March 5th, 2026 Luncheon & Speaker: Professor Judith Resnik!

Please join us at the New Haven Lawn Club on Thursday, March 5th, 2026 at 12PM for lunch and a talk by Professor Judith Resnik: "Impermissible Punishments: How Pr*son Became a Problem for Democracy".

A three-course plated luncheon will be served. Free parking is available at the New Haven Lawn Club, which is handicap and ADA Accessible, and on the Yale Shuttle and CT Transit bus lines.

Judith Resnik is Arthur Liman Professor at the Yale Law School. In her talk, she will explore the powerful ideas at the heart of her new book, Impermissible Punishments. Drawing on a sweeping transatlantic history, Resnik examines how modern prisons were shaped by reformers who sought humane conditions while normalizing extreme restrictions on human movement—and how prisoners themselves have fought to have their dignity recognized under the law.

From the League of Nations’ first international Pr*son standards in 1934 to landmark U.S. constitutional challenges to whipping, overcrowding, filth, and isolation, Resnik traces how global conflict, civil rights movements, and legal principles rejecting “cruel,” “excessive,” and “degrading” punishment transformed the rules governing incarceration. Painfully relevant today, Impermissible Punishments asks whether governments committed to equality can justify systems designed to break people—and argues that many contemporary forms of punishment must end.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Yale Club of New Haven