“Children Are Different” and Their Lawyers Should Be Too

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The Miller Trilogy, Jones, and the Future of Juvenile Sentencing and Constitutional Interpretation in the Post-Jones America

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The end of “permanently incorrigible”: Putting Jones v. Mississippi into context

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Advancing Racial Justice Through the Restatement of Children and the Law

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What Goes Up but Never Comes Down? Juvenile Punitive Practice Within the United States

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Missing the Mark: How Miranda Fails to Consider a Minor’s Mind

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Certain members of society are more vulnerable and require more protection than others; minors are but one example. Society recognizes the unique position of children and adolescents in other areas of law and investigatory procedures. That same recognition should be extended to custodial interrogations of minors charged with acts of juvenile delinquency so that appropriate…

Rap Rhyme, Prison Time: How Prosecutors Use Rap Evidence in Gang Case

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In this Article, we call for greater nuance and careful treatment of rap-related evidence in the courtroom, which includes recognizing rap’s history, conventions, and practices generally, and acknowledging rap’s complicated and complex intersection with gangs specifically. Greater nuance and more careful treatment will enable courtroom members, including judges and jurors, to make better informed evaluations…

The Fight for Reproductive Justice After Dobbs: Race and Reproduction as Carceral Tools

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This paper analyzes how race and reproductive healthcare are used as carceral tools of racial oppression that emanate from slavery. I argue that both mass incarceration and the denial of reproductive health services for Black women must be abolished as a way of abolishing vestiges of slavery. Part II contextualizes the historical control of Black…

Community-Based Research Can Be a Tool in the Fight Against Structural Racism

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This Article suggests that doing non-extractive research, what some have called liberation science,7 involves transformation starting from the earliest stages of the research process to upend implicit hierarchies of knowledge and power. Part I of this Article explains the concept of wicked problems and documents the embedded wicked problem of structural racism. Part II focuses…

Trauma-Focused Justice: Recognizing Systemic Trauma 

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This article situates trauma within the Supreme Court’s mitigation framework for adolescents. The framework is based on the developmental research recognized by the Supreme Court in three landmark cases—Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama.

Razing and Rebuilding Delinquency Courts: Demolishing the Flawed Philosophical Foundation of Parens Patriae

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ALL EYEZ ON RAP & HIP-HOP: ANALYZING HOW BLACK EXPRESSION IS CRIMINALIZED AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE RAP ACT OF 2022

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The Black existence, in the United States of America, has always been regarded as a conditional right. Conventionally, Blackness must always be nonviolent and non-disruptive to safely exist. Because of this, Blackness cannot be confined to restraints and disrupts these conventions with acts of joy and creative expression. Black creativity is both unconventional and sacred.…

The Anti-Racist Imperative of Infancy

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This article calls for the categorical exclusion of young children from juvenile court jurisdiction as a pathway toward the abolition of the juvenile legal system in its current form. This article highlights the landscape of age-based jurisdictional boundaries across the country: 24 states have no minimum age of arrest and prosecution, while 18 states have…

Locked Away for Life: The Case Against Juvenile Life Without Parole for Felony Murder

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This article makes the argument against the imposition of life without parole for young people who commit felony murder using an adolescent development framework. The author analyzes existing case law to outline that, just as the U.S. Supreme Court found the death penalty inappropriate for felony murder and relied on adolescent brain development research in…

Abolish Gang Statutes with the Power of the Thirteenth Amendment: Reparations for the People

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This article calls for the use of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish federal and state gang statutes. Highlighting the lineage of modern-day gang statutes from Black Codes to vagrancy laws from the Jim Crow era to gang injunctions, this article establishes how current gang statutes remain as “badges and incidents” of slavery. This article walks…

Data, The New Cotton

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Black Lives Monitored

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Race, Surveillance, Resistance

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Virtual Shackles: Electronic Surveillance and the Adultification of Juvenile Courts

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Deception in Place of Equal and Impartial Administration of Justice: The Use of Deception When Interrogating Juveniles

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Why (Jury-Less) Juvenile Courts Are Unconstitutional

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Brain Science and the Theory of Juvenile Mens Rea

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Kids Will be Kids: Time for a “Reasonable Child” Standard for the Proof of Objective Mens Rea Elements

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A More Grown-Up Response to Ordinary Adolescent Behaviors: Repealing PINS Laws to Protect and Empower D.C. Youth

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Unshackled: Stories of Redemption Among Serious Youth Offenders

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