On July 13, 2013, a jury in Florida acquitted George Zimmerman in the shooting death of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. The case brought national notoriety to self-defense statutes known as “Stand Your Ground or “Castle Doctrine” laws. Florida was the first state to enact one of these laws in 2005, and nearly half of all of the states followed by enacting changes to their self-defense laws. While Zimmerman’s case brought a new level of scrutiny to these laws, not all of the media coverage was helpful, or even accurate. This panel will explore the applicable law, race, and masculinity, using a multidisciplinary approach. Issues covered will include basic self-defense doctrines and how they are changed by Stand Your Ground laws; the national legal landscape regarding the reshaping of self-defense; the impact these changed laws have had on prosecutorial discretion and public reaction; the emerging empirical work surrounding these issues; Florida’s statute allowing immunity from prosecution and civil suit in self-defense cases, and the potential constitutional problems it raises; how implicit racial bias can influence juror perceptions of reasonableness in self-defense; and the dialogic relationship between race, masculinity and the criminal law.