Abstract<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom the early 1970s onward, the United States Supreme Court has narrowed the constitutional protections of criminally accused persons and immunized the criminal judicial system and its actors from legal accountability. This legal trend is a part of the \u201cSecond Redemption\u201d that followed the Civil Rights
Movement, akin to the First Redemption that marked the end of Reconstruction. It appears pretty evident that the Court\u2019s post-civil rights approach to constitutional criminal law was primarily driven by racism. However, existing scholarly works that examine the Court\u2019s \u201ccriminal procedure counterrevolution\u201d as a whole fail to include American racism in the discussion of underlying motives.
This article connects anti-Black racism to the criminal procedure counterrevolution. To do so, it first develops a novel theory of racial redemption, or the white supremacist backlash and overthrow of the two national racial equality projects: Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement. It highlights the two main areas of law that feature in racial redemptions: constitutional civil rights law and criminal law. It then identifies three components of racial redemption: citizen redemption, political redemption, and judicial redemption. Finally, it uses this theory to examine racial redemptions from the civil rights lens.
This article applies this theory to racial redemptions through the lens of criminal law. It demonstrates how the white citizenry, the white political class, and the Supreme Court collaborated to racialize crime and criminal law during the Reconstruction Era. This racialization eased somewhat in the early to mid-twentieth century before intensifying after the 1960s. By situating the criminal procedure counterrevolution against this backdrop, the link between American racism and the counterrevolution becomes evident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Zamir Ben-Dan Volume 61, No. 1, 2026 Abstract From the early 1970s onward, the United States Supreme Court has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"coauthors":[1934],"class_list":["post-13719","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PeZrWS-3zh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}