[We have the following announcement. DRE]
The [Association of American Law Schools] Section on Minority Groups is excited to announce its programming for the AALS Annual Meeting to be held January 3-6, 2024, in Washington, D.C. The Section will host a main program, Works-In-Progress/New Voices session, and pedagogy panel. Below you will find a brief description of each program and links to additional information regarding: calls for proposals and papers; deadlines; and contact information for individuals able to answer further questions.
Main Program (co-sponsored by the AALS Sections on Critical Theories, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues, Poverty Law, and Women in Legal Education)
Everything Old is New Again
Every day seems to present a new crisis of democracy. Shifts in judicial deference to history and tradition, executive actions, and legislative initiatives disproportionally impacting diverse and marginalized communities-and the rhetoric surrounding them-have caused many scholars, community leaders, and activists to draw parallels between the modern political and social atmosphere and the atmosphere of the Jim Crow era and the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. How accurate are these comparisons? If we truly are reliving a version of this part of history, how important is it to also understand the resistance and opposition movements and strategies that ultimately lead to change? What lessons does this history offer to the legal profession today? This panel will examine both whether there is a resurgence in the political and social dynamics of the Jim Crow era and to what extent resistance movements and strategies may inform pushes for social change today. For additional information, click here.
Works-In-Progress/New Voices Session
Infrastructures of (In)justice
Recent years have witnessed growing political and scholarly attention to how infrastructure, both material and intangible, can perpetuate injustice or promote justice. Scholarship has increasingly repudiated fixed, neutral views of infrastructure, instead construing infrastructure as a tool of power. The concept of infrastructural injustice has underpinned scholarship in diverse areas of law, including property law (e.g., housing), environmental law (e.g., water pollution), immigration law (e.g., transnational mobility), law and technology (e.g., algorithmic bias and digital redlining), and legal research and writing (e.g., critical legal research). While infrastructural justice is imperative for democracy to flourish, achieving it often remains elusive. We invite submissions addressing infrastructural (in)justice, broadly defined, including critiques and models for reform. For further information, click here.
Pedagogy Panel
Democracy in Crisis: A Pedagogical Response in the Legal Academy
Democracy is in crisis. From the judiciary to the legislative and executive branches, decisions are being made that target or disproportionately affect and disenfranchise underserved communities. Persistent injustices we have witnessed over recent years have triggered a reckoning in many institutional spaces, including American law schools. Considering the critical role that that law schools play in shaping our democracy, concerned law professors and deans are evaluating their courses and curricula to address ways to promote justice within the legal system in the United States. This panel considers the role legal education plays in defending democracy by incorporating social justice into law school curricula. Panelists will discuss integrating related teaching methods into their courses and the law curriculum more generally. Panelists will also discuss the challenges, barriers, and solutions to attempts to resist justice-infused legal curricula. For further information, click here.
