Policing the State, Second Edition

"The crevasse between scholarly thought and human suffering often seems unconscionably vast, as very few thinkers directly apply their elite knowledge to current problems. Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr. speaks powerfully against this quiet, applying his extraordinary ethical sensibility and interpretive discernment to expose the underpinnings of a tragically commonplace crime."

--Kathryn Lofton, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies, Yale University



"In this moving, haunting, probing book, Ruprecht tells the story of a trial in which he participated as a juror in 2008. The story is in some sense a tragedy, a form of art and experience that happens to be at the center of the author's academic concerns. This book has the human interest of any such story . . . but it is also asking, between the lines, what tragedy is and what it would be to maintain hope, rather than resigning oneself to fate, in the midst of tragedies."

--Jeffrey Stout, Professor of Religion, Princeton University



"Ruprecht has a wide-ranging and fertile intellectual imagination. He has written on tragedy and modernism, Plato and gardening, New Testament passages and Hellenism through history. In this book, Ruprecht brings his keen, insightful, and reflective intellect to bear on his own personal involvement on an Atlanta jury. It is a compelling and challenging exploration of ethics, justice, and democracy in America today."

--Gary Laderman, Professor of American Religious History and Cultures, Emory University



"Written from a juror and scholar's perspective, Policing the State presents us with a textbook case of the shameful abuse of police power. Ruprecht affirms how the democratic process of trial by jury effectively pursued the truth, uncovered it, identified the wrongdoers, sent them to prison, while aiming at the deeper work of reconciliation. A must-read for all."

--Anthony A. W. Motley, Pastor, Lindsay Street Baptist Church in Atlanta