This plenary asks a question at the heart of the larger ambition for the conference: How can we build a left vision that gives shape to aspirations for a more radical democracy? Will this vision take the shape of socialism, economic democracy, abolition, or something else? And how might we begin thinking about the role of legal thought, and legal change, in bringing any of these about? What, finally, would it mean to think and practice law in a way that helps us move “beyond neoliberalism”?
Amna Akbar is an Associate Professor of Law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Prof. Akbar’s scholarship explores the intersections of national security and criminal law, and the potential of social movements to transform our thinking about law, law enforcement, and law reform.
Aziz Rana is the Richard and Lois Cole Professor of Law at Cornell University. Dr. Rana teaches U.S. constitutional law and political development, with a particular focus on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since the founding.
Dorothy Roberts is an acclaimed scholar of race, gender, and the law, with joint appointments in the University of Pennsylvania Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School, where she holds the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander chair. Prof. Robert’s path-breaking work focuses on urgent contemporary issues in health, social justice, and bioethics, especially as they impact the lives of women, children, and African-Americans.
The plenary panel will be moderated by Amy Kapczynski, Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Faculty Co-Director of the LPE Project and the Global Health Justice Partnership.