The LPE Project and YLS LPE Student Group hosted a lunch talk with Terrell “Rell” Carter, Rachel Lopez, and Kempis “Ghani” Songster, on Participatory Law Scholarship: Reimagining Legal Academia on Tuesday, March 26th. Carter, Lopez, and Songster have authored the groundbreaking articles “Redeeming Justice” and “Regarding the Other Death Penalty,” among other works. Most recently, Professor Lopez authored an article on Participatory Law Scholarship forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review. These works are part of an emergent genre of participatory law scholarship (PLS), which is legal scholarship written in collaboration with authors who have no formal training in the law, but rather expertise in law’s injustice through lived experience.
Monica Bell joined our panelists for a conversation about these articles on death by incarceration, Participatory Law Scholarship, and connecting the legal academy to social movements. Emerging from the Critical Race Studies and movement lawyering traditions, Participatory Law Scholarship seeks to produce legal scholarship through collaboration with authors without formal legal training but with extensive expertise in the law through lived experiences.