2021–22 NYU Law Review Symposium, Critical Legal Empowerment: Strategies for Community-Built Justice

Critical Legal Empowerment: Strategies for Community-Built Justice is the 2021-2022 NYU Law Review Symposium created in partnership with The Robert and Helen Bernstein Institute for Human Rights. We invite you to join our conversation on critical legal empowerment methods, explore what’s needed to create an American legal ecosystem that is truly just, and situate the emerging US legal empowerment movement within a global context. 

The symposium begins with community action workshops on February 18th and a community keynote on February 23rd. The symposium itself is February 24th and 25th. Finally, the last community action workshop will be held on March 4th. Though that is the last community action workshop, we hope conversations and actions continue afterwards.

Critical legal empowerment rejects technocratic approaches and embraces community-based efforts to redistribute legal power. These methods open up space for communities to engage in legal work and the legal profession and builds upon – but offers something district from – progressive legal approaches such as movement lawyering, law and organizing, and community lawyering. Inspired by scholars of critical race theory, this quality of critique also requires self-reflection, humility and a commitment to critical praxis—a groundedness in the grassroots. 

More information about the symposium and access to the Zoom links can be found here: https://2022.nyubernsteinconference.org/about/

**All panels and workshops will have live transcription and be recorded.