Editors’ Note: Reintroducing Law & Liberation
The Yale Journal of Law and Liberation was founded in 1989 and last published in 1992. Yale Law School has not had a journal focused on liberation, civil rights, civil liberties, or social justice in the three decades since, unlike most of its peer institutions. A few years ago, a group of dedicated students fought to revive this historic journal despite institutional pushback. This revival volume and subsequent volumes are the culmination of efforts from a broad coalition of students and mentors dedicated to creating a home for radical—using Angela Davis’s definition of “grasping things at the root”—legal scholarship. When we began the journey to revive this journal, we did not know that we would launch at this moment of increased censorship, data erasure, and book banning. But these circumstances only make us more steadfast in our commitment to liberation.
In poring through YJLL’s historic archives, we found striking parallels to our current moment. The Honorable Thelton E. Henderson reflected on creating solidarity between Black Americans and the LGBTQ+ community; preeminent civil rights scholar Derrick Bell wrote about racial justice; revolutionaries including Akua Njeri, a Black Panther and the fiancée of Fred Hampton, wrote about mass incarceration and described the legal system as the “lynching system”; and the YJLL board wrote about Palestinian rights. These parallels remind us that our fight is not new. We have a long line of ancestors who have struggled against hatred of communities fighting for justice. It is our job to carry their torch for the generation that comes after.
In reviving YJLL, we commit to its longstanding mission to not only bring liberation to the academic legal discourse but also challenge the nature of that discourse itself, the rules around who can contribute to it, and our assumptions about what is considered valuable legal scholarship. YJLL will continue to be a home for academic writing, activist reflections, creative works, and wisdom born from lived experiences with the law. In this volume, we are honored to begin with a foreword on moral fusion in challenging times from Reverend William J. Barber II, a longtime civil rights activist and President of the Poor People’s Campaign. Following Reverend Barber’s call for a commitment to a “firm moral belief that we should try to improve as many lives as possible” and “oppos[e] injustice and immoral policies” wherever we find them, we share:
- an article from Alec Karakatsanis, a civil rights lawyer and Founder of Civil Rights Corps, on how the body camera movement has further entrenched the police state;
- an interview with Professor Noura Erakat, a leading human rights attorney, on Palestinian liberation and international law, led by Professor Aslı Ü. Bâli;
- a series of reflections on the question, Is Law and Liberation an Oxymoron? from Baher Azmy, the Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights; Professor Samuel Moyn; civil rights attorneys Benjamin Crump and Deleso Alford; Professor Gerald Torres; and prison journalist, Lyle May;
- a student note from Darnell Epps on how the writ of habeas corpus has been significantly curtailed under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA);
- a student note from Helen Malley on movement lawyering, advocacy in carceral environments, and the historic role of hunger strikes in prisons; and
- five pieces from Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, one of the foremost Arabic-language poets.
Our revival edition coincides with an acute moment of assault on our communities—the kidnapping of migrants to hold them illegally in concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay; the erasure of transgender and non-binary peoples’ existence; the revocation of life-saving gender-affirming and reproductive health care; the financing and facilitating the ethnic cleansing of Palestine; the demonization of affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and countless other tyrannies. And yet, our commitment to the liberation of all people remains steadfast. Especially now, we seek as a community to seed hope for a different world where every person has access to food, shelter, health care, a livable wage, human rights, and a habitable climate.
We close with the words of the YJLL founders: “The paradox of our ambition is that it is activism from within the narrow confines of the academy. But just how much liberation can you have within the law? Law and Liberation, at its most basic, is an attempt to take the awareness of this tension into our struggle for social change. Refusing to hide from this tension is our first step towards participating in the liberation struggles of each other.” As Professor Baher Azmy teaches in this volume: “Law and liberation is an oxymoron. Lawyering and liberation is not.”
The future needs us all. History shows us that protest is never popular at the time. But it is necessary for the future. We hope that you join us in dissenting to hatred and institutional violence wherever you find it. Let us create in its place a safe world for all of us.
Onwards,
The YJLL Volume 4 Leadership Team
with special thanks to all students in years past who supported Volume 4