California Racial Justice Act and Access to Justice: Bridging the Law-Social Science Divide

• In Event: ASC Presidential Panel: Racial Justice Act

Abstract

Access to justice under CRJA is contingent upon several resource and expertise factors that are specific to this law. In cases challenging prosecution and/or sentencing due to patterns of disparity, the defense needs to be able to obtain appropriate data from local criminal justice agencies, analyze the data, and present the findings in court if a successful challenge is to be made. This generally entails working with social science experts. In our talk, we will highlight several obstacles to access to justice that emerge due to the different kinds of expertise and modes of knowledge that distinguish social science from law. Drawing in part on our previous collaboration addressing the social science on racial disparities in the administration of California’s death penalty, we will then make some general suggestions about how to bridge that knowledge divide to ensure that these cases, in practice, can help achieve racial justice as envisioned by this landmark law.

Authors

• Mona Lynch, University of California, Irvine

• Lisa Romo, Office of the California State Public Defender