Stephen Galoob, a professor in The University of Tulsa’s College of Law, is combining his training in analytic philosophy with a passion for real-world criminal law reform.
Galoob self-identifies as a criminal law nerd. Since arriving at UTulsa, he has worked with law and undergraduate students as part of Project Commutation, which brought together experts from the criminal justice system to reform Oklahoma’s incarceration practices. Along the way, the project team secured commutations for hundreds of people.
He also co-founded the Tenth Circuit Year-in-Review Fellowship, which brings together law students from several institutions to study federal criminal law. He has testified before the Oklahoma Legislature on criminal law policy numerous times. Since 2015, he has served on the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals Committee for the Preparation of Uniform Jury Instructions.
Galoob’s scholarship addresses criminal law policy questions and deeper issues related to justice and legitimacy. For example, he is working with Jake Monaghan (a philosopher at the University of Southern California) on a project that examines what legal rules should govern police and police departments and who should regulate the exercise of police power. “In part, it’s a question of morality and professional ethics: How does the fact that police ostensibly exercise power on behalf of the people they police matter in determining how police should exercise their discretion?” Galoob asked. He also recently presented his scholarship on legitimacy and policing at the annual meeting of the Politics, Philosophy, and Economics Society at Tulane Law School.
Galoob’s broader interests lie in studying the legitimacy of criminal law. How does the fact that we live in an unjust world – with significant historical injustices and glaring inequities in our current political arrangements – matter in the operation of criminal law? “For most people who think about criminal law, the answer is, ‘Not much.’” he said.
“Some thinkers have argued that facts about injustice affect the types of crimes that should be policed and prosecuted, but not the fundamental legitimacy of the criminal legal system. In this project, I want to examine how injustices matter to determine whether states have legitimacy (which, for my purposes, is basically the right to rule) and to consider the implications of injustice for criminal law,” he said, adding that he hopes to turn these topics into a book someday.
Galoob’s theoretical projects have led him to partner with Matthias Brinkmann, a philosopher at Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität in Munich, Germany, to create an international working group of scholars examining fundamental questions about legitimacy. “Professor Brinkmann and I both agreed that it would be a good idea to provide a forum for scholars of political legitimacy in a variety of different disciplines, including philosophy, political science, and law. So far, we’ve had presentations from philosophers at the University of Virginia, the University of Southern California and The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.”
Galoob has been working through these questions since his first philosophy coursework nearly 25 years ago. “I would also like to convince other theorists that some of the questions – especially about the relationship between injustice and legitimacy and the nature of criminal law – are worth asking,” he said. “As an activist, I would like to work alongside public officials and other legal reformers to make our world more fair and just. I am grateful to work at UTulsa, which is an excellent place to do rigorous philosophy and to try to change the world.”