Michelle Hayman (2L)
Birge Carnegie got a little less radical over reading week. Thirteen of the most badass students attended the 21st annual “Rebellious Lawyering Conference” (RebLaw) at Yale University. RebLaw provides students with the opportunity to hear from social justice lawyers, activists, and community organizers, and to meet other law students interested in using their law degree to change society for the better.
The conference opened with a passionate and timely speech from Vincent Warren, Director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, about race and policing. Warren began by discussing a series of events on April 27, 1962, when police officers shot 29-year-old Ronald Stokes and wounded six other members of the nearby Nation of Islam Temple. He connected this incident with the ongoing resistance to racial profiling in policing in the United States following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. Without sugar-coating the issues, Warren left students with the message that they must “believe justice is possible.”
Whether the law can be used to make effective change was a recurring theme. Panels on the mass incarceration of women, detainment of migrants, and the criminalization of homelessness left little hope in the current American justice system. Other panels focused more on implementing strategies for change, such as a panel on how lawyers, activists, and communities could work together more effectively.
sujatha baliga, director of the Restorative Justice Project at the National Council of Crime and Delinquency, explored avenues for change outside of the adversarial system in her closing keynote address. She passionately discussed the benefits of implementing restorative justice alternatives to juvenile detention, drawing on her own experiences as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. She was one of the few speakers who referenced Canada, as she discussed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and other restorative justice initiatives among First Nations communities.
RebLaw happens every year at Yale, and the U of T Law Union regularly organizes a carpool there. If the reason you decided to attend law school was because you felt it would help you make a difference in the world, consider joining us next year.
