Oakland Demonstrates Right Way to Use Restorative Justice With Teens

Oakland Demonstrates Right Way to Use Restorative Justice With Teens

Restorative justice is a centuries-old approach that seeks to empower people to address the harms, needs and obligations that arise when a crime has been committed by bringing together victims, offenders and members of their respective communities. The face-to-face open dialogue process is focused on personal accountability and reparations; it is achieved when victims and offenders share deeply personal and painful life experiences with the least likely person in the world — each other. Restorative justice requires its participants to lay bare feelings of self-loathing, suffering, rage, loneliness, rejection that they have hidden from the world and often from themselves. They must face reckonings they have long resisted.

Stephen Reinhardt: The Liberal Judge With a Fighting Spirit

Stephen Reinhardt: The Liberal Judge With a Fighting Spirit

When one of America’s most influential and highly regarded jurists dies unexpectedly—a Jew and avowed atheist, a towering intellect who loved nothing more than a sappy Hollywood biopic enjoyed with buttered popcorn and a box of candy—where do you hold the memorial service?

Christine Blasey Ford’s Memory of her Assault Isn’t a Case of Mistaken Identity (with Jennifer Thompson)

Christine Blasey Ford’s Memory of her Assault Isn’t a Case of Mistaken Identity (with Jennifer Thompson)

It’s a convenient theory that allows us to believe both the accused and the accuser, but it undermines everything we know about mistaken identity in cases of sexual assault.

Lara Bazelon is a law professor and writer. The recipient of MacDowell and Mesa Refuge residencies, her op-eds and essays have been published in the New York Times,The Atlantic Magazine, New York Magazine, Washington Post, Slate, and Politico, among other media outlets.  Her nonfiction book, AMBITIOUS LIKE A MOTHER: WHY PRIORITIZING YOUR JOB IS GOOD FOR YOUR KIDS is available for pre-order and will be published on April 19.