Classical Literature for the Criminal Justice Classroom

Abstract

When students are confronted with primary sources to be critically evaluated, a path toward independent inquiry and, ultimately, self‐awareness, is forged. Primary sources challenge intellectual passivity in that they force the mind to take charge of its own thinking, and such independent thinking is the means by which intellectual freedom and strength are achieved. In incorporating primary sources into the criminal justice classroom, one place to start is with the Classical world. This paper shares some practical teaching tips, tricks, and tools for teaching Classical primary texts about “justice” to students of criminal justice. Sample materials used in undergraduate classes from five lessons centering on the question of justice are also discussed.

Notes

1. Beyond issues of language, translation, historical and sociocultural context, lest we are Kant himself we of course can never truly know Kant’s original meaning, but this irreconcilable epistemological problem should not stand in the way of exploring primary sources.

2. Primary sources are also invaluable in fostering philosophical inquiry in the classroom, which also has a place within the criminal justice classroom because philosophy, too, underlies everything that we do as academics, practitioners, and consumers of criminal justice. We do the things that we do for a reason, in other words, and we do those things because we think we have reason to do them. Philosophy thus has very real implications. The philosophies that we employ in order to justify punishment, for example, lend shape and meaning to how we treat offenders in the broader scope of our response to crime. There is very little judgment to be made about our actions or inactions within criminal justice without philosophies of criminal justice.

3. On the dangers and difficulties of dichotomized thinking in general, I refer the reader to Deborah Tannen’s excellent book, The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue (1998).

4. For example, some of the more pervasive false dichotomies among criminal justice students’ thinking are, “discretion is good or bad,” “human behavior is nature or nurture,” “criminal justice is crime control or due process,” and so on. Such dichotomized thinking is often related to the problem of oversimplification, better known in the philosophy of logic as a fallacy of reduction.

5. The materials discussed here were designed and implemented in a course called Philosophy of Criminal Justice, taught during the fall semester of 2006, but I have used selections of the material in other courses, including Survey of Corrections, Introduction to Criminal Justice, International Criminal Justice, and Criminal Justice Ethics.

6. For an excellent discussion of the importance of Classical education, see Nussbaum’s (1997) fine work, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.

7. For an extensive discussion of the Classical influences on American philosophy and the founding of the United States, see Russell Kirk’s (1991) The Roots of the American Order.

8. Perhaps the biggest challenge that an instructor faces is that, at the beginning, her students feel intimidated by primary sources and Classical literature because they have rarely, if ever, been asked to take on such materials. A great amount of encouragement is needed on the part of the instructor to assure her students that they are perfectly capable of squaring off with the likes of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. Indeed, of the many unsavory side effects of academic overspecialization in American higher education, disciplinary isolation is but one (Brinker 1960), but to be sure, philosophical inquiry is not and cannot be the exclusive intellectual terrain of philosophy students. When criminal justice students realize that they, too, have something important to learn from Plato, they feel empowered on a number of levels. The instructor must work hard to foster a classroom environment in which students feel comfortable exploring uncharted intellectual territory.

9. This short assignment/author introductory lecture is best done during classtime that precedes the class period during which the reading assignment is due. Certainly, these ancillary learning tools‐study questions and introductory mini‐lectures‐take extra preparation on the part of the instructor. But these teaching tools have proven enormously effective in improving student comprehension and discussion of primary source materials, and students respond favorably to them in both semester evaluations and unsolicited feedback.

10. Some instructors might worry that providing students with their lecture slides beforehand may send students the message that they do not have to take notes or, worse, even attend class. My own experience indicates otherwise; that is, students are grateful for the lecture slides as a study tool. They appreciate not having to madly copy down material from lecture slides while at the same time trying to take notes over lecture, listen to their instructor, and participate in class discussion. Since my lecture slides are essentially nothing more than class outlines, I have never had students successfully substitute lecture slides for class participation or attendance. Lecture slides also help students take charge of their own learning in that the slides represent but one more resource you have provided for their success; the rest is up to them.

11. At my university, most upper division undergraduate courses accommodate forty students, so I divide the students into eight groups of five. These original eight groups can be divided further into groups of four, and other options are to pair off students or let them choose their own discussion partners. Our upper division undergraduate courses meet bi‐weekly for 75 minutes each period; the structured classtime discussed here is thus organized according to this schedule.

12. These group activities where students must work out philosophical arguments on paper later serve as excellent exam study tools.

13. The appendix to this article offers further sample exam essay questions.

14. See Bedau (1992, 1970), Bedau and Cassell (2004), Black (1978, 1974), Camus (1995), Conway (1974), Lempert (1981), Morris (1981), Nathanson (1985), Pincoffs (1966), Prejean (1993), Radelet and Borg (2000), Reiman (1985), Solomon (1990), van den Haag (1991, 1986, 1985, 1969, 1968). Cf. also United States Supreme Court cases Furman v. Georgia (1972) and Gregg v. Georgia (1976).

15. Often translated from the Greek as “justice,” dikaiosunē actually has a variety of meanings, including “doing the right thing” (Lee 1968) or “doing one’s own” (Grube 1992).

16. Like Grube’s translation of the Republic, Grube’s version of the Crito (1981) is also superior to other translations available. The English is modern, and the text is equipped with helpful footnotes and an introduction. An additional benefit to Grube’s Crito is that the speakers’ parts in the dialogue are specifically marked. Crito is also short‐about 12 pages‐which means it can easily be assigned to students for one class period. Crito is accompanied by four other dialogues in Grube’s 1992 edition, including Euthyphro, Apology, Meno, and Phaedo, and used copies can be found online for a penny.

17. Ideally, law should thus embody justice; or that it should be the means by which justice is delivered or denied (Friedrichs 2006). But as it is evident in Plato’s Crito, law and justice have a paradoxical relationship. Bork (1990) relates a similar story of the disconnect between law and justice: When Judge Learned Hand begged Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to “do justice!,” Holmes responded, “That is not my job. It is my job to apply the law” (p. 6).

18. Aristotle is famous for the difficulty of his writing, and some scholars have suggested that this is because he never intended for many of his papers to be published for public consumption (Barnes 1995). I have disconcerting memories of fellow Classics graduate students bursting into tears over their well‐worn copies of Nicomachean Ethics. Suffice it to say that Aristotle is best negotiated together as a class.

19. Cicero’s Republic pays obvious literary homage to Plato’s Republic. Some scholars have argued that Cicero in fact brings Plato “up to date and down to earth” (Powell and Rudd 1998:xvii).

20. Both Cicero’s Republic and Laws are conveniently available in Powell and Rudd’s (1998) single volume, featuring modern English and easy to follow dialogue with marked speakers and line numbers. The text is also equipped with an excellent introduction, comprehensive explanatory notes, and index of names. Like the other texts discussed in this paper, used copies of Cicero’s Republic and Laws are sold online for less than one dollar.

21. To be sure, the incorporation of primary sources into the criminal justice classroom should be limited neither to the Classics nor to works of a philosophical nature. Rather, this author encourages the use of primary sources of any type including contemporary texts and even original research. Instead of a standard criminology textbook, for example, instructors may do well to consider using instead Cullen and Agnew’s Criminological Theory: Past to Present (Roxbury Publishing 2003), Henry and Einstadter’s Criminology Theory Reader (New York University Press 1997) or even Oxford’s Handbook of Criminology (2002), each of which presents essential readings and selections of original research that have shaped the history of criminological thought.

22. Moral accountability is of course a key component in both criminal responsibility and the justification of criminal justice practices. As specifically regards the moral justification of punishment, see Nietzsche’s (1998 [1887]) second essay “Guilt,” “Bad Conscience,” and the Like, contained within his seminal work On the Genealogy of Morals.

23. As Locke ([1689] 1965) discusses in chapter XXVII of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “… . [T]o find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for;‐ which, I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself. …” (p. 192).