From Policing and Protest to Discrimination and Systemic Racism
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| This summer, the University of Virginia School of Law is convening a series of National Faculty Workshops on the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement and the broad array of legal questions it implicates — from policing and protest to discrimination and systemic racism. Each virtual workshop, open to all law faculty nationwide, will feature a single scholar who will present on a recent or current project and will be moderated by a member of the UVA Law faculty. Papers will be distributed approximately one week in advance to those who register below. For questions, please contact Rebecca Klaff.
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| THE RACIAL PROMISED LAND?
Randall L. Kennedy, Harvard Law
Thursday, July 23
Randall Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law and the regulation of race relations. He is the recipient of the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Race, Crime, and the Law. He will discuss competing visions of racial justice since 1950. These include white supremacist aspirations, the ambitions of neglected black organizations such as the Nation of Islam, the ideal of the race-blind society, and the visions associated with those marching with the Movement for Black Lives who are calling for the “abolition” of various institutions such as police and prisons.
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| DE FACTO ABOLITION AND DIVESTMENT
Paul Butler, Georgetown Law
Monday, July 27
Paul Butler, the Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown, researches and teaches in the areas of criminal law and procedure, race law and critical theory. He is the author of “Chokehold: Policing Black Men,” which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and described by The New York Times as the best book on criminal justice reform since “The New Jim Crow.” Butler will discuss myths about policing and prosecution, including that police solve most crimes and that policing and prosecution are sought by most people who have experienced harm. His article explores the meaning and consequences of the reality that most crime, including violent crime, is not addressed by the criminal legal process and explains how prison abolition and police divestment might enhance accountability from the state, and from private actors who cause harm.
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| WHAT DEMONSTRATIONS ARE, AND WHAT DEMONSTRATIONS MEAN
Jeremy Waldron, NYU School of Law
Wednesday, July 29
Jeremy Waldron teaches legal and political philosophy at New York University School of Law as a University Professor. In the paper Waldron will discuss, he writes: “In the midst of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests, can we adduce any general understanding of what it is to demonstrate? ... At its most successful, [a demonstration] sounds a warning that intimates both an upending of business-as-usual in politics and the power and emergence of new political formations. That is why accommodating demonstrations in a mature political system is no easy matter.”
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| THE SUPREME COURT’S CHALLENGE TO CIVIL SOCIETY
Linda Greenhouse, Yale Law School
Monday, Aug. 3
Linda Greenhouse is a senior research scholar at Yale Law School. Greenhouse covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times between 1978 and 2008 and now writes a biweekly column on law. She plans to discuss her paper on the court’s recent decisions in Janus v. AFSCME and the seemingly unrelated cases enabling employer opt-outs from the ACA contraception mandate within a wider landscape: the erosion of the concept of mutual obligation necessary for civil society to thrive.
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| A FEDERAL RIGHT TO EDUCATION
Kimberly J. Robinson, UVA Law
Wednesday, Aug. 5
Kimberly Jenkins Robinson is a national expert on educational equity, equal educational opportunity, civil rights and the federal role in education. Robinson is the Elizabeth D. and Richard A. Merrill Professor of Law, a professor of education, and a professor of law, education and public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at UVA. She will discuss the topic that is the focus of her latest edited book, “A Federal Right to Education: Fundamental Questions for Our Democracy,” which gathers leading constitutional and education law scholars to consider the challenging questions raised by recognizing a federal right to education in the United States.
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| THE TRAUMA OF INJUSTICE
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, BU Law
Monday, Aug. 10
Angela Onwuachi-Willig is dean and professor of law at Boston University School of Law, and a renowned legal scholar and expert in critical race theory, employment discrimination and family law. Before joining BU Law, Onwuachi-Willig served as Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. She is the author of “According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family.” Onwuachi-Willig will discuss the sociological concept of cultural trauma of Blacks in relation to the legal outcomes in high-profile cases involving police and quasi-police killings of Blacks, such as the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice.
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