Critical Justice: Systemic Advocacy in Law and Society

by Francisco Valdes, Steven Bender, Jennifer J. Hill

Critical Justice equips students and teachers with a framework for confronting systemic injustice by developing systemic advocacy projects rooted in insights of the critical schools of legal knowledge and field-based advocacy approaches. The textbook describes both law’s complicity in maintaining injustice and its importance as a tool in struggles to advance equal justice. Drawing on iconic and cutting-edge writings, the textbook outlines the “Critical Challenge” for how to translate the noble promise of equal justice into lived social realities for all―how to use law for justice.

The textbook prepares students to use law for justice by developing systemic advocacy projects that overcome the “blindfolds” and “handcuffs” of traditional legal education and practice. Critical Justice ’s conceptual and practical toolkit focuses on four key missing elements―social identities, groups, interests, and power―to explain the persistence of systemic injustice, and on redesigned professional norms to promote collaboration with subordinated communities. The textbook defines and illustrates systemic systemic advocates craft ameliorative fixes to discrete problems while also transforming the playing field by building the organized power of subordinated groups and shifting consciousness and culture to undermine supremacist ideologies. Critical Justice also presents a template for designing advocacy projects to help students craft fellowship projects and pursue dream jobs.

Critical Justice fills a gap in racial and social justice curriculum that connects the dots among systems and oppressions that persist across time and borders. With all author proceeds going to an academic nonprofit with antisubordination aims, this textbook is truly a collective undertaking in praxis toward equal justice for all.

1356 pages, Hardcover

Published May 24, 2021

Reviews

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book fills an important gap among legal books by focusing on social justice critiques of the law and legal systems. Rather than teach the standard doctrine, it challenges the assumptions and inequities baked into that doctrine. This critical critique is not typically a part of the core curriculum at law schools. But it should be, especially today when the gap between politics and the law is so narrow, as evidenced in the news almost every day.