Reading Seminar: Critical Theories of Policing

This reading seminar explores the legal, social, and political foundations of policing through a critical theoretical lens. The course will examine policing not merely as an administrative or enforcement mechanism, but as a set of institutional practices deeply entwined with race, property, state power, and the fundamentals of sovereign governance. Students will engage with scholarship that interrogates how policing functions to produce and reproduce social hierarchies, manage populations, and maintain political and economic systems of dominance and subordination. By situating policing within broader historical and structural contexts, the seminar aims to develop students' capacities for critical legal analysis of law enforcement and its societal consequences. 

Through close reading, critical discussion, and focused reflection, students will interrogate foundational assumptions about the role of law and law enforcement in society. The seminar will encourage participants to critically engage with questions such as: 

How does policing serve to reproduce racial and economic hierarchies? 

In what ways does legal authority interact with coercion, surveillance, and social control? 

What theoretical and practical pathways exist toward alternatives to traditional policing? 

By the conclusion of the course, students will be equipped to apply critical theoretical frameworks to legal doctrine, scholarship, policy debates, and broader discussions of justice and social transformation.