About

History of The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology

Since its founding in 1910 by Dean John Henry Wigmore, the Journal has played a unique role in the history of criminal law and criminology in the United States. The Journal was a product of the “National Conference on Criminal Law and Criminology,” held in 1909 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Northwestern University School of Law. The Conference elected Dean Wigmore as its first president, and voted into existence the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. One of the Institute’s first acts was the publication of an official organ, resulting in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Its purpose was to articulate and promote a criminal justice reform agenda, associated with the Progressive Era that dominated the first third of the twentieth century.

In its early years, the Journal promoted the Progressive reform agenda by providing a forum for the contributions of lawyers, legal scholars, and social scientists on the issues of criminal justice reform. The Journal overcame disciplinary divisions to combine the areas of criminal law and criminology. This unique interdisciplinary approach defines the Journal today, as the only journal in the world that combines both criminal law and criminology. While the Journal still deals with social science, much of the Journal today focuses on legal doctrine, including constitutional criminal procedure.

The Journal has been cited in at least 85 Supreme Court cases including Miranda v. Arizona, Culombe v. Connecticut, Brewer v. Williams, Oregon v. Elstad, Brown v. Illinois, In re Gault, Roper v. Simmons, Harmelin v. Michigan, Solem v. Helm, Furman v. Georgia, Ring v. Arizona, Coker v. Georgia, Terry v. Ohio, and Roe v. Wade. Published authors include John Henry Wigmore, Booker T. Washington, Clarence Darrow, August Vollmer, Roscoe Pound, Herbert Wechsler, J. Edgar Hoover, Adlai Stevenson, two Supreme Court Justices (Arthur Goldberg and Warren Burger), at least two Illinois Governors, two US Attorneys General (Robert F. Kennedy and Nicholas Katzenbach), multiple US Attorneys, and countless federal judges.

Today, the Progressive reform agenda so dominant in the beginning of the century seems distant. We are seeing the reversal of a trend toward reformative goals of punishment and experiencing an unprecedented rise in our prison populations. We witness the recurrence of the criminal justice system as a topic in local and national politics and a leading topic in presidential administrations.

As it has done for the past one hundred years, the Journal continues to provide a forum for dialogue and debate on current criminal law and criminology issues.

The Journal remains one of the most widely read and widely cited publications in the world. It is in the top ten of the most widely subscribed journals published by any law school in the country. As one of the most widely circulated journals in the country, our broad readership includes judges and legal academics, as well as practitioners, criminologists, and police officers. Research in the area of criminal law and criminology addresses concerns that are pertinent to most of American society. The Journal strives to publish the very best scholarship in this area, inspiring the intellectual debate and discussion essential to the development of social reform.