Faith in Community: Representing Colored Town

Abstract

In previous work investigating the role of race, lawyers, and ethics in the American criminal justice system, I analyzed the use of racial identity, racialized narrative, and race-conscious representation by prosecutors and defenders in cases of racially-motivated violence. This Article extends that project by examining the race-conscious practices and dilemmas of lawyers representing communities of color in combating the public and private forces of urban impoverishment. Part I surveys law school clinical practices of community lawyering. Part II assesses theories of community lawyering, drawing on the record of community economic development, the rise of the theoretics of practice movement, the history of community organizing, and the still evolving rebellious lawyering tradition. Part III considers critiques of community lawyering distilled from contemporary clinical legal scholarship. Part IV appraises the normative and practical dilemmas of race-conscious community lawyering practices.