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2018 Wis. L. Rev. 441 (2018)
Law and Social Movements: Reimagining the Progressive Canon

handle is hein.journals/wlr2018 and id is 453 raw text is: LAW AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: REIMAGINING THE PROGRESSIVE CANON ScoTT L. CUMMINGS* Introduction ...................................................................44 1 I. The O ld C anon .......................................................442 II. Toward A New Canon...............................................451 A. When a Lawsuit Sparks a Movement: The Antisweatshop Campaign .....................452 B. Challenging Executive Overreach: Litigating Human Rights in the War on Terror.......... ..........460 C. Backlash Avoidance: The March Toward Marriage Equality................................470 D. Contesting Illegal Status: Immigrant Rights under Siege .478 E. Building Power: The Movement for Black Lives ..........487 III. L essons ................................................................494 C onclusion .....................................................................500 INTRODUCTION This Article examines the progressive legal canon-iconic legal campaigns to advance progressive causes-and explores the implications of canon construction and critique for the study of lawyers and social movements. Looking backward, it reflects on why specific cases, like Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade, have become fundamental to progressive understandings of the role that lawyers play in social movements and how those cases have come to stand for a set of warnings about lawyer and court overreach. It then explores what might be gained from constructing a contemporary progressive legal canon and under what criteria one would select cases for inclusion. A core contribution of the Article is to synthesize examples of significant contemporary campaigns that respond to * Robert Henigson Professor, UCLA School of Law. For their extraordinarily helpful feedback and support, I am grateful to KT Albiston, Mark Aaronson, Tonya Brito, Veena Dubal, Ingrid Eagly, Gwyn Leachman, and Reuel Schiller. I benefitted from insights shared by participants in the Wisconsin Law Review Symposium on Public Interest Mobilization and Access to Justice Movements in the New Democratic State and the UC Hastings Faculty Workshop. I am thankful for the incredible research assistance of Tala Oszkay and Yani Jacobs.

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