NAWJ's Fairness and Access Committee provided an insightful webinar that reflected on the history of the law as a tool for the protection and advancement of racism and racial discrimination.  Moderator Judge Terrie E. Roberts and panelists Dr. Michele Goodwin and Professor Ariela Gross led a discussion that included the Antebellum period through the Jim Crow period, and the law’s role in advancing racial injustice, from the legalization of slavery, slave patrols, slave codes, and the Black Codes enacted during the Reconstruction period.  Dr. Goodwin and Professor Gross concluded by discussing why recognizing the law as a facilitator of racism and racial discrimination is urgent and necessary in dismantling the racism and racial discrimination that persists today.

Resources and references from the panelists are found below the video.

Hon. Terrie E. Roberts
Judge, San Diego Superior Court
Read Judge Roberts' bio
Email: terrie.roberts@sdcourt.ca.gov

Dr. Michele Goodwin, JD, LLM, SJD
Chancellor's Professor, University of California Irvine, School of Law and School of Public Health
Read Dr. Goodwin's bio
Email: goodwin@uci.edu

Book:
Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and The Criminalization of Motherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Law Review Articles:
The Thirteenth Amendment: Modern Slavery, Capitalism, and Mass Incarceration, 104 Cornell. L. Rev. 899 (2019)(John Hope Franklin Prize, Law & Society Association, honorary mention 2020) 

A Different Type of Property: White Women and The Human Property They Kept  (forthcoming in the Michigan L. Review 2021) 

Commentary:
We Can't Be Free Until We Fully Abolish Slavery, The Appeal, Oct. 7, 2020

More information:
For more information about Michele Goodwin, here is her website:
www.michelebgoodwin.com

Dr. Ariela Gross
John B. and Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law and History, University of Southern California, Gould School of Law
Read Dr. Gross' bio
Email: agross@law.usc.edu

Dr. Gross’ new book (use discount code of BFBB2020)
Becoming Free, Becoming Black- Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana

Articles and Commentary
Other books, essays, talks, and interviews, from Dr. Gross