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.

Universalism, Vulnerability, and Health Justice

Introduction This Essay charts a new course for the health justice model for health law scholarship, advocacy, and reform I have developed in a series of prior publications[1] and in conversation with other health law scholars.[2] The health justice model emphasizes collective problem-solving to secure distinctively public interests in access to health care and healthy living conditions. This...

What the World Can Teach Us About Supreme Court Reform

Introduction Judicial review remains more controversial in the United States than in other democracies, despite its far longer history.[1]  This is sometimes explained by the unique lack of express textual authorization for the power,[2]  even though it is not as if inclusion in the constitutional text immunizes a provision from widespread criticism and contestation.[3]  To my mind, a more...

The ICE Trap: Deportation Without Due Process

Introduction Since 2014, an unprecedented surge of in absentia removal orders has resulted in the deportation of tens of thousands of noncitizens, often at the expense of due process.[1] The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) permits an immigration judge to order a noncitizen removed in absentia—that is, “in the absence” of the noncitizen—if the government establishes by clear, unequivocal...

Sexual Privacy and Persecution

Abstract As women and members of marginalized communities across the globe are increasingly the targets of online sexual violence and threats, future asylum claims are likely to involve allegations of online sexual privacy violations. This Essay proposes a framework for conceptualizing sexual privacy-threatening online acts, such as deepfake sex videos and nonconsensual pornography, as past...

Learning From My Teachers

Abstract
Each year, the UCLA School of Law presents the Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching to an outstanding law professor. On April 12, 2022, this honor was given to Professor Aslı Ü. Bâli. UCLA Law Review Discourse is proud to continue its tradition of publishing a modified version of the ceremony speech delivered by the award recipient.

The WTO Waiver on COVID-19 Vaccine Patents

Abstract In 2020, India and South Africa proposed a waiver (TRIPS Waiver) to temporarily suspend the protection of COVID-19 related intellectual property rights of countries belonging to the World Trade Organization (WTO).  Disagreements between developing and developed countries over how to proceed stalled the adoption of the TRIPS Waiver until 2022.  This was not the first time such a...

Death and Ethics: Suffocating or Saving Nonlawyer Practitioners with Lawyer Ethics

Abstract Lawyers are no longer the only legal practitioners. In several states and trending toward more, lawyers now share their so-called monopoly over the practice of law with nonlawyer practitioners (NPs). These NPs may practice law without the supervision of lawyers and, like nurse practitioners who provide greater access to medicine, this newborn class of legal professionals was created to...

Discipline Outside the Schoolhouse Doors: Anti-Black Racism and the Exclusion of Black Caregivers

Abstract This Essay calls upon the civil rights and education justice communities to expand their vision of school discipline law and policy reform to include the often ignored, yet deeply impacted lives of parents, caregivers, and families.  Deploying what critical race theorists define as storytelling or counternarratives, we share Nyla’s story to bring forward an all too common deployment of...

Judges, Lawyers, Legal Theorists, and the Law in Nazi Germany (1933–1938); Kristallnacht; and My Parents’ Escapes from the Nazis

I. Introduction How did the legal system in Germany enable the deprivation of the rights of Jews and, ultimately, the Holocaust in which six million Jews, including 1.5 million children, were murdered? How could state-sponsored and legalized evil be permitted in a civilized country in the twentieth century? The core answer, as this Essay will explain, is that German society—including, shamefully...

Critical Race Theory: Inside and Beyond the Ivory Tower

Abstract The history of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is inextricably intertwined with the history of student activism on law school campuses.  This activism was sparked in resistance to the dominant legal education system and done with the goal of cultivating alternative spaces where law students could learn how to tackle and dismantle the seemingly permanent structures of subordination in the...

Connecting Race and Empire: What Critical Race Theory Offers Outside the U.S. Legal Context

Abstract The renewed solidarity across movements and borders in recent years underscores the importance of transnational understandings of racial justice.  This is particularly true in the current moment, in which global crises such as migration and climate change are laying bare the persistent impacts of structural racism and colonial subordination around the world.  In this Essay, I argue that...

Yes, Critical Race Theory Should Be Taught in Your School: Undoing Racism in K–12 Schooling and Classrooms Through CRT

Abstract Despite panicked calls from the right to keep Critical Race Theory (CRT) out of the K–12 classroom, the authors assert that CRT, one of many theoretical frameworks used in ethnic studies, is needed to address the entrenched status quo of well-documented inequity through racism in schooling.  Rather than deny CRT is being taught in schools, the authors embrace CRT as a tool to disrupt the...

Protect Black Girls

Abstract At its core, Critical Race Theory (CRT) provides us with a panoply of necessary tools and a lens through which to analyze the multilayered relationship between Black girls, their education, and the criminal legal system.  Florida’s history, especially the historical landscape of Central Florida, distinctly highlights the grave importance of CRT when attempting to understand how society...

Critical Race Theory: Another Casualty in the Attack on Facts

Abstract The attack on Critical Race Theory is the latest attempt to undermine the interracial coalition that has been building over the last twenty years.  In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, a global movement for Black lives ensued, which in turn motivated a calculated resistance that mobilized around education.  Not unlike the attempts of the past to stall racial...