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Workshop renews debate on police power
By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer
Scholars from throughout the United States, Canada and beyond will come to UB June 10-11 to participate in "The Police Power Reconsidered: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Modern Governance," a workshop hosted by the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy in the UB Law School.
The event will examine the broad topic of "police power," which sometimes falls between the cracks in current academic discourse.
One of the chief organizers of the workshop is Markus Dubber, professor of law and director of the Buffalo Criminal Law Center in the UB Law School.
"Police power" is the "most expansive—and most amorphous—of governmental powers," Dubber notes in his recent book, "The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government."
When it comes to property laws, for example, "police power" doesn't refer to men and women in uniform, but is used instead to authorize restrictions on private businesses, such as zoning requirements, Dubber says. In criminal law, however, the term "police" often is used to talk about actual law-enforcement officers.
And in issues of constitutional law, he explains, "a given state action could be analyzed as a manifestation of 'police' or 'law.'
"Depending on how it is categorized, the state action might then be subject to different constraints," he says.
The workshop will address the fact that the concept of "police" has largely disappeared as a subject in discussion, but not as a phenomenon. Scholars often examine the subject in various disciplines, among them social and political theory, legal theory and history, criminology and feminist studies. yet they don't realize its greater relationship to the topic of police power, Dubber says. The workshop, which will assemble an interdisciplinary group of international scholars, aims to create an opportunity for exchange and inspiration among individuals who might not otherwise be aware of each other's work or common interests, he adds.
Serving as co-organizer of the event with Dubber is Mariana Valverde, professor of criminology at the University of Toronto, who first visited UB in fall 2002 for a Baldy Center-sponsored lecture.
"The June workshop is a follow-up to one Mariana and I put on in Buffalo two years ago entitled 'The New Police Science: Police Powers in Comparative Perspective,'" says Dubber.
"The collection of papers based on that workshop will be published by Stanford University Press in a new series "Critical Perspectives on Crime and Law,'" he says, noting there are plans to publish the papers from the June workshop as well.
These publications are expected to serve as central points in a re-emerging field of study, Dubber points out.
Academic interest in the term "police" is common in Europe, but hadn't caught on in the United States until recently. The workshop seizes on this recent movement in the interdisciplinary study of police and further advances and reinvigorates the topic, he says.
"This is a small, intensive workshop, not a public conference," Dubber notes. Space is limited and participants should read in advance the workshop papers, which are available through the Baldy Center.
For information on the workshop and a list of participants, visit http://www.law.buffalo.edu/baldycenter/pdfs/PolicePower06.pdf.