Rascuache Lawyer: Toward a Theory of Ordinary Litigation

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Critical race theory is a movement in law that emerged in the 1980s and seeks to have race at the center of legal analysis. It began as a critique of the progressive Critical Legal Studies movement (CLS), which gave primacy to class but tended to ignore race. According to Váldes, Culp, and Harris, “Critical race theorists have not placed their faith in neutral procedures and the substantive doctrines of formal equality; rather, critical race theorists assert that both the procedures and the substance of American law . . . are structured to maintain white privilege.”Francisco Váldes, Jerome McCristal Culp, and Angela P. Harris, Crossroads, Directions, and a New Critical Race Theory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 1. 2. Váldes, Culp, and Harris, Crossroads, 1. 3. Váldes, Culp, and Harris, Crossroads, 1. 4. Váldes, Culp, and Harris, Crossroads, 1–2. 5. Váldes, Culp, and Harris, Crossroads, 2. 6. Francisco Váldes, “Legal Reform and Social Justice: An Introduction to LatCrit Theory, Praxis, and Community,” 14 Griffith Law Review 148 (2005); E.M. Iglesias and Francisco Váldes, afterword to LatCrit V Symposium,“LatCrit at Five: Institutionalizing a Postsubordination Future,”78 Denver University Law Review 4 (2001), 1249–1333; Váldes, “Foreword: Poised at the Cusp; LatCrit Theory, Outsider Jurisprudence and Latina/o Self-Empowerment,” 2 Harvard Latino Law Review 1 (1997), 1. 7. Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1987). 8. Bell, And We Are Not Saved, 20. 9. Bell, And We Are Not Saved, 6–7. 10. Richard Delgado, The Rodrigo Chronicles: Conversations About America and Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996). 11. I have refined this pedagogical tool in teaching a class on law and subordination that included theoretical readings on lay lawyering and advocacy on behalf of subordinated groups, and which requires that students work in a “field placement” with subordinated groups (e.g., the homeless, day laborers, 244 notes to pages 6–8 and at-risk youth). An additional requirement was that students write weekly “field reports” or journals that critically evaluate the class readings, discussions, and field placements. For more detail on how I started writing the Letters, and created my fictional amiga, see Alfredo Mirandé González, “Alfredo’s Jungle Cruise: Chronicles About Law, Lawyering, and Love,” Davis Law Review 33 (1999–2000), 1347–1375. 12. Some works written by non-lawyers, such as Steve Bogira, have looked at ordinary cases. Bogira, a journalist, focused on the cases coming before one judge in Chicago’s Cook County Criminal Courthouse, the busiest courthouse in the country. See Steve Bogira, Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse (New York: Vintage, 2006). 13. Gerald P. López, Rebellious Lawyering: One Chicano’s Vision of Progressive Law Practice (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992). 14. Kevin R. Johnson, “Civil Rights and Immigration: Challenges for the Latino Community in the Twenty-First Century,”8 Chicano-Latino Law Review, 42–89. 15. Johnson, “Civil Rights and Immigration,” 50. 16. Bill O. Hing, “Coolies, James Yen, and Rebellious Advocacy,” UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Research Paper no. 107 (May 2007), 1-44, 1. 17. Hing, “Coolies,” 4. 18. Hing, “Coolies,” 3. 19. Hing, “Coolies,” 3. 20. Bell, And We Are Not Saved; Patricia Williams,“Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights,”Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review 401 (1987); Richard Delgado, “The Imperial Scholar: Reflections on a Review of Civil Rights Literature,” 132 University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1984), 561; Angela P. Harris,“Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory,” Stanford Law Review 42 (1990), 581; Mari Matsuda,“Looking at the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations,”Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Review 22, 323; Charles R. Lawrence, III, “Race and Affirmative Action: A Critical Race Perspective,” in Kairys, D. (ed.), The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, 3d ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 312–337; Margaret E. Montoya,“Mascaras, Trenzas, y Greñas: Unmasking the Self While Un/braiding Latina Stories and Legal Discourse,” Chicano-Latino Law Review 15 (1994), 1–37. 21. Roberto Unger, “The Critical Legal Studies Movement,” in Hutchinson, A. C. (ed.), Critical Legal Studies (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1989), 323–344; Peter Gabel and Jay M. Feinman, “Contract Law as Ideology,” in Kairys (ed.), The Politics of Law, 3d ed., 497–510; Robert W. Gordon, “Some Critical Theories of Law and Their Critics,” in Kairys (ed.), The Politics of Law...