We surely don’t have all of the answers but we have settled on some lessons. We will teach our students to press forward, because there is no real alternative. We will teach them to challenge unjust laws because, as Frederick Douglass said, ‘power concedes nothing without demand.’ We will inspire them to harness their outrage and energy into new and better policies. We will underscore that when law enforcement chokes the life from a helpless individual, it is past time to question what the law is and who it serves.
— Professor Trina Jones and co-author Kimberly Jade Norwood of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, acknowledging that as law professors and Black Americans they are struggling with what to teach their students about law and justice. (Medium, June 15, 2020)
It’s true that these protests seem to be very different. It’s galvanizing a group of young, multi-racial people who are saying enough is enough. But it’s not going to change if it doesn’t lead to legislation at the state level, as well as at the federal level.
— Professor Guy-Uriel Charles, noting that current protests against police violence towards Black people are reminiscent of the protests that led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but will lead to change only if people overcome many recently enacted barriers to voting. (Here and Now, June 5, 2020)
The work of improving justice is never truly done. Justice is not an achievement. It is a practice. As we change and grow as a society, our understanding of justice changes and grows and expands. And our courts must do the same. “We must come together to firmly and loudly commit to the declaration that all people are created equal, and we must do more than just speak that truth. We must live it every day in our courtrooms. My pledge to you today is that we will.
— N.C. Chief Justice Cherie Beasley MJS ’18, speaking at a June 2 press conference on the intersection of the justice system and the protests occurring in cities and communities across North Carolina in which she noted that much of the pain expressed “is grounded in the belief that justice is perpetually denied in cases involving African Americans.”
We need to look beyond police — at prosecutors, at court clerks, at the judges that make bail determinations. There has been justifiable protest at the way people have been kept in jail just because they don’t have money for minor crimes — they don’t have money to pay bail bondsmen.
— Professor Brandon Garrett, who recently coauthored a slate of policing reform measures to be implemented at the federal, state, and local levels, said meaningful change to policing and racial justice demands a reconsideration of the criminal justice system as a whole, not piecemeal reform. (Spectrum News 1, June 12, 2020)
The real monuments to these kinds of movements aren’t the placards at the corners of streets. ... They are the laws that come as a process oftranslating movements into political power and political change that makes it better structurally for everyone on this issue.
— Professor Darrell Miller, speaking during a Duke Law virtual event titled “Policing in America: How did we get here and where do we go?” on the current state of policing with an emphasis on how policies and biases impact communities of color, pointed to political participation as a key mechanism for change. (July 9, 2020)
