The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice is not for the weak of heart or the timid in spirit. Feminist inquiry and critical race analysis are the touchstones of our endeavor. Our building blocks are new forms of analysis that reach beyond traditional conceptions of legal thought. We challenge our writers, our readers, and ourselves to question who we are and how the law defines us. We strive to be a transformative experience. In a spirit of openness, we explore how we are classified, stratified, ignored, and singled out under the law because of our race, sex, gender, economic class, ability, sexual identity, and the multitude of labels applied to us. Identity is a matrix of experiences; when the law fails to recognize any one facet of our identity, both the law and the person lose invaluable dimension. Our challenge is to examine how we negotiate our identities, how the legal system negotiates them for us and how these negotiations affect our ability to attain justice.
Our conception of justice looks beyond legal rights to how fairness, equity, and respect delineate the boundaries of what legal justice must, at a minimum, entail. We include all struggles against oppression within this conception. We seek to invoke a vision of justice that is without fear, a vision that allows us to be who we are as we are, without sanction or penalty. We encourage personal and social responsibility towards achieving this vision, and we welcome all viewpoints and ideas that are expressed with respect and collegiality.
Finally, we are a journal that promotes living discussion. Through our symposium, we will test, shape, and strengthen our scholarship by bringing a myriad of experiences into the realm of legal thought. We intend to build alliances across differences, to rub ideas together and watch the sparks fly. We invite you to help us fan the flames, to set the legal community on fire. Subscribe, submit (your work, not yourselves), and support us in our mission.