The Political Sociology of Stand Your Ground Laws: Considering the Impact of Race and Class on the Expansion of the Castle Doctrine

• In Event: The Politics of Stand Your Ground: Origins and Implications

Abstract

Over the last decade, 21 states have expanded protections associated with the Castle Doctrine, the law governing the conditions under which civilians have a right to use lethal force in the course of self-defense. These modifications, often referred to as “Stand Your Ground Laws,” include some or all of the following: the removal of requirements to retreat from various places, the presumption of reasonable fear, and immunity from civil liability. The 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager, and the subsequent acquittal of the shooter, George Zimmerman, brought Stand Your Ground laws to the national stage and generated considerable debate not only over the desirability of such laws, but also over the potential for the laws to exacerbate existing forms of race and class inequality. More recently, a series of highly publicized acquittals of white defendants claiming to have shot and killed unarmed African Americans in self-defense has only added to growing debate over the racial politics of justifiable homicide law. In this paper, we examine state-level variation in laws governing self-defense claims and consider the extent to which expansion in the Castle Doctrine is accounted for by theories of racial and economic threat. Specifically, we argue that Stand Your Ground modifications are consistent with punitive, “law and order” crime policies. Racial threat theories suggest that punitive crime policies are more likely in jurisdictions with a higher percentage of African American and Latino/a residents. Economic threat explanations frame punitive policies as an outcome of pronounced forms of class inequality. We also consider the role of political ideology, as we expect that conservative jurisdictions are more likely than liberal jurisdictions to adopt Stand Your Ground modifications.

Authors

• Jill McCorkel, Villanova University

• Kelly Welch, Villanova University