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Abortion. Physician-assisted suicide. Same-sex marriages. Embryonic stem-cell research. Poverty. Crime. What is a faithful Christian response? The God of the Bible is unquestionably a God of justice. Yet Christians have had their differences as to how human government and the church should bring about a just social order. Although Christians share many deep and significant theological convictions, differences that threaten to divide them have often surrounded the matter of how the church collectively and Christians individually ought to engage the public square. What is the mission of the church? What is the purpose of human government? How ought they to be related to each other? How should social injustice be redressed? The five noted contributors to this volume answer these questions from within their distinctive Christian theological traditions, as well as responding to the other four positions. Through the presentations and ensuing dialogue we come to see more clearly what the differences are, where their positions overlap and why they diverge. The contributors and the positions taken include Clarke E. Cochran: A Catholic Perspective Derek H. Davis: A Classical Separation Perspective Ronald J. Sider: An Anabaptist Perspective Corwin F. Smidt: A Principled Pluralist Perspective J. Philip Wogaman: A Social Justice Perspective This book will be instructive for anyone seeking to grasp the major Christian alternatives and desiring to pursue a faithful corporate and individual response to the social issues that face us.
Every day, in courtrooms around the United States, thousands of criminal defendants are represented by public defenders--lawyers provided by the government for those who cannot afford private counsel. Though often taken for granted, the modern American public defender has a surprisingly contentious history--one that offers insights not only about the "carceral state," but also about the contours and compromises of twentieth-century liberalism. First gaining appeal amidst the Progressive Era fervor for court reform, the public defender idea was swiftly quashed by elite corporate lawyers who believed the legal profession should remain independent from the state. Public defenders took hold in some localities but not yet as a nationwide standard. By the 1960s, views had shifted. Gideon v. Wainwright enshrined the right to counsel into law and the legal profession mobilized to expand the ranks of public defenders nationwide. Yet within a few years, lawyers had already diagnosed a "crisis" of underfunded, overworked defenders providing inadequate representation--a crisis that persists today. This book shows how these conditions, often attributed to recent fiscal emergencies, have deep roots, and it chronicles the intertwined histories of constitutional doctrine, big philanthropy, professional in-fighting, and Cold War culture that made public defenders ubiquitous but embattled figures in American courtrooms.
An exploration of the concept of justice, focusing on its place in public service. The three essays in Justice in Public Life, written by Claire Foster-Gilbert, Jane Sinclair, and James Hawkey, examine the meaning of justice in the twenty-first century, asking how justice can be expressed by our public service institutions and in society more widely. They consider whether justice is tied to truth and whether our idea of justice is skewed when we conflate it with fairness. They also explore how justice as a virtue can help us navigate the complexities of life in economics, in wider society, and in righting wrongs. In addition, their essays consider the threats to a just society, including human nature itself, the inheritance of unjust structures, the wide range of views about what constitutes justice, and the difficulty of establishing it globally and between nation-states. Justice in Public Life brings an often abstract concept to life, calling on public servants to nurture justice as a virtue pursued both individually and communally.
What happens when public prosecutors, the most powerful officials in the criminal justice system, seek convictions instead of justice? Why are cases involving well-to-do victims often prosecuted more vigorously than those involving poor victims? Why do wealthy defendants frequently enjoy more lenient plea bargains than the disadvantaged? In this eye-opening work, Angela J. Davis shines a much-needed light on the power of American prosecutors, revealing how the day-to-day practice of even the most well-intentioned prosecutors can result in unequal treatment of defendants and victims. Ranging from mandatory minimum sentencing laws that enhance prosecutorial control over the outcome of cases, to the increasing politicization of the office, Davis uses powerful stories of individuals caught in the system to demonstrate how the perfectly legal exercise of prosecutorial discretion can result in gross inequities in criminal justice. For the paperback edition, Davis provides a new Afterword which covers such recent incidents of prosecutorial abuse as the Jena Six case, the Duke lacrosse case, the Department of Justice firings, and more.
From an award-winning civil rights lawyer, a profound challenge to our society's normalization of the caging of human beings, and the role of the legal profession in perpetuating it Alec Karakatsanis is interested in what we choose to punish. For example, it is a crime in most of America for poor people to wager in the streets over dice; dice-wagerers can be seized, searched, have their assets forfeited, and be locked in cages. It's perfectly fine, by contrast, for people to wager over international currencies, mortgages, or the global supply of wheat; wheat-wagerers become names on the wings of hospitals and museums. He is also troubled by how the legal system works when it is trying to punish people. The bail system, for example, is meant to ensure that people return for court dates. But it has morphed into a way to lock up poor people who have not been convicted of anything. He's so concerned about this that he has personally sued court systems across the country, resulting in literally tens of thousands of people being released from jail when their money bail was found to be unconstitutional. Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings—an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color and for which the legal system has never offered sufficient justification. Usual Cruelty is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it.
Concentrating on the conflicts of interest among criminal justice system components, between the public and its perception of crime, and among policymakers, this analysis promotes new public policy directions. First, an analysis of crime, criminals, and the criminal justice system provides a perspective to help distinguish myths about ideal system operation from the reality of its functioning. This conceptual framework focuses on the conflicting priorities of private motives and public interests, perceptions (and misconceptions) of crime, theories about what constitutes a criminal, and the implementation of criminal justice policy from these perceptions. The workings of each of the major components of the criminal justice system are then examined, with attention to the real roles and interests of the police, lawyers (attorneys and the defense counsel), the courts, and corrections. Interests and goals that are prime points of conflict between these components are detailed, as is the impact of these conflicts on law enforcement and crime. Third, four policies currently being used in the U.S. to deal with crime are explored -- deterrence, rehabilitation, decriminalization, and diversion. Attempts are made to fit each policy into its historical beginning a and to highlight reasons for its emerging as an important policy; each policy's assumptions about the nature of crime and the nature of criminals are discussed. Finally, processes for assessing policies and their impact on society and crime are presented; the processes are evaluated for advantages and pitfalls. Evaluations of research designed to assess policies then lead to proposals for improving criminal justice policy.
Public opinion is vital to the functioning of the criminal justice system but it is not at all clear how best to establish what this is, and what views people have on different aspects of criminal justice and the criminal justice system. Politicians and the media often assume that the public wants harsher, tougher and longer sentences, and policies may be shaped accordingly. Detailed research and more specific polling often tells a different story. This book is concerned to shed further light on the nature of public views on criminal justice, paying particular attention to public opinion towards specific types of offenders, such as sex offenders and mentally disordered offenders. In doing so it challenges many enduring assumptions regarding people's views on justice, and confronts the myths that infect our understanding of what people think about the criminal justice system.
"In the American judicial system, even accused murderers, rapists, arsonists, and child abusers have voices and rights; and as the Miranda warning says, if they cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent them. Enter the public defender, who must try to help people who have done reprehensible things--no matter their personal assessment of the client and situation. Former PD Allen Goodman draws upon a deep understanding of that milieu, conveying its complexities and dilemmas, reveling in great moral victories, enduring administrative inanity, and staggering from defeats. It is an intensely idealistic job, but also one that breeds corrosive cynicism. Goodman limns the difficulties of remaining a good human being while defending the worst of them"--
Praise for Public Health and Social Justice "This compilation unifies ostensibly distant corners of our broad discipline under the common pursuit of health as an achievable, non-negotiable human right. It goes beyond analysis to impassioned suggestions for moving closer to the vision of health equity." —Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, Kolokotrones University Professor and chair, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School; co-founder, Partners In Health "This superb book is the best work yet concerning the relationships between public health and social justice." —Howard Waitzkin, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico "This book gives public health professionals, researchers and advocates the essential knowledge they need to capture the energy that social justice brings to our enterprise." —Nicholas Freudenberg, DrPH, Distinguished Professor of Public Health, the City University of New York School of Public Health at Hunter College "The breadth of topics selected provides a strong overview of social justice in medicine and public health for readers new to the topic." —William Wiist, DHSc, MPH, MS, senior scientist and head, Office of Health and Society Studies, Interdisciplinary Health Policy Institute, Northern Arizona University "This book is a tremendous contribution to the literature of social justice and public health." —Catherine Thomasson, MD, executive director, Physicians for Social Responsibility "This book will serve as an essential reference for students, teachers and practitioners in the health and human services who are committed to social responsibility." —Shafik Dharamsi, PhD, faculty of medicine, University of British Columbia