WEBINAR: Race, Civil Liberties, and the Legal Profession

In this program, Michele Goodwin, award-winning author, advocate, professor, and social commentator, will reflect on law as an institution and tool that historically protected and advanced racism. From the Antebellum period through Jim Crow, law’s role in advancing white supremacy and racial injustice was visible through the legalization of slavery, slave patrols, fugitive slave laws, laws that provided for the physical torture of enslaved persons on through Black Codes enacted during Reconstruction and “separate but equal laws.” Professor Goodwin will discuss why recognizing and reckoning with law as an accomplice and facilitator of discrimination and racism are overdue and urgent in protecting the rule of law. Her talk will close articulating why law’s role and responsibility in dismantling discrimination and racism are crucial in promoting the rule of law.

Participants will learn:

• History of law’s involvement in promoting and establishing racial discrimination
• Law’s direct role in undermining progress toward racial equality and ending racial discrimination
• Law’s role and responsibility in dismantling racism