For those of you following along, it’s week 3 in our Law in Rural America seminar. Today we’re thinking about rural courts (civil and criminal) and their role in resolving disputes in rural spaces. #RuralLaw 1/
First: one of my fav law+soc articles, David Engel’s “The Oven Bird’s Song.” jstor.org/stable/3053447… We'll talk about the ways formal legal systems interact w/ rural norms and how rural communities express boundaries between insiders and outsiders through dispute resolution. 2/
Then we’re going to tackle @MaybellRomero's recent “Viewing Access to Justice for Rural Mainers of Color Through A Prosecution Lens.” The article opens up ways to think about racial inequities in rural criminal justice, … 3/
… introduces a “thicker” definition of A2J (which we’ll return to later in the semester with work from @lisareneepruitt), and offers up a few potential reforms. Check out @MaybellRomero's paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… 4/
(Two students wrote great JOTWELL style response papers to Romero’s article. Hey @IReadJotwell, looking for a couple of reviews???)
What does criminal justice look like in Indian Country? The third article we’re reading for this week is @kevin_washburn's “American Indians, Crime, and the Law” from @michlawreview. It’s an article that offers us a lot to unpack in class… papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… 5/
…Washburn presents the scope of what amounts to the “single most aggressive use of federal power against an Indian that routinely occurs, at least in modern times,” —that is the “prosecution and imprisonment of an Indian for an on-reservation crime against another Indian.” 6/
For a peek into news coverage: 1. Jessica Pishko, “The Shocking Lack of Lawyers in Rural America” in The Atlantic theatlantic.com/politics/archi… 7/…
and 2. Ted Roelofs, “What’s behind the population boom in rural Michigan jails?,” Grand Haven Tribune. grandhaventribune.com/news/local/wha… 8/8
Oh shoot. I’ve clearly missed my opportunity for some good 30 Rock gifs. Here you go:
@threadreaderapp unroll please.
