Prerequisite: None

Exam Type: No Exam

This reading group will consider one of the newest intellectual currents within American Legal Theory – Critical Race Theory. Emerging during the 1980s, critical race scholars made many controversial claims about law and legal education – among them that race and racial inequality suffused American law and society, that structural racial subordination remained endemic, and that both liberal and critical legal theories marginalized the voices of racial minorities. Course readings will be taken from both classic works of Critical Race Theory and newer interventions in the field, as well as scholarship criticizing or otherwise engaging with Critical Race Theory from outside or at the margins of the field.

Note: This reading group will be held on the following dates: 9/9, 9/23, 10/7, 10/28, 11/18, and 12/2.

Textbook(s):
Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller and Kendall Thomas, eds., Critical Race Theory: Key Writings that Formed the Movement (New York: New Press, 1996)