Overview
Social Justice Textbook Project
Social Justice Textbook Project
The textbook prepares students to use law for justice by developing systemic advocacy projects that overcome the “blindfolds” and “handcuffs” of traditional legal education and practice. Critical Justice’s conceptual and practical toolkit focuses on four key missing elements—social identities, groups, interests, and power—to explain the persistence of systemic injustice, and on redesigned professional norms to promote collaboration with subordinated communities. The textbook defines and illustrates systemic advocacy: systemic advocates craft ameliorative fixes to discrete problems while also transforming the playing field by building the organized power of subordinated groups and shifting consciousness and culture to undermine supremacist ideologies. Critical Justice also presents a template for designing advocacy projects to help students design fellowship proposals and pursue dream jobs. The textbook is accompanied by a teacher’s manual filled with examples and explanations.
Critical Justice fills a gap in racial and social justice curriculum that connects the dots among systems and oppressions that persist across time and borders. With all author proceeds going to an academic nonprofit with antisubordination aims, this textbook is truly a collective undertaking in praxis toward equal justice for all.