LAWE 714

Catalog description

This course invites students to learn about and critically reflect on why and how state and federal governments punish people convicted of crimes and to consider how the law both limits and facilitates contemporary punishment practices.  The class explores the histories and justifications of punishment in the United States, examines the geographies and economies of punishment in the U.S., identifies experiences that the law deems collateral to punishment, and considers how, if at all, the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment limits how governments may impose these various forms of punishment.