Image of the nine Scottsboro defendants, policemen, and a defense attorney

Reimagining the Public Defender

For the poor, who are disproportionately people of color, the criminal justice system in the United States is essentially a plea-and-probation system.
White police officers surrounding Black family in a car.

Racism on the Road

In 1963, after Sam Cooke was turned away from a hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana, because he was black, he wrote “A Change Is Gonna Come.” He was right.

How Cars Transformed Policing

Most communities barely had a police force and citizens shared responsibility for enforcing laws. Then the car changed everything.
Traffic in an intersection in Los Angeles in 1922.
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Why We Can — and Must — Create a Fairer System of Traffic Enforcement

The discretionary nature of traffic enforcement has left it ripe for abuse.
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How the Fight Over Civil Forfeiture Lays Bare the Contradictions in Modern Conservatism

The brewing conflict between originalism and law-and-order politics.
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A Bullet Can Cross the Border. Can the Constitution? The Supreme Court Won’t Say.

The Supreme Court punts on Hernandez v. Mesa, leaving the Constitution lost in the borderlands.