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Papers by Amna Akbar
Examines how clinical and doctrinal faculty can work together to overcome the difficult challenge... more Examines how clinical and doctrinal faculty can work together to overcome the difficult challenges in facility classroom conversations about race while enhancing students’ understanding of the various issues of race that arise within the criminal justice system. Presenters include professors of criminal law and procedure in traditional lecture courses, clinics and seminars. Presenters will provide overview of specific techniques to
Publications by Amna Akbar
![Research paper thumbnail of 2020 "Law, Police Violence, and Race: Grounding and Embodying the State of Exception," in Theory & Event 22(4): 902-934 [with Mat Coleman and Amna Akbar]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/63527229/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](This paper theorizes police violence by elucidating the relationship between racialized violence ... more This paper theorizes police violence by elucidating the relationship between racialized violence and law. We contrast Giorgio Agamben’s generalized state of exception with Walter Benjamin’s targeted and localized account, which we complement with Saidiya Hartman’s work on periodization and affect. We argue that racialized police violence is constitutive of law because police routinely enact violence in racially targeted ways, and judicial practice sanctions this violence through predictable deference to racialized affect, legitimizing anti-black racism as fear for safety. We conclude that a theoretical account of law and violence must include material practices of policing and enforcement, for it is the latter that, in a racial state, are, in fact, law.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This Article examines the federal government's community engagement efforts with American Muslim ... more This Article examines the federal government's community engagement efforts with American Muslim communities as part of a larger infrastructure for policing radicalization and countering violent extremism (CVE). While the federal government presents community engagement as a softer alternative to policing, community engagement is integrated into a larger policing apparatus, making the reality far more coercive. Community engagement efforts are staged within the greater context of radicalization discourse, counterradicalization and CVE programs. Radicalization theory posits that increased religiosity and politicization in Muslims provokes an increased threat of terrorism. Government counterradicalization programs aim, therefore, to monitor and influence the political and religious cultures of Muslim communities so as to prevent radicalization, bringing tremendous scrutiny to bear on these communities.
This Essay sketches out the Movement for Black Lives' claims about law, argues that law faculty s... more This Essay sketches out the Movement for Black Lives' claims about law, argues that law faculty should be paying close attention to the movement's challenges to core empirical and methodological assumptions in our teaching and scholarship, and offers pedagogical techniques to welcome these challenges into our classrooms.
The movement's empirical claim is that law does not function as is often imagined, the imagination of law’s functioning being central to the legitimacy we invest in our system of government. This claim has many dimensions worth exploring, but here I point to two central applications: police killings and the disjuncture between procedural rights and substantive justice.
The movement's methodological claim challenges conventional wisdom about how law changes and the role of law in social change. Organizers have refused to work within the traditional confines of legal process or to celebrate law as the end of their struggle. Instead, they have lifted up disruption and contestation as tactics, and relied on law only as a tool for incremental change in a broader campaign for a radical restructuring. In the process, they have shed light on law’s operation, recast law’s morality, and questioned its relationship to haunting social problems.
The movement exposes to the mainstream what black communities have argued—and black freedom struggles have organized against—for centuries: Law is not fair, it does not treat people equally, and its violence is lethal and routine. Law is constituted by power and the powerful, and it changes for the benefit of the marginalized only when it is made to.
The movement's critiques may make us uncomfortable, and taking them on in the classroom may require risks—but we need to get uncomfortable. For too long, too many of us have looked the other way, even when we know better. It is time to look at the law beyond our conventional ways of seeing. It is time to bring in the people who for too long have been outside the classroom, and yet are so central to law’s operations.
NYU Law Review, 2018
In this Article, I consider the contemporary law reform project of a radical social movement seek... more In this Article, I consider the contemporary law reform project of a radical social movement seeking to transform the state: specifically, the Movement for Black Lives policy platform, “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice.” The Movement for Black Lives is the leading example of a contemporary racial justice movement with an intersectional politics including feminist and anti-capitalist commitments. The visions of such radical social movements offer an alternative epistemology for understanding and addressing structural inequality and injustice. By studying not only the critiques offered by radical social movements, but also their visions for transformative change, the edges of law scholarship can be expanded, a deeper set of critiques and a longer set of histories—of colonialism and settler colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade and mass incarceration—centered, and a bolder project of transformation forwarded. These visions should push legal scholars toward a broader frame for understanding how law, the market, and the state co-produce intersectional structural inequality, and toward agendas that focus not on building the power of law and law enforcement, but on transforming the state and society and building the power of marginalized communities. This shift would invigorate the social movements literature and bring new energy to scholarship on substantive areas of law, from criminal and immigration law to property and contract law.
To illustrate the creative potential of studying radical social movements, this Article considers policing the Vision for Black Lives with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Ferguson and Baltimore reports. The Vision and DOJ reports offer alternate conceptualizations of the problem of policing and the appropriate approach to law reform. Reflective of liberal law reform projects on police, the DOJ reports identify policing as a fundamental tool of law and order that serves the collective interests of society, and locate the problems of police in their failure to adhere to constitutional law. As a remedy, the DOJ reports advocate for investing more resources in police: more trainings, better supervision, community policing. In contrast, the Vision identifies policing as a historical and violent force in Black communities underpinning a system of racial capitalism and limiting the possibilities of Black life. Here, law is central to the shape and legitimation of racialized violence and inequality. The Vision’s reimagination of policing—rooted in Black history and Black intellectual traditions—transforms mainstream approaches to reform. The Vision demands shrinking the large footprint of policing, surveillance, and incarceration, and shifting resources into other social programs in Black communities: housing, health care, jobs, and schools. It focuses on building power in Black communities, and fundamentally transforming the relationship between government, market, and society. In forwarding an abolitionist imagination, the movement offers transformative, affirmative visions for change designed to address the structures of inequality—something legal scholarship has for far too long lacked.
![Research paper thumbnail of 2017 "Missing in Action: Practice, Paralegality, and the Nature of Immigration Enforcement," in Citizenship Studies 21(5): 547-569 [with Mat Coleman and Amna Akbar]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/51192496/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](U.S. immigration control is typically understood in terms of enforcement practices undertaken by ... more U.S. immigration control is typically understood in terms of enforcement practices undertaken by federal officers guided by legislation and court decisions. While legislation and court opinions are important components of the immigration control apparatus, they do not adequately account for immigration control 'on the ground.' To explore this problem, we advance the concept of paralegality, the practices and operations that constitute a dynamic system of actions and relationships that are not simply linear applications of legislation or judicial decisions but may in fact extend or counter these texts. We illustrate the importance of paralegality by reconstructing the evolution of the §287(g) and Secure Communities programs, both of which have shape-shifted dramatically since their inception. Our account of immigration control highlights the problem practice poses for law, proposes a theoretical alternative to textual-law-centric research on immigration and law enforcement, and contributes to scholarship on everyday citizenship.
Blog Posts / Short Entries by Amna Akbar
![Research paper thumbnail of 2017 "Donald Trump says he’s just enforcing immigration law. But it’s not that simple," in The Monkey Cage (The Washington Post) [with Mat Coleman and Amna Akbar]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/54941961/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](From the moment he rode down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, Donald ... more From the moment he rode down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, Donald Trump has emphasized that he was determined to enforce U.S. immigration law. Secretary John Kelly, while still heading the DHS, put it even more simply, saying, “the law deports people. Secretary Kelly doesn’t.” That formulation is far too simplistic. Laws don’t enforce themselves; people make decisions about how to enforce them. That’s why the same laws are enforced differently from one county sheriff to the next — and from one U.S. president to the next. Enforcement is where the law is figured out, in practice, involving tinkering, experimentation, conflict, and negotiation among stakeholders.
Examines how clinical and doctrinal faculty can work together to overcome the difficult challenge... more Examines how clinical and doctrinal faculty can work together to overcome the difficult challenges in facility classroom conversations about race while enhancing students’ understanding of the various issues of race that arise within the criminal justice system. Presenters include professors of criminal law and procedure in traditional lecture courses, clinics and seminars. Presenters will provide overview of specific techniques to
This paper theorizes police violence by elucidating the relationship between racialized violence ... more This paper theorizes police violence by elucidating the relationship between racialized violence and law. We contrast Giorgio Agamben’s generalized state of exception with Walter Benjamin’s targeted and localized account, which we complement with Saidiya Hartman’s work on periodization and affect. We argue that racialized police violence is constitutive of law because police routinely enact violence in racially targeted ways, and judicial practice sanctions this violence through predictable deference to racialized affect, legitimizing anti-black racism as fear for safety. We conclude that a theoretical account of law and violence must include material practices of policing and enforcement, for it is the latter that, in a racial state, are, in fact, law.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This Article examines the federal government's community engagement efforts with American Muslim ... more This Article examines the federal government's community engagement efforts with American Muslim communities as part of a larger infrastructure for policing radicalization and countering violent extremism (CVE). While the federal government presents community engagement as a softer alternative to policing, community engagement is integrated into a larger policing apparatus, making the reality far more coercive. Community engagement efforts are staged within the greater context of radicalization discourse, counterradicalization and CVE programs. Radicalization theory posits that increased religiosity and politicization in Muslims provokes an increased threat of terrorism. Government counterradicalization programs aim, therefore, to monitor and influence the political and religious cultures of Muslim communities so as to prevent radicalization, bringing tremendous scrutiny to bear on these communities.
This Essay sketches out the Movement for Black Lives' claims about law, argues that law faculty s... more This Essay sketches out the Movement for Black Lives' claims about law, argues that law faculty should be paying close attention to the movement's challenges to core empirical and methodological assumptions in our teaching and scholarship, and offers pedagogical techniques to welcome these challenges into our classrooms.
The movement's empirical claim is that law does not function as is often imagined, the imagination of law’s functioning being central to the legitimacy we invest in our system of government. This claim has many dimensions worth exploring, but here I point to two central applications: police killings and the disjuncture between procedural rights and substantive justice.
The movement's methodological claim challenges conventional wisdom about how law changes and the role of law in social change. Organizers have refused to work within the traditional confines of legal process or to celebrate law as the end of their struggle. Instead, they have lifted up disruption and contestation as tactics, and relied on law only as a tool for incremental change in a broader campaign for a radical restructuring. In the process, they have shed light on law’s operation, recast law’s morality, and questioned its relationship to haunting social problems.
The movement exposes to the mainstream what black communities have argued—and black freedom struggles have organized against—for centuries: Law is not fair, it does not treat people equally, and its violence is lethal and routine. Law is constituted by power and the powerful, and it changes for the benefit of the marginalized only when it is made to.
The movement's critiques may make us uncomfortable, and taking them on in the classroom may require risks—but we need to get uncomfortable. For too long, too many of us have looked the other way, even when we know better. It is time to look at the law beyond our conventional ways of seeing. It is time to bring in the people who for too long have been outside the classroom, and yet are so central to law’s operations.
NYU Law Review, 2018
In this Article, I consider the contemporary law reform project of a radical social movement seek... more In this Article, I consider the contemporary law reform project of a radical social movement seeking to transform the state: specifically, the Movement for Black Lives policy platform, “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice.” The Movement for Black Lives is the leading example of a contemporary racial justice movement with an intersectional politics including feminist and anti-capitalist commitments. The visions of such radical social movements offer an alternative epistemology for understanding and addressing structural inequality and injustice. By studying not only the critiques offered by radical social movements, but also their visions for transformative change, the edges of law scholarship can be expanded, a deeper set of critiques and a longer set of histories—of colonialism and settler colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade and mass incarceration—centered, and a bolder project of transformation forwarded. These visions should push legal scholars toward a broader frame for understanding how law, the market, and the state co-produce intersectional structural inequality, and toward agendas that focus not on building the power of law and law enforcement, but on transforming the state and society and building the power of marginalized communities. This shift would invigorate the social movements literature and bring new energy to scholarship on substantive areas of law, from criminal and immigration law to property and contract law.
To illustrate the creative potential of studying radical social movements, this Article considers policing the Vision for Black Lives with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Ferguson and Baltimore reports. The Vision and DOJ reports offer alternate conceptualizations of the problem of policing and the appropriate approach to law reform. Reflective of liberal law reform projects on police, the DOJ reports identify policing as a fundamental tool of law and order that serves the collective interests of society, and locate the problems of police in their failure to adhere to constitutional law. As a remedy, the DOJ reports advocate for investing more resources in police: more trainings, better supervision, community policing. In contrast, the Vision identifies policing as a historical and violent force in Black communities underpinning a system of racial capitalism and limiting the possibilities of Black life. Here, law is central to the shape and legitimation of racialized violence and inequality. The Vision’s reimagination of policing—rooted in Black history and Black intellectual traditions—transforms mainstream approaches to reform. The Vision demands shrinking the large footprint of policing, surveillance, and incarceration, and shifting resources into other social programs in Black communities: housing, health care, jobs, and schools. It focuses on building power in Black communities, and fundamentally transforming the relationship between government, market, and society. In forwarding an abolitionist imagination, the movement offers transformative, affirmative visions for change designed to address the structures of inequality—something legal scholarship has for far too long lacked.
U.S. immigration control is typically understood in terms of enforcement practices undertaken by ... more U.S. immigration control is typically understood in terms of enforcement practices undertaken by federal officers guided by legislation and court decisions. While legislation and court opinions are important components of the immigration control apparatus, they do not adequately account for immigration control 'on the ground.' To explore this problem, we advance the concept of paralegality, the practices and operations that constitute a dynamic system of actions and relationships that are not simply linear applications of legislation or judicial decisions but may in fact extend or counter these texts. We illustrate the importance of paralegality by reconstructing the evolution of the §287(g) and Secure Communities programs, both of which have shape-shifted dramatically since their inception. Our account of immigration control highlights the problem practice poses for law, proposes a theoretical alternative to textual-law-centric research on immigration and law enforcement, and contributes to scholarship on everyday citizenship.
From the moment he rode down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, Donald ... more From the moment he rode down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, Donald Trump has emphasized that he was determined to enforce U.S. immigration law. Secretary John Kelly, while still heading the DHS, put it even more simply, saying, “the law deports people. Secretary Kelly doesn’t.” That formulation is far too simplistic. Laws don’t enforce themselves; people make decisions about how to enforce them. That’s why the same laws are enforced differently from one county sheriff to the next — and from one U.S. president to the next. Enforcement is where the law is figured out, in practice, involving tinkering, experimentation, conflict, and negotiation among stakeholders.