Building Legal Competency: Foundations for a More Effective Criminology and Criminal Justice Discipline

Persona Non Grata: The Marginalization of Legal Scholarship in Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals

“…The position of law within the criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) discipline is no stranger to controversy, as evidenced by the debate concerning the role of JDs in CCJ departments (Engvall, 2007;Enriquez, 2007Enriquez, , 2008Hemmens, 2008;Hunter, 2008;Myers, 2007) and disputes about whether law courses should even be part of the curriculum (Hemmens, 2015a(Hemmens, , 2016Russell, 1998;Smith, 1996). Recently, a growing chorus of voices has decried the marginalization of both legal scholarship and legal courses within the CCJ discipline and has made a compelling case that it is time to remedy this marginalization (Hemmens, 2015a(Hemmens, , 2015b(Hemmens, , 2016Nolasco, del Carmen, Steinmetz, Vaughn, & Spaic, 2015;Nolasco, Vaughn, & del Carmen, 2010).…”

“…Given that in the absence of law there is no crime and no criminal justice system (Hemmens, 2015a;Nolasco et al, 2015), as the law plays a pivotal role in defining crime and delineating limits on the societal response to crime (Nolasco et al, 2015), one would think that law courses and legal scholarship would occupy a prominent place within the CCJ discipline.…”

“…The marginalization of legal scholarship and legal courses within the CCJ discipline, while perhaps an unfortunate remnant of the discipline's attempts to establish itself as a legitimate academic discipline by distancing itself from subjects which were viewed as too practitioner-oriented and thus subject to the criticism of being vocational (Nolasco et al, 2015), is a hindrance to the discipline. There is a need for criminal justice scholars to conduct more legal research-both doctrinal legal research, which provides important information to criminal justice practitioners and policymakers, and legal research framed within a sociology of law perspective and conducted using legal and social science research methods, which can place the law in historical, social, and political context, as political scientists and sociologists do when studying legal issues (Hemmens, 2015a(Hemmens, , 2016.…”

“…Criminal justice PhDs, at least if those scholars are educated in criminal justice departments committed to building legal competency in their graduates, are uniquely qualified to conduct research on legal issues in criminal justice informed by criminal justice concepts and theories and using both legal research and social science methodologies (Nolasco et al, 2015), which can constitute a form of mixed methods research when used in combination (Nolasco et al, 2010). Furthermore, criminal justice scholars who conduct research on legal issues are needed in order to provide criminal justice students with an education provided by instructors who are up-to-date on ever-changing legal issues critical to understanding the functioning of the criminal justice system (Hemmens, 2015b(Hemmens, , 2016.…”

“…It is conventional wisdom among CCJ scholars that it is difficult to get legal scholarship published in CCJ journals. There is anecdotal evidence that legal scholars in CCJ face an obstacle in the form of some journal editors' lack of receptivity to legal scholarship (Hemmens, 2015b), and there is a growing discussion among CCJ scholars about the marginalization of legal scholarship within the CCJ discipline (Hemmens, 2015a(Hemmens, , 2015b(Hemmens, , 2016Nolasco et al, 2015;Nolasco et al, 2010). However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the representation of legal scholarship in CCJ journals.…”