Rethinking Law (Boston Review / Forum)

Description

Some of today’s top legal thinkers consider the ways that legal thinking has bolstered—rather than corrected—injustice.

Bringing together some of today’s top legal thinkers, this volume reimagines law in the twenty-first century, zeroing in on the most vibrant debates among legal scholars today. Going beyond constitutional jurisprudence as conventionally understood, contributors show the ways in which legal thinking has bolstered rather than corrected injustice. If conservative approaches have been well served by court-centered change, contributors to Rethinking Law consider how progressive ones might rely on movement-centered, legislative, and institutional change. In other words, they believe that the problems we face today are vastly bigger than can be addressed by litigation. The courts still matter, of course, but they should be less central to questions about social justice.
 
Contributors describe how constitutional law supported a system of economic inequality; how we might rethink the First Amendment in the age of the internet; how deeply racial bias is embedded in our laws; and what kinds of changes are necessary. They ask which is more important: the laws or how they are enforced? Rethinking Law considers these questions with an eye toward a legal system that truly supports a just society.
 

Contributors include
Jedediah Purdy, David Grewal, Jamal Greene, Reva Siegel, Jocelyn Simonson, Aziz Rana