Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
As the term critical race theory (“CRT”) is maligned in state legislatures, school board meetings, the media, and beyond, it is as essential a time as ever to consider how to reclaim the identity of CRT. Within the context of that inquiry, this panel proposes to engage with an important, broader epistemological conversation regarding the relationship between CRT and praxis. Beyond the interrogative ways that CRT is used to critique legal doctrines and mainstream legal thought, what else does CRT have to offer students who intend to practice law? In a moment wherein CRT (or racial justice projects broadly defined) is under attack, where is the best curricular site to address these questions?
In this panel, we will explore clinical legal education as a special (and underappreciated) place where theory and practice come together. Clinics are in position to off-road from classroom to practice, to push students to think about the transformative reaches and limits of both law and theory. The panel proposes to critically analyze the role of clinical legal education in making clearer the connections between CRT and praxis, and in reclaiming the identity of CRT as a capacious site of contesting the law.
We will consider topics such as:
•How to translate the tenets and methodology of CRT into tools that practitioners can draw upon to improve the conditions of marginalized individuals and communities.
•The efficacy of CRT to students in a climate in which racial justice generally and CRT specifically are under attack, the possibilities and limitations of incorporating CRT into clinical legal education.
•The usefulness of CRT as a prefigurative project that demonstrates what can be instead of what is for students.
•The role of CRT in defending and expanding rights-based claims.
•What might CRT offer in this moment of contestation and crisis that is different from other frameworks?
•Amber Baylor, Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
•Norrinda Brown, Associate Professor of Law, Fordham Law School
•Annie Lai, Clinical Professor of Law, UC Irvine School of Law
•Sunita Patel, Professor of Law, Faculty Director, David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, and Faculty Director, Veterans Legal Clinic, UCLA School of Law
•Erika K. Wilson, Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘03
As the term critical race theory (“CRT”) is maligned in state legislatures, school board meetings, the media, and beyond, it is as essential a time as ever to consider how to reclaim the identity of CRT. Within the context of that inquiry, this panel proposes to engage with an important, broader epistemological conversation regarding the relationship between CRT and praxis. Beyond the interrogative ways that CRT is used to critique legal doctrines and mainstream legal thought, what else does CRT have to offer students who intend to practice law? In a moment wherein CRT (or racial justice projects broadly defined) is under attack, where is the best curricular site to address these questions?
In this panel, we will explore clinical legal education as a special (and underappreciated) place where theory and practice come together. Clinics are in position to off-road from classroom to practice, to push students to think about the transformative reaches and limits of both law and theory. The panel proposes to critically analyze the role of clinical legal education in making clearer the connections between CRT and praxis, and in reclaiming the identity of CRT as a capacious site of contesting the law.
We will consider topics such as:
•How to translate the tenets and methodology of CRT into tools that practitioners can draw upon to improve the conditions of marginalized individuals and communities.
•The efficacy of CRT to students in a climate in which racial justice generally and CRT specifically are under attack, the possibilities and limitations of incorporating CRT into clinical legal education.
•The usefulness of CRT as a prefigurative project that demonstrates what can be instead of what is for students.
•The role of CRT in defending and expanding rights-based claims.
•What might CRT offer in this moment of contestation and crisis that is different from other frameworks?
•Amber Baylor, Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
•Norrinda Brown, Associate Professor of Law, Fordham Law School
•Annie Lai, Clinical Professor of Law, UC Irvine School of Law
•Sunita Patel, Professor of Law, Faculty Director, David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, and Faculty Director, Veterans Legal Clinic, UCLA School of Law
•Erika K. Wilson, Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘03
