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Joseph Margulies is Professor of Law and Government at Cornell University. He was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush (2004), involving detentions at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, and in Geren v. Omar and Munaf v. Geren (2008), involving detentions at Camp Cropper in Iraq. His books include Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power and What Changed When Everything Changed: 9/11 and the Making of National Identity.
Draconian individual punishment distracts from systemic change and reinforces the cruelest and most racist system of incarceration on the planet.
Well-meaning nonprofits don’t go far enough in the fight against gentrification. Residents themselves must be in charge, and neighborhood trusts point the way.
Far from a relic of the past, September 11 continues to normalize state-sanctioned barbarity.
In many states, legal regimes sanction the predictable murder of innocent black men. Justice will not be served until the law changes.
States should release from prison far more than the very small percentage of low-level, nonviolent offenders they hold.
The massacre led immediately to national security fantasies.
Reducing prison populations isn’t enough. We need a new criminal system founded on priniciples of justice rather than fear of crime.
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