Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2022

Abstract

Within recent years, different areas of the legal community have publicly addressed the need for racial justice. The killing of George Floyd and the reckoning with race that followed prompted law schools, bar associations, and court systems, as well as government, private, and non-profit legal organizations, to publicly acknowledge that racial disparities continue to persist in our society. While most of these legal institutions have made some recognition of the fact that the legal system has played a role in perpetuating systemic racism, they have essentially failed to address how discrimination against system-impacted individuals continues to deepen racial and socioeconomic inequities within the legal profession itself.

This Essay, which grows from ongoing research highlighted in my symposium remarks, argues that the legal profession, with its history of racial exclusion and active participation in furthering mass incarceration, has both an obligation and an opportunity to adopt a proactive racial equity reentry agenda. Such an agenda would redistribute economic and social resources by creating intentional professional pathways for people with the lived experience of criminalization. An equity-oriented reentry agenda would not only help system-impacted people in rebuilding their lives, but it would also help to reshape a legal profession that has historically reinforced social and racial marginalization.

Disciplines

Civil Rights and Discrimination | Law | Law and Race | Legal Profession

Download

Share

COinS