The Columbia Law Review is excited to be hosting a Symposium on the Law of Protest this fall. The in-person conference will be held on November 15, 2024, on Columbia’s campus in New York City. The event will feature a variety of academic, practitioner, and student perspectives on protest law in addition to a keynote speaker. Five pieces of original scholarship will be presented at the Symposium and will subsequently be published in our June 2025 issue. This webpage will be updated periodically with more information about participants, venue, and timing. Please direct any questions about the event to our Symposium & Book Review Editor, Shaunak Puri, at symposium@columbialawreview.org.
Protests have long played a central role in American society and politics, dating back to the “Germantown Protest” of 1688 through the Civil Rights Era and beyond. They have become increasingly prevalent and wide scale in the past few years, including 2017 protests of President Trump’s “Muslim Ban”; 2020 protests following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor; the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, which many claimed was a protest against perceived election fraud; and, since October 2023, mass protests asserting a wide variety of perspectives on Palestine and Israel. Though protests are an increasingly common aspect of life in the United States, they are governed loosely by murky and often ill-enforced laws and policies. This Symposium will shine a much needed light on the current state of protest law, bringing together scholars, practitioners, and activists to consider where the law should go next. It will include topics such as Protests and the Constitution, Policing and Prosecution of Protests, Protests on Campus, and Comparative Perspectives from Protests in Other Countries.
Prior Columbia Law Review Symposia
2023. A Symposium on “Property and Education.” Vol. 123, No. 5.
2021. The Other 98%: Racial, Gender, And Economic Injustice in State Civil Courts. Vol 122, No. 5.
2019. Common Law for the Age of AI. Vol. 119, No. 7.
2017. The Legacy of Constance Baker Motley: Education, Equality, and the Law in the United States Today. Vol. 117, No. 7.
