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A more detailed description and Abstract for the article are forthcoming. 

Abstract: 

Criminal law scholarship suffers from a whiteness problem. Criminal law scholars appear to be increasingly concerned with the racial disparities within the criminal legal system. The focus of the scholarship tends to be on the marginalized community and the various discriminatory outcomes they experience as a result of the system. There are frequent mentions of racial bias in the criminal legal system and mass incarceration, the lexical descendent of overcriminalization. Some observers might say that to a certain degree, everyone is now a race scholar. Or, at the very least, many scholars who write about criminal law are willing to at least mention that there is a racial component to its administration. However, the scholarship is often missing consideration of the role of whiteness and white supremacy as the underlying logics that drives much of the bias in the system. This Article examines the ways that whiteness has become the norm within the criminal legal system, including within criminal law commentary. It makes this intervention by focusing on the burgeoning area of criminal law discourse that examines the role of the prosecutor.

Biography:

Professor I. India Thusi is a Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law with a joint appointment at the Kinsey Institute. Her research examines racial and sexual hierarchies as they relate to policing, race, and gender. Her articles and essays have been published or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, NYU Law Review, Northwestern Law Review (twice), Georgetown Law Journal, Cornell Law Review Online, amongst others.

Thusi’s research is inextricably connected to her previous legal experience at organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and—most recently—The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication lab that collaborates to effect lasting policy and culture change. She served as a federal law clerk to two social justice giants: the Honorable Robert L. Carter, who sat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and was the lead counsel for the NAACP in Brown v. Board of Education; and the Honorable Damon J. Keith, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and is lauded for his prominent civil rights jurisprudence. She also clerked for Justice van der Westhuizen at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the country’s highest court.

Among other career accomplishments, Dr. Thusi was selected as a Fulbright U.S. Global Scholar for 2020-2023. Her paper “Reality Porn” was selected for the 2020 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum, and she was recognized as a Top 40 Rising Young Lawyer by the American Bar Association in 2019. Her most recent paper was selected for the 2021 Equality Law Scholars Workshop

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The CJR Workshop Series offers a virtual forum for academics to share criminal justice works-in-progress with an audience of academics and practitioners. Seats are limited so registration is required.