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Working within the Department’s concentration in Criminal Legal Studies, Dr. Wilson is also pleased to serve as Director of the pre law minor, Coordinator of the Pre-Law Resource Center and the pre law advisor, and faculty adviser for the Stan State Pre Law Society student club. 

Working from the perspectives of legal practitioner and academic, Dr. Wilson is interested in how law (criminal law in particular) implements and enforces practical ethics through the concrete social and political institutions which define and regulate punishment, privacy rights, and property rights. He also enjoys writing about the various interelationships between philosophy, law, politics, film, music, and literature.

As an attorney, Dr. Wilson has tried cases in dozens of California state and appellate courts, and several Federal District courts. He is currently licensed in California (1993) and New York (2015), and formerly licensed in Colorado (2009). He has worked as both a private attorney and a court-appointed ‘private defender’ on behalf of the indigent. Dr. Wilson’s specialization in criminal law and defense includes extensive hands-on experience within the institutions of the criminal law such as the prison system, the methodologies of sentencing and punishment, and constitutional criminal procedure. 

  • Critical Examination of Criminal Law
  • Criminal Procedures I and II
  • Capital Crimes and the Death Penalty
  • Success Strategies for Criminal Justice
  • Criminal Judicial Process
  • Constitutional Law for Criminal Justice
  • Jurisprudence, Law, & Society
  • Court Observer Program
  • Moot Court
  • Theory of Crime and Punishment
  • Legal Research and Writing

 

Recent Events

  • Crime, Violence, Justice: Philosophical Perspectives (editor), Trivent Publishing (2024).
  • “The Conquest of Death and the Divine Afterlife: Philip K. Dick’s Life and Fiction of the 1960s,” in The Esoteric Theology of Philip K. Dick, eds. George Sieg and Michael Barros (Lexington, 2024 [forthcoming]).
  • “Perturbations in the Reality Fields: Logos, Gnosis, and Aletheia in Philip K. Dick’s Late Works,” presentation as invited speaker, The Philip K. Dick Festival, Fort Morgan Colorado, June 2024.
  • “Perturbations in the Reality Fields: Logos, Gnosis, and Aletheia in Philip K. Dick’s Late Works,” in Jesuits in Science Fiction: The Clash of Reason and Revelation on Other Worlds, ed. Richard Feist (Vernon Press, 2024).
  • “Law, Lawlessness, and Political Philosophy in Paul Verhoeven’s Science Fiction Trilogy,” Paul Verhoeven@85 Conference, The Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies, Bangor University, Wales, UK (September, 2023)
  • “The Home as Haven: Personhood, Privacy, and Property Rights,” Sanctuary: Criminal Legal Conference, Durham University, UK (September, 2023)
  • “Creating a Faculty Road Map for Successful Pre-Law Programs (Or, Advising the CSU Way),” Pacific Coast Association of Pre-Law Advisors Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA 2023.
  • “Rogue Cops: Policing the Future in the Blade Runner Films,” Blade Runner @40 Conference, The Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies, Bangor University, Wales, UK (June, 2022) View video presentation. My presentation begins at about 00:21:00 with panel discussion at about 01:26:00).
  • “Criticizing the Criminal Law: Rejoining A Severed Corpse/Corpus” (panel convener), “Pure Compensation, Mass Incarceration, and the Abolition of Criminal Justice” (paper presentation), Critical Legal Conference, University of Dundee, UK (virtual presentation, September 2021).
  • “Phil Dick’s Political Syncretism: The Intrusion of the Era into His Fiction,” Philip K. Dick: His Sources and Inspirations (seminar panelist), Northeast Modern Language Association Virtual Conference (virtual presentation, March 2021).

Publications

  • A Philosophy of Criminal Justice (Budapest: Trivent Publishing), under contract.
  • “Introduction” and “Reflections From The Abyss: Herzog’s Philosophy of Death” in The Philosophy of Werner Herzog, eds. Christopher Turner and M. Blake Wilson (Lanham: Lexington Books [Rowman & Littlefield], 2020).
  • “The Business Ethics of Recreational Marijuana,” in Business Cases in Ethical Focus (Broadview Press, 2019).
  • “Examining the effects of psychiatric symptoms, brain injury symptoms, and low self-control on theplacement of inmates in administrative segregation and their risk for suicidal ideations,” Chintakrindi, S., Cappelan, J., Porter, J. R., Gupta. S. & Wilson, M.B. (forthcoming 2021).
  • “Communitarianism,” “First Occupancy Rights,” encyclopedia entries in World Encyclopedia of Territorial Rights, ed. Michael Kocsis (Springer, 2020). 
  • “Personhood and Property in Hegel’s Conception of Freedom,” Pólemos Rivista di Filosophia No. 2, 2018.
  • “Flow My Tears, Rick Deckard Said,” in Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy (La Salle: Open Court Publishing, 2019).
  • “Counterrevolutionary Polemics: Katechon and Crisis in de Maistre, Donoso, and Schmitt,” Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence 3 (2): 2019, December)
  • “Letter of October 24, 1851,” translation of Juan Donoso Cortés, Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence 3 (2):96-104 (2019)
  • “In the Neutral Zone, A Libertarian’s Home is Their (High) Castle,” in The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy (La Salle: Open Court Publishing, 2017).
  • “Behind Zarathustra’s Eyes: The Bad, Sad Man Meets Nietzsche’s Prophet,” in The Who and Philosophy (Lexington Books [Rowman & Littlefield], The Philosophy of Popular Culture Book Series, 2016.