Lessons in Legal Literacy: Democratizing Legal Critique as a Means of Resisting Racial Injustice

Abstract

This commentary addresses the problem of racial injustice in the United States through the lens of the legal humanities. Using examples from the grand jury materials in the Michael Brown shooting as a case study, I argue for close reading, literary analysis, and other humanist methodologies as tools to empower undergraduates and laypeople as legal critics. The second half of the commentary describes a recent pedagogical exercise as an example of the possibilities for legal literacy instruction within an undergraduate humanities curriculum. Ultimately, I argue that the work of building legal literacy has the potential to resist or address racial injustice by making legal texts and institutions more amenable to critique from the legal humanities and the public humanities.