Jonathon Booth
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401 UCB
2450 Kittredge Loop Road
Wolf Law Building
Boulder, CO 80309
Office: 451
Phone: (303) 735-2169
E-mail: jonathon.booth@colorado.edu
Curriculum Vitae: View (PDF format)
Bio:Jonathon Booth is a historian of democracy, race, law, and policing in the United States. He teaches courses including Criminal Law, American Legal History, and Law and History of Policing.
Jonathon's research reaches from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and focuses on the practical impact of law and its enforcement - in other words, how the law tangibly affects Americans. His recent articles include The Cycle of Delegitimization: Lessons From Dred Scott on the Relationship Between the Supreme Court and the Nation, 51 UC Law Constitutional Quarterly 5 (2023) and Policing after Slavery: Race, Law, and Resistance in Atlanta, forthcoming in the University of Colorado Law review.
He is currently working on an article titled The Legal Architecture of Emancipation, describes the full range of new laws passed by Southern states after Reconstruction that, although formally race neutral, served to cement white political and economic power. He is also at the early stages of a book project titled Policing the Rural South, 1850-2020.
Before coming to Colorado, Jonathon was the Legal History Fellow at the Harvard History Design Studio and clerked for the Hon. Barrington D. Parker on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Hon. Kevin McNulty on the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 2021 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2019. He received his B.A. in History and Economics, joint honours, from McGill University.
Forthcoming
| The New Satanic Panic, 36 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. |
Articles
| Policing after Slavery: Race, Crime, and Resistance in Atlanta, 96 Colo. L. Rev. 1 (2025). |
| The Cycle of Delegitimization: Lessons From Dred Scott on the Relationship Between the Supreme Court and the Nation, 51 UC Const. Q. 5 (2023). |
| Ending Forced Labor in ICE Detention Centers: A New Approach, 34 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 573 (2020). |
| Capitalism, Anti-Blackness, and the Law: A Very Short History, 35 Harv. BlackLetter L.J. 5 (2019). |
Other Publications
| Regulating Freedom in Georgia's County Court, SHGAPE Blog, April 19, 2023. |
| New Sheriff in Town, The Drift, Issue 3, February 3, 2021. |
| How Private Prisons Profit from Forced Labor, Current Affairs, October 26, 2020. |
Book Chapters
| The Impact of the American Civil War on Political Writing, in Caribbean Literature in Transition, vol. 1, (Evelyn O'Callaghan and Tim Watson, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2020). |
Book Reviews
| Review of Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US by Julian Go, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books, April 2024. |
| Post-industrial Property Law: Review of A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality by Claire W. Herbert, 8 J. L. Prop. & Soc?y 1 (2023). |
Courses:
| Fall 2025 | American Legal History | LAWS 7155-801 |
| Fall 2025 | Seminar: History and Law of American Policing | LAWS 8145-801 |
| Spring 2025 | Criminal Law | LAWS 5503-803 |
| Fall 2024 | Special Topics | LAWS 6708-804 |
Our Vision
With our roots in Colorado and a global outlook, we are ...
a supportive and diverse educational and scholarly community in a place that inspires vigorous pursuit of ideas, critical analysis, contemplation, and civic engagement to advance knowledge about the law in an open, just society.
Our Mission
To be an outstanding public law school that: provides students with a state-of-the-art legal education and prepares them to serve wisely and with professionalism; advances the development of knowledge through scholarship, testing of new ideas, and challenges to the status quo; and serves as a vehicle and catalyst for meaningful public service, all of which deliver high value to our students and have positive impacts?both locally and globally?on the legal profession and society.