The Supreme Court and the New Jim Crow

Examine how the Supreme Court has systematically reduced the constitutional rights of persons charged with crimes over the last fifty years.

This course will examine the role of the Supreme Court in erecting the legal backbone of The New Jim Crow, the name given to the newest iteration of the white supremacist structure that uses the criminal judicial system to dehumanize and exploit Black people. It will explore developments during the post-Civil Rights Era, such as the replacement of overt racism with racially coded politics, the Supreme Court’s shift to the right, and the War on Drugs. Most importantly, this course will reveal how the Supreme Court has systematically rolled back a host of constitutional protections related to the rights of criminal defendants, while simultaneously immunizing the system and its players from claims of racial bias. It will draw striking parallels between the Supreme Court’s response to Reconstruction a century prior and its jurisprudence over the last fifty years.

Students will learn:

• How the Supreme Court has narrowed the constitutional rights of criminal defendants
• How the Supreme Court has immunized the criminal judicial systems from claims of racial bias
• Which areas of constitutional criminal law have improved, and which are still in need of change