Author Talk: Columbia Law Review Essays and Forum

What to expect: Author Talks are typically done Q&A style. A brief introduction will be given of the authors. Before jumping into our Q&A we will have an oral presentation from two of our authors, Ghani Songster and Rell Carter. Finally, we will leave 10 minutes at the end for questions from the audience.

The scholarship:
Participatory Law Scholarship (PLS): The Essays Committee will be publishing Participatory Law Scholarship, by Professor Rachel López. This piece outlines the theory and practice of what it means to coauthor scholarship with people who have no formal training in the law, but have expertise in the law's function by way of lived experience. In this piece, Professor López reflects on her impetus for co-authoring with Kempis "Ghani" Songster and Terrell "Rell" Carter: the Right to Redemption framework. While incarcerated, Ghani and Rell developed this framework, which seeks to eliminate harsh sentencing practices such as life without parole. In PLS, Professor López walks the reader through her experience co-authoring with Ghani and Rell in their first article together, Redeeming Justice.

Regarding the Other Death Penalty: The Forum Committee will be publishing this piece, which was written by Ghani Songster, Rell Carter, and Rachel López. The piece is a response to Randle DeFalco's new book Invisible Atrocities. Drawing from lived experience, the piece employs DeFalco's framework to visibilize the slow, but fatal violence of sentences of life without parole, more aptly understood as death by incarceration. This piece puts Participatory Law Scholarship into practice.

Law and Political Economy (LPE): This is a movement that was cofounded by Amy Kapczynski. This project aims to "develop[] ideas and proposals to democratize our political economy" to address the way in which "developments over the last several decades in legal scholarship and policy helped to facilitate rising inequality and precarity, political alienation, the entrenchment of racial hierarchies and intersectional exploitation, and ecological and social catastrophe." See LPE's website for more details.