The "Grammars of Governance": Race and Racism in Legal Studies and the Continuing Quest for Justice

• In Event: 25.034 - Division G Vice-Presidential Session. Race(ing) Across the Disciplines: How Research in Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and Law Understands Race and Racism

Abstract

In law, the status of race and racism has historically been neglected as an important social problem that requires critical attention. As a result, the prevailing legal ethos absolves the law and conventional legal scholarship from having to fundamentally deal with the ‘peculiar institution’ of race. This presents certain challenges, the very least being that the focus of legal practice is increasingly severed from its material consequences that disparately impact racial minorities. This presentation argues the law and legal scholarship have been, at best, complicit in perpetuating racism, and at worst, functioned as a principle engine of oppression. It takes as its inspiration the Critical Race Theory (CRT) commitment that racial injustice is fundamental to American law. First, racism cannot be solved through ordinary legal processes. Second, legal scholarship must undergo a reflexive metamorphosis in order to address the problem of racial injustice. Third, CRT offers a promising legal discourse that understands race and racism as a product of the unhappy marriage between ‘above the fray’ legal morality and its grammars of racial subordination.

Author

• Hoang Vu Tran, Florida Atlantic University