Carolyn Ramsey does research at the intersection of criminal law, criminal procedure, and legal history. She specializes in using archival materials to bring new insights to our understanding of how criminal law doctrine developed and how social norms affected legal outcomes. She is especially interested in the legal history of intimate-partner violence, homicide law, police practices, and prosecutorial discretion. She is completing a book on government intervention in intimate-partner violence before the Battered Women's Movement and launching a new, critical research emphasis on 'history and tradition' in criminal procedure with special attention to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century policing. Her research is not limited to legal history; she also writes about the reform of modern criminal law and analyzes the relevance of legal history to modern constitutional issues.
keywords
American and comparative legal history, criminal law, intimate-partner violence, criminal procedure, gender and law
LAWS 5503 - Criminal Law
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2018 / Spring 2019 / Spring 2020 / Spring 2021 / Spring 2023 / Spring 2025 / Spring 2026
Studies statutory and common law of crimes and defenses, the procedures by which the law makes judgments as to criminality of conduct, the purposes of criminal law, and the constitutional limits upon it.
LAWS 6045 - Criminal Procedure
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2018 / Fall 2024 / Fall 2025
Focuses primarily on the constitutional limitations applicable to such police investigative techniques as arrest, search, seizure, electronic surveillance, interrogation and lineup identification.
LAWS 7513 - Domestic Violence
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Spring 2023 / Spring 2025
Explores the law, policy, history and theory of domestic violence. Examines the limits of legal methods and remedies for holding batterers accountable and keeping victims safe; the dynamics of abusive relationships; the history of the criminal justice system's response to domestic violence; the defenses available to battered persons who kill their abusers; the legal paradigm of the sympathetic victim; psychological and feminist theories about abusive relationships; civil rights and tort liability for batterers and third parties; and the intersection of domestic violence with international human rights.
LAWS 8455 - Seminar: Gender and Criminal Justice
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Spring 2019 / Spring 2020 / Spring 2021 / Fall 2022 / Fall 2023 / Spring 2026
Explores the intersection of gender and criminal justice in such areas as police and prosecutorial discretion, the investigation and prevention of crimes, the definition of offenses and defenses, factors contributing to criminality, criminal sentencing and the experience of punishment, and the societal ramifications of incarcerating children's caregivers.
