The Racial Architecture of Criminal Justice

Abstract

One of the pleasures of contributing to symposia-especially symposia where each contribution is brief-is the ability to engage in new explorations, test new ideas, and offer new provocations. I do that now in this essay about race, architecture, and criminal justice. I begin by discussing how race is imbricated in the architecture of courthouses, the quintessential place of supposed justice. I then take race and architecture a step further. If we think of architecture expansively-Lawrence Lessig's definition of architecture as "the physical world as we find it" comes to mind-then it becomes clear that race is also imbricated in the very architecture of the Fourth Amendment. All of this raises an interesting question: If the very architecture of the Fourth Amendment is the problem-not just its interpretation but its very design-what are we to do?