Arnold is interested in both the justifications for civil confinement and the formal legal doctrines that restrict and permit the government’s power to incarcerate, such as habeas and due process. Her work examines similarities, tensions, and incoherencies across civil and criminal carceral systems to interrogate the state’s power to confine in the absence of explicitly punitive goals.
Previously, Arnold was a Forrester Fellow at Tulane Law School. Before that, she was a staff attorney at CASA in Maryland, where she supported working-class immigrant communities through direct representation, legislative advocacy, impact litigation assistance, and other forms of movement lawyering.
