Law School hosts social reform event

It's rare to see a lawyer look beyond the courtroom -- and on to the streets of urban America. But on Friday and Saturday, about 150 law students, faculty and members of the Philadelphia legal community attended the 20th Annual Edward V. Sparer Symposium on "Social Movements and Law Reform." Sponsored by the Public Law Group and Public Service Program, as well as the Penn Law Review, the forum was designed to explore the role of social reform in law. "Essentially, we're investigating the relationship between social movement and law reform in many different areas," said Susan Feathers, the head of the Public Services Program at the Law School. The conference featured law professors who spoke about various social issues, including children's rights, workplace advocacy and the environmental movement. "We want to create a new discourse in legal scholarship," explained Penn Law Professor Edward Rubin, one of the academic coordinators of the symposium. "A lot of law is made on the streets, and legal scholars have failed to recognize social reform as an influence." On Saturday, Ian Lopez, a professor at the University of California Law School at Berkeley, explored the bond between racial protest and legal opposition in his lecture entitled "Rejecting a White Racial Identity: Legal Violence and the Chicano Movement." Lopez focused on the significance of the 1968 "East L.A. 13" trial, which involved an uprising amongst Latin American high school students in helping Mexicans distinguish themselves as a separate race. "I want to emphasize the unnecessary police violence and brutality as a central component in the Latino movement," he said. Reva Siegel, a professor at Yale Law School, focused her presentation on the legal analysis of gender in "Gender and the Constitution from a Social Movement Perspective." By discussing the 14th and 19th amendments -- the only constitutional ratifications connected to women's rights -- Siegel investigated the social movements that catalyzed these changes. "I want to point out that the suffrage movement has been largely erased from legal consciousness," she said. Attendees were impressed, specifically by the revolutionary ideas linking law and social reform. "I think that it's really interesting to get a group of forward-thinking people to attack the many problems that continue to plague our society," said Brent Starks, 25, of Washington, D.C. Starks works for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Chandra Bhatnagar, a third-year Penn Law student, agreed. "It's not often in a law school setting that you address issues of gender, race and the struggle for equality," he said. "We, as young people concerned with justice, need to create opportunities to discuss these issues and build upon the legacies of those who came before us."

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