The Municipal Courts Project is an effort to increase public information about the thousands of low level, limited jurisdiction, city-run courts that comprise an enormous part of the American judiciary. The Project collects and shares data, scholarship, teaching materials, and other resources. The aim is to make municipal courts a more integral part of vital conversations around criminal justice, local governance, and the role of courts.
Professor Alexandra Natapoff is an award-winning criminal legal scholar and an expert on the American misdemeanor system. She is the author of Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal (Basic Books, 2018), as well as numerous articles about the low-level criminal process. She is the Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.