CategoryDiscourse

Discourse publishes shorter articles that are timely, interdisciplinary, and novel. Discourse strives to serve as a platform for scholars, ideas, and discussions that have often been overlooked in traditional law review settings. Because we seek to publish pieces that are accessible to legal and non-legal audiences alike, Discourse articles are generally between 3,000 and 10,000 words. Like our print journal, Discourse articles are published on Westlaw, Lexis, and in other legal databases, as well as our own website. Beginning with Volume 68, Discourse began publishing special issues of Law Meets World.

Mental Disability, Exceptional Abortion, and the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act

This piece argues that the underlying logics of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which recently gained traction in Congress but failed to be passed, raise serious concerns that have been largely overlooked, and calls for a more thoughtful consideration of mental health and disability in contemporary gender and reproductive discourse and politics.

A Critical Race and Disability Legal Studies Approach to Immigration Law and Policy

This piece argues that the progressive immigration reform must take into account the ways in which racism and ableism permeate the immigration system, and calls for a more intersectional approach to immigration law and policy scholarship and practice. It highlights one organization’s recent efforts to put this intersectional approach into research and practice.

Losing Historic Filipinotown

The article argues that Historic Filipinotown is a Los Angeles area ripe for development, and the city’s proposal for a North Westlake Design District makes it poised to become the next site of gentrification.

Living Poor in the Affluent City

Focusing on gentrification as a force for displacement, the author reflects on themes of the essays in this series, organizing them under the topics of causes, consequences, and solutions.

The Problem With Nostalgia (or In Defense Of Alternative Facts)

Language lives in the present, though we often approach it as though it was settled in the past. But those yearning for the meanings of some bygone era, like those endeavoring to deduce a single, correct meaning from the words on a page, are deluded. The intractable problem of induction scuttles these projects, and reveals that we cannot ask “What does it mean?” without also asking, “To whom?”