Phelps Lecture features leading legal journalist

Journalism, criminal justice reform and social media intersect at this year’s Phelps Lecture on First Amendment Law with leading legal journalist and Yale Law School lecturer Emily Bazelon.

Bazelon will give the lecture at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 16 at Tulane Law School, 6329 Freret Street. Titled “Journalism about Criminal Justice in the Age of Social Media,” Bazelon’s lecture comes in the wake of her recently published book Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. In the book, she argues the mass incarceration problem is the result of over-aggressive prosecutors who have sent too many to prison, including the innocent, and have contributed to the breakdown in the justice system. In the book she explores the dynamics that led to where we are today and explores the power of prosecutors by following two cases that highlight how two people in different parts of the country go through the system with different outcomes. A New York Times review is here.

Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law, and Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School.

The Phelps Lecture Series was inaugurated in 1992 to honor Ashton Phelps, Sr., a distinguished Tulane Law School graduate (L'37), who practiced law at Phelps, Dunbar, Marks, Claverie and Sims, served as Publisher of The Times-Picayune and as Vice Chairman of Tulane's Board of Administrators.

The Lecture operates under the direction of the Ashton Phelps Chair of Constitutional Law, established in 1983, by the S.I. Newhouse Foundation and The Times-Picayune. The Phelps Lecture is dedicated to First Amendment law and related fields, because of Mr. Phelps' lifelong activities as a newspaper attorney and newspaper publisher.

Following the lecture, there will be a reception in the Marian Mayer Berkett Multipurpose Room.