MCLR+ Articles (Mod Crim L Rev)

Mod Crim L Rev 1:1 (2024)
Special Issue
Reconstructing Criminal Law Revisited
(Nicola Lacey, Guest Editor)

In this Special Issue, a diverse range of authors confront questions about whether, and how, we can reconstruct criminal law (as well as its associated institutional forms, including the trial and the penal process) in progressive ways. Amid a resurgence of interest in abolitionism, is there still space for a scholarship focused on critique oriented to reconstruction rather than abolition? And what are the conditions of existence of such reconstructive projects across both different areas of criminal law and practice and different jurisdictions?

• Alejandro Chehtman, University Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Lindsay Farmer, University of Glasgow, UK
• Nicola Lacey, London School of Economics & Political Science
• Rocío Lorca Ferreccio, University of Chile, Santiago
• Arlie Loughnan, University of Sydney, Australia
• Marie Manikis, McGill University, Canada
• Meredith Rossner, Australian National University
• Elfie Shiosaki, Australian National University
• Helen Taylor, Australian National University
• Gabrielle Watson, University of Edinburgh, UK
• Roxana Willis, London School of Economics & Political Science

Mod Crim L Rev 1:2 (2025)
Special Issue
Criminal Law, Literature, and History
(Simon Stern, Guest Editor)

The contributors to this Special Issue explore relations between criminal law, literature, and history, covering a wide geographical and historical range, on topics relating to both law and procedure.

• Daria Bayer, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Law
• Anna Schur, Keene State College, US, Comparative Literature
• Abhinav Sekhri, New Delhi, India, Law
• Simon Stern, University of Toronto, Canada, Law/English
• Hannah Walser, NYU Law School, US, Law
• Elise Wang, Cal State Fullerton, US, English

Special Issue Workshop: June 25, 2024
[Event Page | Video | Podcast]

Mod Crim L Rev 2:1 (2025)
Special Issue
Between Modern Debtors’ Prison & Modern Peonage:
Economic & Poverty Sanctions in Global Perspective

This Special Issue with an international & interdisciplinary line-up critically analyzes economic discrimination and poverty sanctions in criminal justice systems around the world.

Criminal justice systems the world over are run through with economic discrimination: from the pre-trial stage (bail, and cash bail in particular) to the trial or bargaining stage (from a lack or scarcity of public defender services to fees for available public defenders, along with various other fees, charges, and hidden taxes) to the sanction stage (fines, more fees, surcharges, restitution, etc.). What’s more, each time an economic sanction isn’t paid, further economic—or non-economic—sanctions are triggered, including imprisonment and a panoply of “collateral” sanctions such as ineligibility for or loss of drivers’ and occupational licenses and public services.

The result is the systemic criminalization of poverty across the entire criminal justice process—wholly apart from the long-familiar roster of individual criminal offenses punishing poverty explicitly or implicitly (vagrancy, loitering, etc.) which has traditionally attracted the lion’s share of judicial and scholarly attention.

The phenomenon of criminal justice systems operating as modern debtors’ prisons cuts across countries and legal systems in the Global South and North. In countries from India to Germany, prison–literally–is imposed as punishment for failing to pay a fine. The practice of using economic penalties as a source of government revenue is also widespread. The Kenyan judiciary finances itself partially through court fees. In the United States, local governments enrich themselves through a net of punitive economic sanctions so dense and wide that many ensnared in it—and notably those living from paycheck to paycheck and, disproportionately, racialized individuals—find it impossible to escape. In effect, they live in a state of perpetual penal peonage that resembles less a modern debtors’ prison (whose occupants, some two centuries ago, enjoyed enough public empathy to result in its demise) and more a form of modern slavery.

Participants include:

• Gustavo Beade, Universidad Austral de Chile, Law
• Morten Boe, Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Crime, Security & Law, Freiburg, Germany
• Sarai Chisala-Tempelhoff, Gender and Justice Unit, Malawi
• Patricia Faraldo Cabana, University of A Coruña, Spain, Law
• Jean Galbraith, University of Pennsylvania Law School
• Mao-hong Lin, National Taipei University, Taiwan, Criminology
• Chikondi M. Mandala, Gender and Justice Unit, Malawi
• Abhinav Sekhri, Advocate, Delhi High Court & Independent Scholar, New Delhi
• Robert Stewart, University of Maryland, Criminology
• Brieanna Watters, University of Minnesota, Sociology

Special Issue Workshop: Sept. 13 (Pt. 1) & Sept. 21, 2024 (Pt. 2)
[Pt. 1 Event Page | Video | Podcast] [Pt. 2 Event Page | Video | Podcast]

Mod Crim L Rev 2:2 (2026)
Special Issue
Inducing Intimacy: International Perspectives on Sexual Fraud

Chloë Kennedy’s Inducing Intimacy: Deception, Consent and the Law (Cambridge 2024) tackles an important and timely topic that resonates across jurisdictions worldwide–the regulation of deceptively induced intimacy, notably through the criminal law–by taking a broadly interdisciplinary approach.

This Special Issue brings together an international group of contributors to this Special Issue of the Modern Criminal Law Review, which will engage with Kennedy’s monograph to explore a wide range of connected issues (sex offenses, consent, deception, identity, criminalization, etc.) from several perspectives (doctrinal, historical, comparative, theoretical, etc.).

Participants include:

• Tatiana Badaró, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
• Moa Bladini, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
• Beatriz Corrêa Camargo, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Brazil
• Sarai Chisala-Tempelhoff, Gender and Justice Unit, Malawi (moderator)
• Aya Gruber, University of Southern California, US
• Chloë Kennedy, University of Edinburgh, Scotland (author)
• Preeti Pratishruti Dash, National Law School of India University
• Nora Scheidegger, University of Bern, Switzerland
• Rachel Tolley, Cambridge University, UK
• Cristina Valega, Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law & Pontifical Catholic University of Peru

Special Issue Workshop: June 4, 2025
[Event Page | Video | Podcast]

Mod Crim L Rev 3:1 (2026)
Special Issue
Criminal Law and Language

This Special Issue showcases a selection of cutting-edge work representing a wide spectrum of methodological approaches to the study of the intersection between language and the law and governance of crime and punishment, broadly construed.

Participants include:

• Anya Bernstein, University of Connecticut, Law
• John M. Conley, University of North Carolina, Law
• Oliver Gerson, University of Passau, Law
• Tatiana Grieshofer, Birmingham City University, English
• Jean-Louis Halpérin, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, Law
• Janny Leung, University of Hong Kong, English
• Arpeeta Mizan, University of Dhaka, Law
• Robin Riner, Marshall University, Anthropology

Join us for the free livestreamed online Special Issue Workshop June 4, 2026!

Mod Crim L Rev 3:2 (2027)
Special Issue
Ancient Criminal Law: A Global Perspective
(Clifford Ando, Guest Editor)

Guest edited by Clifford Ando (University of Chicago), this special Special Issue will focus on “Ancient Criminal Law: A Global Perspective.”

Contributors include:

• Clifford Ando, University of Chicago
• Beth Berkowitz, Columbia University
• Ari Bryen, Vanderbilt University
• Liang Cai, University of Notre Dame
• Benjamin Gallant, Harvard University
• Adriaan Lanni, Harvard University
• Mark Letteney, University of Washington
• Seth Richardson, University of Chicago
• Andrew Wolpert, University of Florida

The free livestreamed online Special Issue Workshop will take place June 24, 2026.