Mea Culpa: Lessons on Law and Regret from U.S. History

Steven W. Bender

ene 2015 · NYU Press

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In Mea Culpa, Steven W. Bender examines how the United States’ collective shame about its past has shaped the evolution of law and behavior. We regret slavery and segregationist Jim Crow laws. We eventually apologize, while ignoring other oppressions, and our legal response to regret often fails to be transformative for the affected groups. By examining policies and practices that have affected the lives of
groups that have been historically marginalized and oppressed, Bender is able to draw persuasive connections between shame and its eventual legal
manifestations. Analyzing the United States’ historical response to its own atrocities, Bender identifies and develops a definitive moral compass that
guides us away from the policies and practices that lead to societal regret.

Mea Culpa challenges its readers. In a different era, might we have been slave owners or proprietors of a racially segregated establishment? It’s easy to judge immorality in the hindsight of history, but what current practices and policies will later generations regret?

More than a historical survey, this volume offers a framework for resolving some of the most contentious social
problems of our time. Drawing on his background as a legal scholar, Bender tackles immigration, the death penalty, the war on terror, reproductive rights,
welfare, wage inequity, homelessness, mass incarceration, and same-sex marriage. Ultimately, he argues, it is the dehumanization of human beings that
allows for practices to occur that will later be marked as regrettable. And all of us have a stake in standing on the side of history that resists dehumanization.

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Steven W. Bender is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Planning and Strategic Initiatives at Seattle University School of Law. He is the author of Mea Culpa: Lessons on Law and Regret from US History (NYU Press, 2015), Run for the Border: Vice and Virtue in U.S.-Mexico Border Crossings (NYU Press, 2012), Tierra y Libertad: Land, Liberty, and Latino Housing (NYU Press, 2010), and Greasers and Gringos: Latinos, Law, and the American Imagination (NYU Press, 2003).