Conference Announcement and Call-for-Papers: ClassCrits IV: Criminalizing Economic Inequality, Sep. 23-24, 2011 in Washington, DC at American University Washington College of Law. The call-for-papers deadline is May 6, 2011. The call can be found here: ClassCrits Call for Papers_Due May 6 2011.
This workshop, the fourth meeting of ClassCrits, takes as its theme the criminalization of economic inequality. The dominance of “free market” economic theory and policy has been accompanied in the U.S. by increasing reliance on the criminal justice system to make and enforce economic policy. The criminal justice system is increasingly used to control persons and groups whose participation in formal markets is marginal at best. Immigration law has turned into “crimmigration,” using the domestic criminal justice system to enforce immigration laws constructing workers and their families as “illegal people.” States and municipalities have criminalized the lives of homeless people, including those who are mentally ill. International markets in heroin, cocaine, and marijuana are the targets of a “war on drugs” fought through criminal justice (and military) methods. Criminal law is used to deter and punish sex trafficking, and the criminal justice system buttresses, or substitutes for, welfare policy. At the same time, corporate wrongdoing has been lightly punished, if at all, and the drumbeat against “government” as the enemy of the people continues unabated. In this sense, economic inequality has not been “criminalized” at all. Quite the opposite, powerful interests encourage American citizens to see economic inequality as natural and good. Criminalizing Economic Inequality will provide an opportunity for legal scholars, economists, policymakers, activists, and others to critically examine the relationship between state power and market power in upward redistribution and the continued spread of laissez-faire ideology.
We invite panel proposals and paper presentations that speak to this year’s theme as well as to general classcrits themes. See the following page for details.
In addition, we extend a special invitation to junior scholars to submit proposals for works in progress. Each work in progress will be commented upon by a senior scholar as well as other scholars in a small, supportive working session.
Poverty Law 