Policing has long been used to reinforce racial and class hierarchies. 2020 stands as yet another inflection point in the discourse on policing, marked by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Elijah McClain, Daniel Prude, and many others. Calls for human and civil rights—and for a transformation in how societies conceptualize public safety—have created a moment ripe for legal scholarship. The essays in this collection, all authored by leading scholars of color, respond to that moment.

This collection also constitutes SLR’s and Stanford BLSA’s contribution to an unprecedented collaboration between thirteen of the nation’s top law journals.

Reckoning and Reformation:
Reflections and Legal Responses to Racial Subordination and Structural Marginalization

Other journals contributing to this collaboration include the California Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal.

Today and over the coming weeks, all thirteen participating journals are publishing symposium essays on topics pertaining to racial subordination, structural marginalization, and the complex relationship those two phenomena have with the law. In addition to the four essays published on this website, SLR and Stanford BLSA encourage you to read some of the many other excellent essays in the collection, which are available on the websites of the other participating journals.