Widening the Lens of Justice: A 20th Anniversary New Legal Realism Conference on Inclusion, “Bleached Out” Identity, and Ethics in Legal Education

In a time when racial inclusion in US law schools is under debate and attack, this conference poses fundamental, empirically based challenges to law teaching. Many years ago, NLR co-founder David Wilkins critiqued the standard legal approach to “bleached-out professionalism” for Black lawyers. We draw from that work, as well as from relevant social science research and theory, from Critical Race Theory, from research outside of mainstream Global North traditions, and from other perspectives that shake up taken-for-granted “truths” undergirding traditional U.S. legal education. Furthermore, conference participants will bring new paradigms developed within the legal academy to bear on assumptions that have guided traditional Western social science itself. In opening up this truly interdisciplinary space for conversation, the conference will encourage the development of expansive research and teaching frameworks for the legal academy – frameworks containing possibilities for real change.