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Law & Liberation

Law and Liberation embraces the premise that the legal system in the United States has failed to fulfill its promise of social justice for those disenfranchised by virtue of their race, class, gender, sexual orientation or other characteristics. We regard it as not coincidental that the basic legal framework of this country was established, at least in part, to secure power and prerogatives of a group of white male elites and that the enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality inscribed in the Constitution denied the personhood of a large segment of the population. Nor do the problems resulting from the persistently unjust distribution of social wealth and power stop at our national borders; indeed, we recognize that these inequities arise within the context of a global system of power and the disempowered in our own are crucially linked. To understand the working of our own contemporary legal structure (culture), then, requires an analysis of its role within the global system of social power in which we maintain our relative hegemony. 

As law students, we have become increasingly aware of the disparity between the idealized image of law presented in the casebook and classroom, and the reality of law as an institutional mechanism of control. The presumption that the proper goal of our legal system is to attain neutrality, cost-efficiency, or some kind of objectivity is perhaps the most conspicuous of the many fictions dominating our legal education; but it certainly does not stand alone. What we find missing in the current atmosphere of legal thought is any appreciation of the function of law in legitimating existing relations of power and social domination and any consideration of the prospects of realigning those social relations of power. Much of contemporary legal analysis falls within the narrow conceptual confines of the existing system.            

It is precisely to this urgent reality that the Journal of Law and Liberation responds. We aim to take a step towards a constructive understanding of the law and, in doing so, generate a new way of thinking about the law that employs a multi-disciplinary approach to make possible a deeper understanding of legal issues. We recognize the influential role assumed by journals at Yale Law School, and we aim to use the Journal of Law and Liberation to provide a forum to those who are voiceless in the dominant legal culture. Existing law journals do not adequately address the fundamental socioeconomic violence of the system because they do not attend to the views of the disenfranchised or enrich their perspectives through the multi-disciplinary approach that we plan to encourage. In connection with our inclusive method that aims at cultivating new forms of legal analysis, we intend to serve as a forum for debate. Through these activities we hope to reinforce the belief that social change is effected most readily when theory and practice continuously inform each other. 

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