Creative Inquiry into the Law is a new lecture series exploring legal topics through the lens of the Time-Space-Knowledge vision.

In episode 2, Morgan Wells, the director of the Center for Creative Inquiry, discusses the gravity of the past for incarcerated persons in the United States. Gravity is the force that attracts objects toward one another in proportion to their mass. It holds the planets in orbit and us to the ground. Gravity is also the term we use to refer to something that is serious or weighty. This talk will discuss how the past operates as the center of identity that pulls us in and will explore the consequences of this magnetism, particularly in the context of incarceration. Our criminal justice system assigns an identity to incarcerated persons by telling a story that binds them to a specific context. We will investigate how loosening these tethers to the past can help us pursue a more rehabilitative approach.