October 16, 2011

The Rule of Law Is Broken

The Rule of Law Is Broken 2

Monica Almeida, Redux

An overcrowded prison in Chino, Calif., reflects the modern American approach to penalizing crime, which William Stuntz calls "the harshest in the history of democratic government."

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Monica Almeida, Redux

An overcrowded prison in Chino, Calif., reflects the modern American approach to penalizing crime, which William Stuntz calls "the harshest in the history of democratic government."

By Peter Monaghan

When a renowned scholar of criminal law and procedure says the criminal-justice system is in ruin, the indictment should stick.

The title of William J. Stuntz's The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (Belknap/Harvard University Press) encapsules the claim he details in lucid and entertaining, yet unsettling, prose.

Stuntz's litany of charges: Policing is inconsistent and racially imbalanced. Criminal defendants rarely face jury trials, because they have