Austin Sarat
Austin Sarat is interested broadly in the cultural and social life of American law. He is currently pursuing several lines of research, among are the American values and beliefs revealed by state killings. Sarat uses the death penalty as a lens through which to view ideas about responsibility and blame, pain and its proper uses, race and fairness, mercy and the possibilities of redemption. Sarat recently completed a book-length study of the decline of executive clemency in capital cases and a study of race and capital punishment in the United States.
Sarat's research also focuses on the cultural life of law or law in popular culture. He is now writing a book entitled Hollywood’s Law: What Movies Do for Democracy. This book examines movies about law from 1950 to 2000 in order to understand how these films contribute to the development of democratic citizenship.
At Amherst College, Sarat teaches an introduction to Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought and a first-year Seminar, Secrets and Lies, and a class about murder.
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Garbage in, garbage CEO windfalls out
‘Waste management’ won’t help us confront climate change so long as corporate self-interest rules.
The crowning fiasco: even the king looked embarrassed
The discussion around the British monarchy, which is starting to ignite and will grow and deepen, needs to take in the wider issue of wealth and income inequality and the poisonous economic system that fuels it.
‘Enormous policy failure’: states throw hundreds of thousands—including many children—off Medicaid
"We knew this was coming," wrote one policy expert. "But we still treat these burdens like they're unavoidable natural disasters."
Supreme Court ruling against EPA ‘undoes a half-century of progress’ in protecting waters of...
"It puts our Nation’s wetlands – rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds connected to them – at risk of pollution and destruction, jeopardizing the sources of clean water that millions of American families, farmers, and businesses rely on."
How workers in the South are defying history
The company resisted them. History defied them. Geography worked against them.