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111 Cal. L. Rev. 1 (2023)

handle is hein.journals/calr111 and id is 1 raw text is: The Purpose of Legal Education Etienne C. Toussaint* When President Donald Trump launched an assault on diversity training, critical race theory, and The 1619 Project in September 2020 as divisive, un-American propaganda, many law students were presumably confused. After all, law school has historically been doctrinally neutral, racially homogenous, and socially hierarchical. In most core law school courses, colorblindness and objectivity trump critical legal discourse on issues of race, gender, or sexuality. Yet, such disorientation reflects a longstanding debate over the fundamental purpose of law school. As U.S. law schools develop anti- racist curricula and expand their experiential learning programs to produce so-called practice-ready lawyers for the crises exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars continue to question whether and how, if at all, the purpose of law school converges with societal efforts to reckon with America's legacy of White supremacy. This Article argues that the anti-racist, democratic, and movement lawyering principles advocated by progressive legal scholars should not be viewed merely as aspirational ideals for social justice law courses. Rather, querying whether legal systems and political institutions further racism, economic oppression, or social injustice must be viewed as endemic to the fundamental purpose of legal education. In so doing, this Article makes three important contributions to the literature on legal education and philosophical DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z38G73749G Copyright © 2023 Etienne C. Toussaint. * Assistant Professor of Law, University of South Camlina School of Law (B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology; M.S.E., Johns Hopkins University; J.D., Harvard Law School; LL.M, The George Washington University Law School). I thank the many colleagues who pmvided helpful comments and constructive feedback on drafts of this Article, including the participants of the 2019 Lutie-Langston Writers Workshop at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, the 2019 Clinical Law Review Writers Workshop at the New York University School of Law, the 2019 John Mercer Langston Writers Workshop at Howard University School of Law, the AALS Section on Pmfessional Responsibility at the 2022 American Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting, Sheldon Luke, Matthew Shaw, Phyllis Goldfaib, Susan Jones, Sheldon Evans, Renee Nicole Allen, Samantha Prince, Emily Grant, Jacqueline Fox, Benjamin Barton, and Renee Knake Jefferson. I also thank Victoria Hermann and Sabrin Qadi for research assistance, and Vanessa McQuinn and Ashley Alvarado for editorial assistance. I am especially grateful to the editors of the California Law Review for exceptional editing and support during the publication process. Finally, I thank Ebony, Etienne, Edward, and Erwin I am, because we are. Any errors or omissions contained in this Article are my own. 1

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