Law Professors, Activists Crowd EJS/SALT Panel on “Strategic Scholarship”

By Susan K. Serrano, Research Director

At a standing-room only event, co-sponsored by EJS and the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) during the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, legal scholars and activists addressed the commonly-experienced conflict between the institutional demands of law schools (particularly in the choices of what to write about, where to publish, or whether to work outside traditional civil rights fields) and personal progressive agendas.

The January 5 event in San Francisco included a reception at the Hotel Nikko and a discussion entitled Strategic Scholarship: Opportunities and Obstacles for Progressive Faculty.  “Newer faculty had the opportunity to talk with experienced faculty, members of advocacy organizations and other novice teachers,” said EJS board member Margaret Russell, Santa Clara University School of Law professor.

EJS and SALT convened the innovative gathering, spurred by a question posed by EJS Board member Eric Yamamoto, a law professor at the University of Hawai‘i, in a groundbreaking 1997 work on “critical race praxis.” [1]  

“In post-civil rights America, how might theorists, lawyers, and activists bridge the ‘gap of chasmic proportions’ between progressive race theory and political lawyering practice?”

In addition to Russell, the panelists included SALT co-president José Roberto Juarez, Jr., a professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law and Marcia Henry, senior attorney and legal editor at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.

They addressed possible areas of collaboration between lawyers, national organizations and law professors focusing on how progressives can start to build a more cohesive and well-funded scholarship network structure in the current political climate.

EJS is working in collaboration with others to build a strategic scholarship/advocacy network aimed at strengthening communication between academics and practitioners.  Our first Law Review Roundtable at the University of Michigan Law School in April 2004 explored the challenges and opportunities that progressives face in systematically placing articles in law reviews and journals, in disseminating scholarship to key decision makers, and in creating a constant flow of information between scholars and practicing attorneys.