Law reform or legal reform is the process of analysing current laws and advocating and carrying out changes in a legal system, usually with the aim of enhancing justice or efficiency. There are four main methods of reforming the law: (a) repeal (removal or reversal of a law), (b) creation of new law, (c) consolidation (combination of a number of laws into one) and (d) codification (collection and systematic arrangement, usually by subject, of the laws of a state or country).
Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice - Paul Butler
“Paul Butler was an ambitious federal prosecutor, a Harvard Law grad who gave up his corporate law salary to fight the good fight—until one day he was arrested on the street and charged with a crime he didn’t commit.”
Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter edited by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton
“Combining firsthand accounts from activists with the research of scholars and reflections from artists, Policing the Planettraces the global spread of the broken-windows policing strategy. It’s a doctrine that has vastly broadened police power the world over—to deadly effect.”
The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere - Robert Cottrol
“Students of American history know of the law’s critical role in systematizing a racial hierarchy in the United States. Showing that this history is best appreciated in a comparative perspective, The Long, Lingering Shadow looks at the parallel legal histories of race relations in the United States, Brazil, and Spanish America.”
Law in America: A Short History - Lawrence M. Friedman
“In the masterful hands of the subject’s greatest living historian, the story of the evolution of our laws serves to lay bare the deciding struggles over power and justice that have shaped this country from its birth pangs to the present. Law in America is a supreme example of the historian’s art, its brevity a testament to the great elegance and wit of its composition.”
In this searching talk, Adam Foss, a prosecutor with the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office in Boston, makes his case for a reformed justice system that replaces wrath with opportunity, changing people's lives for the better instead of ruining them.