This year I am teaching a legal history seminar looking at American criminal process. In case of interest, here are some of the main readings, with links to open access copies if I could find them and otherwise links to bibliographical or purchase information (let me know if you have more accessible links for any of these). This isn’t the exact syllabus, much less a comprehensive bibliography of the subject, but I thought it might be a useful starting point for others who might want to incorporate some of these topics into more general history courses.
Part I—Historical Perspectives
The English Inheritance (and Comparison)
Old Bailey Online
John Langbein, The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial
Allyson May, The Bar and the Old Bailey
The Colonial Inheritance
Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar
Smith and Pynchon, Colonial Justice in Western Massachusetts
Hoffer and Scott eds., Criminal Proceedings in Colonial Virginia
The Revolutionary Inheritance
Jack Rakove, Original Meanings, ch. 10 on “Rights”
Founders’ Constitution, sources on Amendments V-VI
19th c. Criminal Courts as Local Dispute Resolution
Grimké, The South-Carolina Justice of the Peace
Laura Edwards, The People and Their Peace
From Dispute Resolution to Professional Bureaucracy
Nicholas Parrillo, Against the Profit Motive, ch. 7 on “Criminal Prosecution”
Michael Willrich, City of Courts
Inventing the Criminal Justice “System”
Illinois Crime Survey (1929)
Wickersham Commission Report on Criminal Procedure (1931)
Policing Vice
Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925)
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (more documents here)
Wickersham Commission Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement (1931)
Jim Crow and the Constitution
Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86 (1923) (more resources here)
Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932)
Michael Klarman, The Racial Origins of Modern Criminal Procedure, 99 Mich. L. Rev. 48 (2000)
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness
The Warren Court’s Criminal Procedure Revolution: Courts
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963)
Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353 (1963)
Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963)
Paul Freund, Justice Was Done for One and All, N.Y. Times Book Review, June 21, 1964
Henry Friendly, The Bill of Rights as a Code of Criminal Procedure, 53 Cal. L. Rev. 929 (1965)
The Warren Court’s Criminal Procedure Revolution: Police
Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961)
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)
Matthew Countryman, Up South
Part II—Constitutional Criminal Procedure and Its Discontents
Prosecutors Unbound?
Inmates of Attica Correctional Facility v. Rockefeller, 477 F.2d 375 (1973)
Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357 (1978)
John Langbein, interview for The Plea
Stephanos Bibas, Brady v. Maryland, in Criminal Procedure Stories (2006)
John Pfaff, Micro and Macro Causes of Prison Growth, 28 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 1239 (2012)
Miranda and Policing: Critiques from Left, Right, and Beyond
Paul Cassell, The Costs of the Miranda Mandate, 28 Ariz. St. L.J. 299 (1996)
Richard Leo, Miranda’s Revenge: Police Interrogation as a Confidence Game, 30 L. & Soc’y Rev. 259 (1996)
Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428 (2000)
Delayed Miranda Warning Ordered for Terror Suspects, N.Y. Times, March 24, 2011
FBI Memorandum, October 2010
Terry and Policing: Procedural Theater?
For City’s Teens, Stop and Frisk is Black and White, WNYC, May 29, 2012
Philadelphia Defends Policy on Frisking, With Limits, N.Y. Times, July 11, 2012,
Floyd v. New York (litigation documents are available here)
‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Ebbs, but Still Hangs Over Brooklyn Lives, N.Y. Times, September 19, 2014
Anders Walker, “To Corral and Control the Ghetto,” 48 U. Rich. L. Rev. 1223 (2014)
Procedure and Substance
William Stuntz, The Uneasy Relationship between Criminal Procedure and Criminal Justice, 107 Yale L.J. 1 (1997)
Donald Dripps, Does Liberal Procedure Cause Punitive Substance?, 87 S. Cal. L. Rev. 459 (2013)
Adam Gopnik, The Caging of America, The New Yorker, January 30, 2012