Titus-Hepp Lecture Series: Jennifer Lackey

Denison University’s Department of Philosophy and the Titus-Hepp Lecture Series welcomes Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University and the Director of the Northwestern Prison Education Program Jennifer Lackey, presenting “False Confessions and Testimonial Injustice.”

In the criminal justice system, confessions have long been considered the gold standard in evidence. An immediate problem arises for this gold standard, however, when the prevalence of false confessions is taken into account. In this paper, Lackey takes a close look at false confessions in connection with the phenomenon of testimonial injustice. She shows that false confessions provide a unique and compelling challenge to the current conceptual tools used to understand this epistemic wrong. Most of her research is in the area of social epistemology, with a recent focus on issues involving credibility and false confessions, the epistemology of groups, and testimonial injustice.

Lackey is the winner of the Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution and the Young Epistemologist Prize, and has received grants and fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.