The Columbia Law Review’s Karl Llewellyn Lecture series celebrates pioneers in the law who have innovated and challenged legal theory. The second annual Lecture was delivered by Howard University School of Law Professor Justin Hansford on November 15, 2024, as the opening address at the Review’s Symposium on the Law of Protest. A transcript of Professor Hansford’s Lecture is published in this Issue. ...
Race and the Law
In an era of reckoning and resistance, this Symposium Piece journeys through the rich terrain of Black protest and Afrofuturist imagination, uncovering a radical legal tradition rooted in historical defiance and visionary possibility. By analyzing Black resistance—from insurrections against slavery to today’s racial justice movements—through an Afrofuturist lens, it identifies three key dimensions of Black protest in the United States: perversion,...
Engaging with the sociocultural dimensions of race and racism across U.S. history is essential when creating, critiquing, and reforming the law. Building on Robin West’s exploration of the law and culture movement, this Piece introduces a novel “hermeneutic” project that reads Black American culture throughout U.S. history to gain critical insights into the nature and function of law in America. Black American culture, deeply rooted in the...