Systemic Justice Project in The Globe

Below are excerpts from Courtney Humphries’s superb Boston Globe article about the Systemic Justice Project at Harvard Law School (cartoon by Sam Washburn and photo by Justin Saglio, both for the Globe):
From the first day, it’s clear that law professor Jon Hanson’s new Systemic Justice class at Harvard Law School is going to be different from most classes at the school. Hanson, lanky, bespectacled, and affable, cracks jokes as he paces the room. He refers to the class of 50-odd students as a community; he even asks students to brainstorm a name for the group. But behind the informality is a serious purpose: Hanson is out to change the way law is taught.
“None of us really knows what ‘systemic justice’ is—yet you’re all here,” he points out. The new elective class, which is being taught for the first time in this spring term, will ask students to examine common causes of injustice in history and ways to use law and activism to even the field.
Traditionally, students come to law school to master existing laws and how to apply them. But surveys given to the students in this class beforehand show that most are worried about big unsolved social problems—income inequality, climate change, racial bias in policing—and believe that law is part of the problem. The goal of Hanson’s class is to introduce a new approach.
The class is part of a new Systemic Justice Project at Harvard, led by Hanson and recent law school graduate Jacob Lipton. They’re also lea...

Source: The Situationist - February 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: J Tags: Education Law Legal Theory Public Policy Situationist Contributors Source Type: blogs