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  • The Sacred Way of Tibetan CRT Kung Fu: Can Race Crits Teach the Shadow’s Mystical Insight and Help Law Students “Know” White Structural Oppression in the Heart of the First-Year Curriculum? A Critical Rejoinder to Dorothy A. Brown

    Part I of this Article uses a quasi-parable, in which Dorothy Brown is a Tibetan Master who teaches law students CRT Kung Fu, the monastic fighting skills by which they will acquire the Shadow's mystical insight to "know" the heart of the first-year curriculum. Part II challenges the organizing principles and content on which Brown's Critical Race Theory purports to critically interrogate traditional legal doctrine, applying a New Age Philosophical critique as well as agency theory to crack dealing in Spanish Harlem. I use this case study to argue that crack dealers deliberately and purposefully choose extra-legal economic opportunities, even at the expense of their neighbors and community. The Conclusion demands that Race Crits think outside of the white structural oppression logical box.

  • Prologue: Brief of Amici Curiae on Behalf of a Committee of Concerned Black Graduates of ABA Accredited Law Schools: Vicky L. Beasley, Devon W. Carbado, Tasha L. Cooper, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Shavar Jeffries, Sidney Majalya, Wanda R. Stansbury, Jory Steele, Et Al., In Support of Respondents

    The brief of Amici Curiae on Behalf of a Committee of Concerned Black Graduates of ABA Accredited Law Schools in Grutter v. Bollinger was written so as to intervene and to assist in the refraining of the public debate surrounding minority admissions programs in institutions of higher education.

  • Breaking Into The Academy: The 2000-2002 Michigan Journal of Race & Law Guide for Aspiring Law Professors

    Once you have set your sights upon a career in law teaching you must determine how best to position yourself to obtain a job in the field. The answer is to write, publish, and otherwise bolster your credentials. Write as many papers with as many of your law school professors as you can; write onto a journal and have your article published; work as a research assistant for a professor and write with him or her; work for a judge and write bench memos and draft opinions; work for a public interest organization or a law firm and publish scholarship about the law you practice there. Whatever you do, write. In addition to providing proof of your interest in legal scholarship and supplying material from which you can fashion a job talk (a scholarly presentation that is a common feature of the interview process), writing with professors, judges, and lawyers will allow you to find mentors who will be able to vouch for your abilities when you need recommendations.

  • Expert Report of Kinley Larntz, PH.D.

    While working in this matter, the author undertook the task of analyzing the statistical relationship between law school acceptance and ethnicity. In particular, focusing on the strength of the relationship between law school acceptance and being a member of certain ethnic groups, controlling for qualifications for admission such as undergraduate grade point average, Law School Admission Test score, and selection index, and for other factors such as residency in the State of Michigan, gender, and a measure of economic disadvantage, waiver of the fee for application.

  • Some Observations on Teaching from the “Pioneer” Generation

    A paper from the perspective of the "pioneer" generation.

  • From Tokenism to Emancipatory Politics: The Conferences and Meetings of Law Professors of Color

    In this paper, the author traces the history of the First National Meetings and conferences since 1969. In Part II, this paper explores the range of meetings and conferences which outlined the development of a proactive agenda for minority student and faculty inclusion within mainstream historically White legal institutions and the evolution of this agenda from one of access to an agenda of security, retention, and the advancement of legal theory and scholarship within and without the established academy. Part III chronicles the maturation of this tradition of independent meetings and conferences of professors of color into a network of legal education institutions promoting institutional, as well as ideological, pluralism. Finally, the concluding comments are devoted to an analysis of the two-fold function of this tradition of meetings and conferences: to combat the paradoxical isolation and heightened visibility of professors of color within historically White institutions and to generate legal theory responsive to the experiences of people of color.

  • Generations: Nanook of the Law School Library and the Classroom

    Many of the essays in this symposium are rooted in the Western Law Professors of Color Conference held in Oregon in the Spring of 1998. The University of Oregon minority colleagues, as faculty of one of the co-sponsoring law schools, were charged, among other tasks, with the selection of the conference theme and tee-shirt design. The title “Generations” was chosen to focus on the challenges across the years for law faculty of color.

  • Introduction: Critical Race Praxis and Legal Scholarship

    The publication of this symposium issue is an occasion for three distinct and yet related celebrations. First, we honor the Western Law Teachers of Color, whose sixth annual meeting on the sublime Oregon Coast in 1998 provided the occasion for organizing the papers published here. Dean Strickland's preface, as well as Professors Linda Greene's and Jim Jones's essays examine the historical significance of this occasion in greater detail. Second, we engage in a festschrift of a particular member of this group-Professor Eric K. Yamamoto -whose publication of a book this year is a significant capstone to fifteen years of scholarship on racial justice. The articles in this symposium issue address one of Yamamoto's many path-breaking concepts: critical race praxis. Finally, the various pieces published here form a testament to the growing maturity of legal scholarship on race and law, as well as-sadly-the still highly contested legitimacy of this kind of scholarship within the mainstream legal academy as an editorial board of one of the Western Law Teachers participating law schools' law reviews decided against publication despite an earlier commitment. The very fact that there was a politicized dispute elsewhere over the articles published here demonstrates the on-going nature of racial struggle inside the walls of law schools, as well as the strategic importance of law students committed to the principle of racial justice. Thus our obligatory first footnote, which thanks those on the editorial board of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, does not begin to convey the complexity of the interracial dynamics-both alliances and fractures-that undergird this particular legal scholarship project.

  • Listen

    In a traditional law school setting, experiences of students of color, especially Native Americans, are often buried by the discourse of the dominant culture. This piece, a non-traditional work using elements of prose, lyric, monologue, and poetry, weaves strands of legal discourse, commentary, and autobiography into a critical narrative of the experience of legal education from an outsider law student's perspective. The author, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, recounts these vignettes in a voice infused with the history and traditions of Native American oral storytelling.

  • Breaking into the Academy: The 1998-2000 Michigan Journal of Race & Law Guide for Aspiring Law Professors

    I was not very far into my law school experience when I realized that my professors had the best job in town-it took me quite a bit longer to discover that I, too, could get in on the deal. Do not misunderstand me-being a law professor is not easy. In fact, when done correctly, the job requires a tremendous amount of intellectual energy, emotional commitment, long hours, and hard work. However, if you enjoy writing, research, public speaking, and developing mentoring relationships, being a law professor could be the career for you. This Article, and the listings of helpful organizations and citations to other articles about law teaching that follow, are intended to help guide the law professor wannabe through the process of applying for a tenuretrack faculty position at a law school.