarlet letters,” pillorying, whipping, and other public punishment were all designed to single out unworthy members of the community. I push Atuahene’s concept of dignity takings by expanding the idea of a dignity taking to include not only the destruction of real or personal property but also the destruction  of people’s actual bodies.

Dissertation

Acevedo, John F. 2013. Harsh Mercy: Criminal Law in Seventeenth-CenturyMassachusetts Bay. PhD dissertation, The University of Chicago. Ann Arbor: ProQuest/UMI. (Publication No. 1492330755).


Abstract: 

As the first sustained study of crime in Massachusetts Bay from the founding of the colony in 1630 until the Salem Witchcraft trials this dissertation demonstrate the changes in colonial criminal law admiration and dispel some of the misconceptions about criminal law in the Massachusetts Bay colony. The colonists of Massachusetts Bay began to alter the Common Law of England to their own ends as soon as they arrived in North America. The colonial Puritan leaders sought to make a godly society on earth, in order to achieve this they attempted to implement Biblical law in their society. However, this proved not to be entirely possible because of the harshness that would emerge from the proscribed punishments being inflicted and the general lack of criminal procedure in the Bible. In creating their new legal code they sought to establish certainty in punishment, but instead the Body of Liberties lead to an increase in defendant’s rights and greater leniency in punishment, but not to certainty. The replacement of this code combined with disturbances in the colony resulting from the English Civil War and Restoration led to an increase in the harshness of punishments under the Laws and Liberties. Finally, the Revolution of 1688 was not an unproblematic event in the colony, contributing to the rigid application of the Common Law during the Salem witchcraft trials.