Touro Law Welcomes Professor Butler of George Washington University Law School to Deliver Address
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Touro Law Welcomes Professor Butler of George Washington University Law School to Deliver Address
February 11, 2010Central Islip, NY – Touro Law Center is pleased to announce that Paul Butler, the Carville Dickinson Benson Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School, will be delivering a lecture to students on Thursday, February 25, 2010 to discuss his newly published book Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice. He will also have a book signing and visit a criminal law class. The event is sponsored by Touro Law Center’s Black Law Students Association, the Criminal Law Society and the Society of American Law Teachers.
Let’s Get Free is described by the Library Journal as “Required reading for all concerned about their neighborhoods and our criminal justice system.” The book is a former federal prosecutor’s radical argument for reform.
Paul Butler was an ambitious federal prosecutor; a Harvard Law grad who gave up his corporate law salary to fight the good fight — until one day he was arrested on the street and charged with a crime he didn't commit. At the courthouse Butler stood alongside the people he'd spent his days sending to prison. This stint on the other side of the law confirmed his sense that the system was not working — not making the streets safer, nor helping the people he'd hoped, as a prosecutor, to protect.
According to Butler, Let’s Get Free “gives an insider’s view of the ‘lock-’em-up culture’ that makes every American worse off. We’ve reached the tipping point—so many people are in prison, especially for nonviolent drug offenses, that incarceration now causes more crime than it prevents. Butler offers innovative methods for citizens to resist complicity and stand up for their rights.”
Chock-full of great stories and cutting-edge insight, this accessible and lively critique will change the way you think about crime and punishment in the United States. As Butler eloquently argues, when we end mass incarceration and excessive police power, everyone wins.
Paul Butler, a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, is one of the nation’s most frequently consulted scholars on issues of race and criminal justice. His scholarship has been the subject of much attention in the academic and popular media. His work has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Nightline, and The ABC, CBS and NBC Evening News, among other places. Professor Butler has written a column for The Legal Times and has published numerous op-ed articles and book reviews. He lectures regularly for the American Bar Association and the NAACP, and at colleges, law schools, and community organizations throughout the United States.
Professor Butler served as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, where his specialty was public corruption. His prosecutions included a United States Senator, three FBI agents, and several other law enforcement officials. While at the Department of Justice, Professor Butler also served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, prosecuting drug and gun cases. After graduating from law school, he clerked for the Hon. Mary Johnson Lowe in the United States District Court in New York, and then joined the law firm of Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in white collar criminal defense. Professor Butler has been awarded the Soros Justice Fellowship.
Let’s Get Free is described by the Library Journal as “Required reading for all concerned about their neighborhoods and our criminal justice system.” The book is a former federal prosecutor’s radical argument for reform.
Paul Butler was an ambitious federal prosecutor; a Harvard Law grad who gave up his corporate law salary to fight the good fight — until one day he was arrested on the street and charged with a crime he didn't commit. At the courthouse Butler stood alongside the people he'd spent his days sending to prison. This stint on the other side of the law confirmed his sense that the system was not working — not making the streets safer, nor helping the people he'd hoped, as a prosecutor, to protect.
According to Butler, Let’s Get Free “gives an insider’s view of the ‘lock-’em-up culture’ that makes every American worse off. We’ve reached the tipping point—so many people are in prison, especially for nonviolent drug offenses, that incarceration now causes more crime than it prevents. Butler offers innovative methods for citizens to resist complicity and stand up for their rights.”
Chock-full of great stories and cutting-edge insight, this accessible and lively critique will change the way you think about crime and punishment in the United States. As Butler eloquently argues, when we end mass incarceration and excessive police power, everyone wins.
Paul Butler, a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, is one of the nation’s most frequently consulted scholars on issues of race and criminal justice. His scholarship has been the subject of much attention in the academic and popular media. His work has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Nightline, and The ABC, CBS and NBC Evening News, among other places. Professor Butler has written a column for The Legal Times and has published numerous op-ed articles and book reviews. He lectures regularly for the American Bar Association and the NAACP, and at colleges, law schools, and community organizations throughout the United States.
Professor Butler served as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, where his specialty was public corruption. His prosecutions included a United States Senator, three FBI agents, and several other law enforcement officials. While at the Department of Justice, Professor Butler also served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, prosecuting drug and gun cases. After graduating from law school, he clerked for the Hon. Mary Johnson Lowe in the United States District Court in New York, and then joined the law firm of Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in white collar criminal defense. Professor Butler has been awarded the Soros Justice Fellowship.
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Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center has a new 185,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art law campus adjacent to and working with a state and a federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York. Touro’s new campus provides a one-of-a kind learning model for law students, combining a rigorous curriculum taught by expert faculty with a practical courtroom experience. Touro, which has a student body of approximately 750 and an alumni base of nearly 5,000, offers full- and part-time J.D. programs as well as graduate law programs
For more info contact:Patti Desrochers
Director of Communications
(631) 761-7062
Fax (631) 761-7069
pdesrochers@tourolaw.edu