The Criminal Justice System: Towards the 21st Century

On January 22, 1994, Duke University was honored to have United States Attorney General Janet Reno visit our campus to deliver the Keynote Address for the Fifth Annual Frontiers of Legal Thought Conference. Every year, Duke Law School students organize and conduct this conference, addressing current legal and societal issues of interest to our students. This year's conference addressed "The Criminal Justice System: Towards the 21st Century." Attorney General Reno's speech stressed the need for interdisciplinary solutions to the criminal and social problems facing our country today. The Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy hopes to foster the sort of dialogue through which such solutions may be found.

Below is a brief description of this year's conference by its co-chairs, followed by a Comment by the Attorney General based on the text of her speech. When we began planning this year's Frontiers of Legal Thought Conference, we set for ourselves one very simple goal: to focus the attention of the Duke University community on criminal justice issues. We selected that topic for several reasons. Both of us intend to pursue careers in criminal justice; that personal interest clearly played a role in our decision.

But we also felt that any proper discussion of criminal justice would necessarily involve broader social questions of race, class, and gender. We feel strongly about those issues as well and we were confident that a conference focusing on criminal justice would provide an excellent forum for a discussion of those social concerns. ...