Clinic Design with Critical Theory

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Session Type: AALS Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: Marriott St. Louis Grand

Room: Majestic E

Floor: Second Floor, Conference Plaza

This session will explore how to build a syllabus or clinic around critical theory concepts by exploring design concepts around two pressing challenges. First, in recent years, clinical legal academia has undergone a period of self-scrutiny to interrogate one of the essential tensions in clinical teaching: how do we prepare students to practice in the very same legal systems that students are looking to subvert? Second, the ABA has recently mandated that law schools “provide education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism” in at least two modalities before graduation.” And, as a result, many law school administrations are looking to clinicians to help fulfill the 303(c) requirement.

We are fortunate to have conceptual tools to apply to the first challenge: the tension between teaching clinical law students to practice in inequitable legal systems. Critical Race Theory arose as a discipline to explain and reconcile the contradictions of antidiscrimination law with the real-life deficiencies in decades of legal advocacy for social justice. Using the tenets of critical theory, we will examine how these concepts might inform course design. We will make particular use of the following cultivated principles, already well embedded in clinical pedagogy, as articulated by the Rocky Mountain Collective on Race, Place & the Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

• Antisubordination – We are concerned about subordination, power, and substantive justice, rather than mere formal equal treatment.

• Hegemony – We believe that power works not only directly and coercively but also hegemonically – that power affects the ways people perceive “reality” as well as their understandings of what constitutes “knowledge” about the world.

• History – We believe that critical engagement with history is centrally important to understanding how power operates through race, gender, sexuality, and class to de-center and marginalize the lived experiences of subordinated peoples.

• Intersectionality – We recognize the multidimensionality of individual identity and the complex, mutually reinforcing relationships among systems of subordination.

• Meritocracy – We question the notion of “meritocracy,” and the assumption that standards of “merit” can be neutral under current social conditions.

• Praxis – We believe in doing as well as talking, in working to make real change in the world.

• Privilege – We believe that group-based privilege, such as race, class, gender, and heterosexual privilege, are pervasive in society.

We are equally fortunate to be members of an engaged and prolific teaching community with members who have been grappling with questions about the second challenge: the adoption and implementation of 303(c) through clinical courses. Exploring recent pedagogical approaches, we will explore clinic design and the role of clinics in 303(c) implementation.

Ideally, participants will leave the session with a concrete plan for designing their own clinic and/or syllabus. This will include a bibliography of resources. The panelists will facilitate substantive discussions about Critical Race Theory and 303(c) and use backwards design tools from prior NCC sessions to work with attendees in breakout sessions on clinic/syllabus design plans.

Breakouts will take place twice during this session. Presenters will direct registrants to one of the following rooms on the Mezzanine Level, Grand Tower: Aubert, Benton, Parkview.