Call for Submissions: Rutgers University Law Review Spring 2021 Symposium

Prosecutors, Power, and Racial Injustice: Building an Anti-Racist Prosecutorial System
A Virtual Symposium

The murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and countless others at the hands of police have brought structural racism to the forefront of American social discourse. The ongoing crusade for racial justice and countervailing resistance to reform have focused primarily on policing. Equally important, however, is the power of prosecutors to perpetuate or upend the status quo of racial injustice in our criminal and juvenile legal systems. 

The 2021 Symposium of the Rutgers University Law Review, in partnership with the Rutgers Center on Criminal Justice, Youth Rights, and Race and the Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic, will explore the ways in which federal, state, and local prosecutors have contributed to mass incarceration in the United States and the roles they are playing or might play in developing and championing an anti-racist system of prosecution. We invite scholars of law and legal ethics, social sciences, and the humanities; current and former prosecutors, defenders, and other practitioners; and people impacted by the criminal or juvenile legal systems to submit paper proposals for inclusion in the symposium issue of the Law Review. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present at the Symposium conference, which will be held virtually on April 9, 2021.

Topics for the conference might include, but are not confined to, the following:

• How historical and contemporary prosecutorial practices have contributed to racial disparities in the juvenile and adult criminal legal systems
• The boundaries and exercise of prosecutorial discretion and prosecutorial decision-making practices
• Prosecutorial ethics
• The unique obligations and powers of juvenile prosecutors
• The potential for and challenges to creating anti-racist prosecutor offices and systems
• Truth and reconciliation commissions and reparations
• Prosecutor/police relationships and interactions
• The roles of public defender offices and the judiciary in prosecutorial reform

Email proposals as a Word or PDF document to the Rutgers University Law Review at lawreview@law.rutgers.edu by midnight on January 22, 2020.

Proposals must include:

1. Your name and contact information;
2. Title of the proposed article;
3. A brief (one-page maximum) description of the article; and
4. A current CV

Authors may submit more than one proposal.