Visiting Professor Jerry L贸pez Tells Students They Can Transform Law Schools
Visiting Professor Jerry L贸pez will speak about transforming law schools in a lecture this fall and a seminar in the spring.
For over four decades, Jerry L贸pez has championed transforming lawyering and legal education, while training law clinic students to serve clients from low-income communities of color. This year, he will bring his knowledge and passion to 糖心原创 as the Wiley Manuel Visiting Scholar and Professor working with the Center for Racial and Economic Justice (CREJ).
L贸pez, a UCLA professor of law, will teach a spring seminar on transforming legal education. The course will build on CREJ Co-Director and Professor Alina Ball鈥檚 fall course on American Legal Education, moving beyond critiques to concrete alternatives.聽L贸pez has challenged traditional assumptions about legal education — its criteria for student admissions and grading and faculty hiring and promotion, and its curricular methods and aims and its relationship to surrounding communities.
Through Professor Ball鈥檚 course and his own, L贸pez said he hopes students come to see themselves as equal participants in shaping their education and UC Law SF. 鈥淪tudents of color and other champions of racial equity in the course will realize that they can, with others, transform law schools,鈥 he explained.
L贸pez will also participate in community-wide events. He will speak about what life would be like in a transformed law school at the annual Wiley Manuel lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 17. He is also working with the CREJ faculty directors to organize an all-day symposium in late March on rebellious lawyering for racial justice — exploring the origins of race-conscious practice, visions of justice, and strategies to advance racial equity.
鈥淥ur core CREJ faculty has all been profoundly influenced by L贸pez’s theory of rebellious lawyering, shaping our scholarship and teaching,鈥 Ball said. 鈥淗aving Professor L贸pez here with us at UC Law SF will be a joy for our students and a treat for our faculty as well.鈥
L贸pez introduced his radical vision of practice in his 1992 book, 鈥淩ebellious Lawyering 鈥 One Chicano鈥檚 Vision of Progressive Law Practice.鈥 In 1975, with a law degree from Harvard, he co-opened a radical storefront law firm in San Diego. From 1985 to 1994, he helped develop and co-launched the Lawyering Against Subordination and for Social Change Concentration at Stanford University.
鈥淲e need Professor L贸pez鈥檚 vision today even more than when 鈥楻ebellious Lawyering鈥 was first published,鈥 said CREJ Co-Director and Professor Thalia Gonz谩lez. 鈥淗ow we work with one another may prove pivotal to defeating efforts to rob women of all choices, to punish communities of color as inherently criminal, to sidestep grotesque income inequality.鈥
In 2003, L贸pez founded the Center for Community Problem Solving in New York City. The Center focused on financial literacy, fair and just workplaces, the health of communities, and education within jails, prisons and detention centers.
鈥淲hile demanding the end of mass incarceration, L贸pez鈥檚 Center concentrated on the barriers to housing and employment and credit facing the formerly incarcerated,鈥 recalled CREJ Co-Director and Professor Shauna Marshall.聽 鈥淲orking with families and community residents, in typical L贸pez fashion, the Center developed targeted re-entry strategies only after gathering extensive data about the scarce nonprofit and government services available.聽He pioneered a re-entry movement responding to on-the-ground realities.鈥
Launched in February 2020, the Wiley Manual Visiting Scholar and Professor program brings preeminent legal scholars with expertise on issues of race, identity, subordination, and inequality to UC Law SF.
The special professorship is named after Justice Wiley W. Manuel, a 1953 graduate of UC Law SF. After a long career in law, Manuel was appointed to the California Supreme Court in 1977, becoming the first African American and person of color to serve on the state鈥檚 highest court. Justice Manuel died in 1981 at the age of 53 and remains one of the most esteemed alumni of UC Law SF.