Law Schools Unite To Bring Police Reform

Law schools across the nation are partnering with the American Bar Association on an initiative to improve police practices.

Nearly a quarter of the law schools in the US will conduct research and advocacy on what model or ideal police practices look like to help eliminate racially-driven police tactics as part of the Legal Education Police Practices Consortium, Law.com reports.

“The ABA has the ability to bring together diverse groups to address these problems and the duty to act to help bring racial equality to our criminal justice system,” ABA President Patricia Lee Refo says in a press release. “The consortium will engage law students and legal experts from around the country in studying and forming solutions to help improve policing practices in our communities.”

PUSH FOR CHANGE

The Legal Education Police Practices Consortium is just one of many efforts by law schools to play their part in bringing about change to systematic racism in the US.

In Florida, all 12 of the law schools formed the Florida Law Schools’ Consortium for Racial Justice, an initiative that partners with local organization to tackle police reform and racial justice in the state.

Both Harvard Law and the Howard University School of Law partnered to form The Justice Initiative, a year-long pilot project that brings together social justice-oriented law students, lawyers, law-school faculty, legal organizations, organizers, and activists to address solutions to racial injustice in the nation.

The ABA consortium will include 10 law deans who will make up the advisory committee. Rich Leonard, dean of the Campbell University Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, is one of the law school leaders who helped spearhead the idea for forming the consortium.

“We were all trying to do our own thing and realized when we started talking that we could have a much more significant impact if the law schools would work together to address this systemic issue,” Leonard tells Law.com.

Sources: Law.com, ABA, Law.com, Harvard Law Today