Legal Commentary

Many thanks to Al, Chris, Willoughby, Anders and the commenters for a terrific book club on "The Ghost of Jim Crow."  You can find these posts by looking under the PrawfsBlawg "Books" Category. 

Next month Prawfs will be hosting a book club on Nicole Stelle Garnett's "Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing, and the Restoration of Urban America."  Garnett is a Professor of Law at University of Notre Dame Law School, and she has written extensively on property, land use, and local government law.  Last year the Federalist Society awarded her the Paul M. Bator Award for demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship and commitment to teaching.

The club begins on March 22 and will run through March 24.  I'm extremely excited about our terrific group of contributors.  They are:

• Michelle Wilde Anderson, Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley School of Law
• D. Benjamin Barros, Associate Professor, Widener University School of Law
• Stephen Clowney, Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky College of Law; Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law (Spring 2010)
• Lee Fennell, Professor of Law, University of Chicago School of Law
• Tracey L. Meares, Deputy Dean and Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law, Yale Law School
• Christopher Serkin, Associate Professor, Brooklyn Law School

And here's a brief synopsis of "Ordering the City" from Yale Press:

This timely and important book highlights the multiple, often overlooked, and frequently misunderstood connections between land use and development policies and policing practices. In order to do so, the book draws upon multiple literatures?especially law, history, economics, sociology, and psychology?as well as concrete case studies to better explore how these policy arenas, generally treated as completely unrelated, intersect and conflict.

 

Nicole Stelle Garnett identifies different types of urban ?disorder,? some that may be precursors to serious crime and social deviancy, others that may be benign or even contribute positively to urban vitality. The book?s unique approach?to analyze city policies through the lens of order and disorder?provides a clearer understanding, generally, of how cities work (and why they sometimes do not), and specifically, of what disorder is and how it affects city life.

We hope you will join us next month for the club.