Today’s left social movements are increasingly turning to a framework of "non-reformist reform" to guide their efforts to build a just society. But what do non-reformist reforms require? How do they differ from liberal and neoliberal approaches to reform? And what role do law and lawyers have to play in advancing such reforms?
The carceral state is in a deep legitimacy crisis, with questions about its proper function up for public debate, and social movements pushing for care, public safety, and accountability. Municipalities, meanwhile, are experimenting with non-police responses to varied social problems. These efforts are important: they signal that abolitionist organizing and social insurgency have built sufficient power that the political elite has had to respond. But as Dorothy Roberts and Wendy Bach teach us, care often provides cover for criminalization, and the deployment of professional services often works hand in glove with systems of punishment.
Mari Matsuda is a central scholar within the critical traditions of legal scholarship: in particular Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, and feminist legal theory. Amna Akbar sat down with her virtually, on December 3, 2020, to ask some questions about her insights on where we are today, where we have been, and where we might go. Today's part of the conversation focuses on how legal analysis has changed and how movements do and should influence legal scholarship.
Mari Matsuda is a central scholar within the critical traditions of legal scholarship: in particular Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, and feminist legal theory. Amna Akbar sat down with her virtually, on December 3, 2020, to ask some questions about her insights on where we are today, where we have been, and where we might go. Today's part of the conversation focuses on the origins and the legacy of CRT.
We are assured Amna will have more to say here at the Blog, but for now check out her account of the abolitionist movement has developed into the type of coalition that can make real change in this moment.
In April, the New York Times ran a profile on abolitionist visionary and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and the Harvard Law Review published an entire issue on prison abolition. This fall, the University of Texas Law School Human Rights Center is hosting a conference on abolition. The new journalistic outlet The Appeal runs abolitionist pieces…