Workshop on Participatory Law Scholarship - Announcement

From Northwestern University Law Review and Drexel Law Review:

 

Building from Redeeming Justice, a law review article co-authored by Professor Rachel Lopez (Drexel Kline Law) with two activists who were sentenced to life without parole decades ago and winner of the 2022 Law and Society Association Articles Prize, Professor Lopez and her colleagues are rolling out a larger project on "participatory law scholarship" or PLS. PLS is legal scholarship co-authored with those with no formal legal training, but expertise in law’s injustice through lived experience. 

 

They are launching the project with a two-part workshop organized by the Northwestern University Law Review and Drexel Law Review. This two-part workshop builds on the foundation of Redeeming Justice to further develop the ethos and methodology of PLS.

 

On February 2, 2023, Part I of the workshop at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law will explore the theory of PLS. The live-streamed panel from the workshop will explore the underlying philosophy of PLS and how it relates to other types of scholarship, including Movement Law Scholarship and Critical Race Theory. You can register for Part I of the workshop here (with in-person and virtual options).

 

On February 9, 2023, Part II of the workshop at Drexel Kline Law will explore the practical and ethical considerations of co-authoring PLS as well as how this scholarship can contribute to social justice initiatives on the ground. The morning panel will explore the creative process of producing PLS as well as the principles and ethics that should shape its formation. The afternoon panel will focus on PLS in Action, exploring how concepts, like the right to redemption and death by incarceration, theorized by incarcerated activists based on their lived experience informed a UN complaint alleging that the US is committing torture by sentencing people to life without parole. You can register for Part II here (with in-person & virtual options). CLE credit is also available for this part of the workshop.

  

If you have any questions or want more information, please reach out to Sarah Wolf-Knight, Senior Symposium Editor, Northwestern University Law Review, at [email protected].