Vanderbilt University Law School :: Criminal Justice Program

Upcoming Events

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces - November 3, 2009

The court will hear oral arguments in Vanderbilt Law School's Flynn Auditorium. The session is open to the Vanderbilt Law community, and a Q&A session for students will follow.

January 29-30, 2010 - Junior Faculty Roundtable

Vanderbilt’s Criminal Justice Program is sponsoring a roundtable for criminal faculty who are early in their careers. In addition to Vanderbilt’s criminal justice faculty, participants will include Laura Appelman (Willamette), Josh Bowers (Virginia), Eve Brensike (Michigan), Samuel Buell (Washington University), Bennett Capers (Hofstra), Roger Fairfax (George Washington), Barbara Fedders (North Carolina), Lea Johnston (Florida), Erin Murphy (Berkeley), James J. Prescott (Michigan), and Alice Ristroph (Seton Hall).

Recent Events

Inaugural Roundtable, September 11-12, 2009

Six provocative papers were presented at the program's first roundtable in September. .

Juvenile Justice Colloquium - March 2009

Academics, practitioners and government officials from the Nashville area attended this colloquium.

Criminal Justice Program

Vanderbilt Law School's Criminal Justice Program allows students to focus on criminal legal theory and practice during their second and third years of law school, offering courses in criminal procedure, legal theory, and specific topics in criminal law.

Criminal Justice Electives

The program also sponsors academic roundtables and symposia aimed at exploring current legal scholarship addressing the broad spectrum of issues in criminal law.

Faculty

Christopher Slobogin - Director, Criminal Law Program
Susan Kay - Criminal Law Clinic / Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs
Nita Farahany
Nancy King
Terry Maroney
Robert Mikos
Alistair Newbern
Mike Newton
Yoli Redero
Ed Rubin

Sentencing, Corrections and Punishment - Spring 2009

This special short course, co-taught by Professors Nita Farahany, Nancy King, Robert Mikos and Christopher Slobogin, will cover:

Theories of criminal punishment
The relationship between sentencing and actual harms
Guidelines sentencing
Collateral consequences of convictions, such as deportation, disenfranchisement, and forfeiture
Probation
State regulation of incarceration , including good-time credits, supervised release, parole, mandatory and discretionary release sentencing systems
Innovations in punishment, including preventive detention, sexual predator statutes, "dangerous offender" statutes, notification, monitoring, mental health courts, drug courts, habitual offender statutes, and shaming penalties

One goal of this course is the development of materials that might be used in a sentencing component of the first-year criminal law course, based on the idea that an understanding of the nature and scope criminal sanctions and their alternatives is crucial to understanding the theory and current practice of criminal law.