David Alan Sklansky, "A Pattern of Violence: How the Law Classifies Crimes and What it Means for Justice" (Harvard UP, 2020)

New Books in African American Studies · May 7, 2021 · 58m

In the wake of the George Floyd killing, many Americans are engaging in a renewed debate about the role violence and especially police violence, plays in American society. In A Pattern of Violence: How the Law Classifies Crimes and What it Means for Justice (Harvard UP, 2020), David Alan Sklansky, the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, argues that in order to think sensibly about criminal justice, we must consider how we think about violence and the criminal law’s role in shaping our perceptions. Sklansky argues that the criminal law’s definitions of violence have…