David Tanenhaus
What's the most important thing you are working on right now?
Máximo Langer, a Professor of Criminal Law at UCLA, and I are writing a history of American juvenile justice for Oxford University Press. A central theme of the book is how juvenile courts, which were largely non-adversarial settings (i.e., lawyer-free), have become more adversarial since the 1950s. We examine the introduction, legitimation, and impact of prosecutors as regular participants in juvenile court. Our research has included interviewing more than 30 leaders in the field, such as judges, attorneys, probation officers, and liberal and conservative reformers and office holders. We want to understand what factors have contributed to a more than 50% decrease in the nation’s juvenile incarceration rate since the late 1990s. There may be lessons from this history that can be used to address the larger problem of mass incarceration.
When you are working on an article or a book, what's your favorite part of the process? What do you do during the process that others might find odd?
I love collaborating on projects because it’s so invigorating. In addition to my book with Langer, I recently completed an edited volume with William S. Bush, titled Ages of Anxiety: Juvenile Justice in Historical and Transnational Perspective (NYU Press, 2018). We worked closely for several years with authors from Canada, France, Turkey, and the United States. Eric C. Nystrom, a native Nevadan and history professor at Arizona State, and I have also collaborated on a series of articles that use databases and digital tools to analyze texts. At the West Coast Rhetoric Conference hosted earlier this month at Boyd, we presented a paper about how the Supreme Court has used the word “our” from the days of John Marshall to John Roberts.
What have you read, listened to, or watched recently that has influenced you or your work?
Once a week, I talk to my ninety-year-old mother, who is the best-read person that I know. Our conversations always include a discussion of her steady diet of books. We were both inspired by Dwayne Betts’s A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, which I’ve taught to students in my juvenile justice course at Boyd. My mom has even sent his poetry to her friends.