Jocelyn Simonson is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research & Scholarship at Brooklyn Law School. She is the author of the book Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People are Dismantling Mass Incarceration, published in August 2023 with the New Press. Professor Simonson writes and teaches about criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and social change. In particular, Professor Simonson studies bottom-up interventions in the criminal legal system, such as bail funds, copwatching, courtwatching, and participatory defense, asking how these real-life interventions should inform our conception public safety, the discourse of constitutional rights, the institutional design of local governance, and the meaning of democratic justice. Her law review articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, California Law Review, and Michigan Law Review, among other journals. Professor Simonson’s scholarship has been cited twice by the Supreme Court, and was designated “Must Read” by the NACDL Getting Scholarship Into Courts Project.

By Jocelyn Simonson

Radical Acts of Justice, How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration (The New Press, August 2023)