Brooklyn Law School - Center for Criminal Justice

At the center of critical conversations in criminal justice

The Center for Criminal Justice builds on the existing strengths of the school’s nationally recognized criminal law faculty and places the Law School at the center of critical conversations, education, and sharing of expertise on the most vital issues and topics in criminal justice law and policy today. The center sponsors timely and topical speakers and events, awards and student fellowships, and provides CLE opportunities to criminal justice practitioners. The center serves as a forum for scholarship and discussion in areas of criminal justice that have real-world impact in New York City and across the nation. The Center also runs the Reimagining Justice initiative, in which student fellows work alongside community-based partners to craft teaching units in Criminal Law and related courses that center the lived experiences of people impacted by the criminal system.

Directors & Faculty

The Center is led by Co-directors Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship Jocelyn Simonson, Professor of Clinical Law Kate Mogulescu, and Associate Professor of Law Alexis Hoag-Fordjour. Our criminal law faculty offer diverse and wide-ranging experience in criminal law – while some have worked as prosecutors others have had careers as defense attorneys before joining the Law School. They produce influential scholarship on topics including corporate criminal conduct, policing in minority communities, juvenile justice, prosecution ethics, and theories of punishment. Our distinguished adjunct faculty in criminal law are noted leaders and practitioners in the field.

Meet the Faculty

Curriculum

The Center for Criminal Justice offers courses, clinics, and a certificate taught by full-time faculty and distinguished adjunct professors to fully enrich your education in the criminal justice system.

Curriculum

Rethinking Justice

The Center for Criminal Justice runs a year-long student fellowship centered on collaborative learning and teaching between law students and organizers working to combat mass incarceration and mass criminalization on the ground. Each year, the Center works with six to seven student fellows and four formerly incarcerated partners. The students and partners collaborate to prepare teaching lessons based on the experiences of the person who has been impacted by the system. The Rethinking Justice project began in Fall 2022, and has reached hundreds of Brooklyn Law students since that time by visiting nearly every Criminal Law class. In Fall 2023, the Rethinking Justice project was profiled in BLS Law Notes. Read the story below.

The Rethinking Justice project broadens law student exposure to the criminal legal system in traditional classroom settings and helps expand who law schools consider experts in academic instructions. The project fits into the Center’s larger goal of dynamically preparing law students for lawyering in the face of mass criminalization through varied knowledge delivery and instruction that better addresses the criminal legal system’s impact on individuals.

Applications for the student fellowship are posted and due in April each year.

Watch video of Professor Jocelyn Simonson, our student fellows, and a formerly incarcerated partner.

Play Video

Professor Jocelyn Simonson describes how a Brooklyn Law School program weaves real-life narratives into the criminal law curriculum, with the help of student fellows and formerly incarcerated partners.