Stanford University Press Blog

Crime and Punishment

Under the Bush administration, the policing power of the US government has expanded extensively, from warrant-less wiretapping programs to enhanced interrogation techniques. In such an atmosphere, the growing field of police science is gaining attention.

The New Police Science examines the many meanings and components of police, from the preventive actions taken by the state (laws, regulations, etc.) to the enforcement and punishment of criminal justice systems. The editors point out:

it is clear that recent developments in the United States have suddenly made this…highly relevant. Agamben’s theorization of modern life as variations on the theme of ‘camp,’ with the concentration camp regarded not as an exception but as the foundation of law and sovereignty, seemed like one of those radical rants that Italian Marxists are famous for—until Guantánamo.

This collection, recently reviewed in Law & Politics Book Review, provides a valuable perspective for anyone interested in the ways power and justice are changing in modern America.

The Law and Harry Potter

In Lex Populi [“law of the people,” playing off of vox populi], William MacNeil looks at how popular culture portrays and interacts with ideas of jurisprudence, examining Fight Club, The Lord of the Rings, the debate over Terri Schiavo’s right to die, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. When discussing Harry Potter, MacNeil draws our attention to the existence of house elves, small creatures who are enslaved to do their human masters’ bidding unless freed by being presented with clothing.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire reveals that there are hundreds of house elves working at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the shining light of all that has been good in Harry’s life. While Harry’s friend Hermione tries to free the house elves from their enslavement, the other students seem unconcerned, as do the house elves themselves, who appear to relish the opportunity to serve well and regard freedom with horror.

MacNeil contrasts the reactions of two house elves to freedom to show the difficulty of finding a legal system that meets the rights of all members of a community. Dobby relishes his freedom, but he “feels that, as far as freedom goes, there can be too much of a good thing. For instance, when Dumbledore offered to pay him ten Galleons a week—a standard wizarding wage… Dobby ‘beat... him down’ to one Galleon. Winky, on the other hand, perceives her freedom as a “‘disgrace’ and a source of ‘shame.’”

MacNeil argues that the novel shows “that rights discourse, and indeed the law itself, might be highly problematic strategies for change, something that you can’t live with, and can’t live without. For how do you change a system’s status inequities—its gender, race, and class ‘intersections’ overdetermined in the figure of Winky—through the very instrument of those inequities, namely the law?”

What should we do about immigration?

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

What do these words mean today? Yesterday, the latest immigration bill died in the senate, signaling that the government, and the country, will continue to look for a direction for our immigration policy.

In this context, it is useful to examine how other countries have dealt with the pressures and benefits of immigration. In The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918-1940, Mary Dewhurst Lewis turns to interbellum France to examine Europe's first guest worker program and the transformations it underwent as France experienced difficult economic and political circumstances. There is much, she argues, that could be used in our current dilemma from the lessons that France learned in the years before the Second World War.

One of the lessons Lewis presents is that there is not a straightforward connection between the integrity of a country's sovereignty and the extent of migrant rights. The reality is a complex negotiation between various interests and levels of power in which there is always a combination of benefit and loss. There can be no straightforward answer our current dilemma, making the nuances of France's journey – first admitting nearly two million immigrants, and then expelling 93,000 of them – relevant and engaging.