Black Lives Matter: On Challenging the Soul of Legal Education (original) (raw)

Toward a race-conscious pedagogy in legal education

Nat'l Black LJ, 1988

It is both an honor and a pleasure to write the Foreword for this issue of the National Black Law Journal. This project represents the culmination of a joint effort involving the NBLJ, Dean Susan Westerberg Prager and me. The project grew out of discussions that began ...

Legal Education and the Legitimation of Racial Power

2015

Thank you for your invitation to talk with you today about how the recent uproar about police killings of African-Americans in Ferguson, Missouri, and across the country might connect to your experience in elite legal education— what might Harvard Law School have to do with what is going on? I will talk about the way that racial justice is ordinarily understood in law schools, and the shortcomings of that dominant conception. My thesis is that Harvard Law School is one of those mainstream institutions of power in America that defends a universalist rule-of-law ideology as a way to comprehend racial justice, and a bankrupt ideology of “meritocracy” to justify the distribution of wealth, power, and prestige in American society. Deans Minow of Harvard and Post of Yale recently published an op-ed in THE BOSTON GLOBE making explicit the connection between the events after Ferguson and law school’s rule-of-law mission:

A Critical Race Inquiry of African American Female Law Students’ Educational Experiences at a Racially Diverse Law School

Journal of Education & Social Policy

The purpose of this research is to examine how African American female law students' educational experiences have been impacted by institutionalized racism. Using Critical Race Theory, we analyzed data from a focus group comprised of five, 3 rd-year black female law students attending a racially diverse campus in the Mid-South. Results indicate that systemic racism and sexism affects all aspects of law school experience for black females. Nonetheless, the strong presence of an institutional honor council, mentors, and minority professors served as protective factors to assist participants navigate a racist and patriarchal legal system. An increase in women and minorities occupying positions in the higher echelons of the legal profession suggests the field of law is fairly represented by race and gender. However, 88% of lawyers are white, and according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, Law is the least racially diverse among the prestige professions (Rhode, 2015). As noted by Garces (2012), this a disappointing trend given that lawyers populate some of the most powerful offices. In higher education, women are better represented and constitute nearly 50% of the average law student population (Calleros, 2006). Nonetheless, the diversity pipeline terminates at the institutional level, as women are five times less likely to make partner in a law firm and are underrepresented at the managerial partner level (Olivas, 2005). For minorities, the field of law is fraught with barriers. While minorities groups constitute one-third of the US population and nearly 20% of the Law school population, they make up fewer than 7% of law firm partners, and only 9% of legal counsels working in large corporations (Rhode, 2015). In one analysis of the student body at a law school in the Midwest, researchers found that minorities comprised 7% of the student body, but less than 1% of regionally practicing lawyers (Wu & Schumacher, 2014). Given these statistics, and the historical replication of white males securing lucrative positions in the legal field, it is reasonable to assert that systemic barriers associated with racism, privilege, and social capital continue to exert a dominant influence on the composition of the legal profession. Researchers have described the racial homogeneity of the law profession as a "Diversity Crisis," believed to result from explicit and implicit bias ubiquitous to the professional pipeline (Negowetti, 2015). First, entrance to law school rests almost exclusively on applicants LSAT scores, despite the recognition that standardized assessments are not an effective screening tool for students of diversity, nor predictive of their later success in the legal profession (Olivas, 2005; Reynoso & Amron, 2002). Second, the practice of affirmative action in law school admissions leads to the stereotype that minority students have inferior academic achievement. Such perceptions negatively impact their academic and social development (Payne-Pikus et al., 2010), and foreground the exclusion of minority law students from formal and formal networking opportunities, deemed essential for one's legal career development (Rhode, 2015). Third: Stereotypes that minority lawyers as less competent persist into the workplace. One study revealed that lawyers were likely to denigrate legal memo's if they believed the author was a minority (Negowetti, 2015). Finally, researchers suggest that female lawyers are caught up in a double bind. Feminine traits are associated with weakness, submission,

McLaurin's Seat: The Need for Racial Inclusion in Legal Education

2001

One of the groundbreaking predecessor cases to Brown v. Board of Education' was McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 2 in which G. W. McLaurin, an African-American college professor, sought admission to the racially segregated Graduate School of Education of the state of Oklahoma. Before the case's appeal to the high Court, Oklahoma decided to admit McLaurin but to require him to sit in a cordoned-off alcove outside of the classroom and at a separate "table-for-one" in the library and cafeteria.' A wellknown photograph of McLaurin from that era starkly conveys the tragedy of exclusion in pre-Brown educational institutions: a welldressed black student sits in forced isolation in the hall outside of a large lecture hall, exiled from white students and professors as he seeks a graduate education.' The Supreme Court ultimately held that the state of Oklahoma could not segregate students within the Graduate School once it had admitted them. Undoubtedly, the de facto racial segregation of McLaurin as a "class of one" took longer to dissipate. I first saw this photograph of McLaurin when I was a law student at Stanford Law School in the early 1980s, and it affected me deeply. Some thirty-plus years after McLaurin's case, I was one of approximately a dozen African-American students-including four African-American women-in a class of one hundred and seventy. Despite this small number, I remember having both a sense of belonging and a relatively sanguine view of the prospects for racial

Teaching Race and Racism in Law School (Annotated Bibliography)

2020

Law students across America are increasingly requesting that their law schools and professors incorporate race in teaching law. This annotated bibliography is intended to be a resource for law faculty and administrators seeking to answer their students' calls for more critical analysis of law, especially as it relates to systemic racism.

Struggles & Support: Diversity in US Law Schools

… 'l Black LJ, 2010

American racism continues to infect and affect the American education system. Students have different experiences with racism and discrimination based on their own racial backgrounds; these may lead to different realities in terms of attitudes, opinions, and actions. However, the shared experience of being students may also result in some similarities between students of different racial backgrounds. While a number of scholars have conducted research on diversity in higher education, there is little empirical research specifically examining the law school context, and even less using a national data set focused on student perspectives and experiences. This study relies on national survey and focus group data to examine levels of law student support for diversity in law

Listen! Amplifying the Experiences of Black Law School Graduates in 2020

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021

Law students graduating in 2020 faced a number of unusual challenges. However, perhaps no students faced more emotional, psychological, logistical, and financial challenges than Black law school graduates in 2020. In addition to changes in the administration of the bar exam (including the use of technology that struggled to recognize Black faces) and delays in the administration of the exam that led to anxiety and increased financial instability, Black communities were concurrently being disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to increased care-taking responsibilities for many, concerns over the health of family members, and a lack of quiet and reliable space to study. Black law school graduates already struggling to juggle these challenges were also confronted with a rise in anti-Black police brutality, and the racist words and actions of politicians. As a result of this unprecedented series of stressors, many Black law gradates struggled to focus on ...