Racial Justice and Abolition Clinic

Course Description

Fieldwork

Students in the Racial Justice and Abolition Clinic will spend the school year working under the supervision of Adjunct Clinical Professors Jason D. Williamson and Justine Olderman on advocacy, organizing, and litigation efforts that seek to identify, name, and challenge the myriad ways in which the criminal, family, immigration, and housing systems, in particular, work to reinforce white supremacy and the legacy of slavery in the United States--all through an abolitionist lens. Students will work in teams with attorneys and other advocates from several fieldwork partners, including Movement for Family Power, Envision Freedom Fund, and Surveillance Resistance Lab, to explore a range of advocacy and organizing strategies aimed at advancing an abolitionist vision of transformational change.

Seminar

Seminar discussions will be centered around the pros and cons of traditional impact litigation, direct representation, law reform, and community organizing in the civil rights/racial justice context, the implications of critical race theory in the practice of movement lawyering, and the connection between abolitionist theory and practice, using the students’ fieldwork experiences to compare and contrast varying approaches to the work. 

Learning Outcomes

The anticipated learning outcomes for this course include:

• To develop a critical analysis of the problems of policing, surveillance and mass supervision, criminalization, incarceration, deportation, eviction, and family separation rooted in a political, social, and historical context that centers racial justice;
• To develop an understanding of the myriad ways in which our respective racial, ethnic, and cultural identities affect our perspectives on abolition, our relationships with clients and impacted communities; and our approach to the work more generally;   
• To develop a critical understanding of the foundational legal scholarship in abolition as applied to the framing, analysis, and interpretation of the problems facing the criminal, immigration, family, and housing legal systems and our society more broadly;
• To gain an understanding of the relationship between legal change and abolitionist movements, and the particular implications for people and communities of color; and
• To understand and critique the possibilities and limits of legal reform within the various legal systems and other oppressive government systems, and to engage with an evaluation of the possibilities of abolitionist, or non-reformist reforms, across various sectors of our society.

Application Procedure

Students interested in applying for the clinic should submit the standard application, resume, and transcript online through CAMS. No formal interviews will be conducted. If you have questions regarding the application procedure, please contact Jason Williamson or Justine Olderman.

Student Contacts

For more information about the clinic, you are welcome to reach out to any of the students below, all of whom participated in the Racial Justice and Abolition Clinic during the 2024-2025 school year.

Patience Adegboyega
Ashley Alphonse
Maya Chamra
Kyle Alexander Hogan
Gabriella Hubbard
Kelsey Kinoshita
Ava McEnroe

* 12 credits consisting of 3 clinical (fieldwork) credits and 3 academic seminar credits per semester.