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Race-ing the Law
Book chapter

Race-ing the Law

Jennifer M Nielsen
Critical Racial and Decolonial Literacies, pp.152-163
Decolonization and Social Worlds, Bristol University Press
22/08/2024
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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#4 Quality Education
#10 Reduced Inequalities

Abstract

Australia was colonized through racial logics by which these lands were deemed absent of people and law. They were then applied to design and found a white nation that explicitly excluded First Nations people and people of colour. Yet generations of lawyers have learned about law in ways that ignore how race is embedded in legal thinking and practice, committed instead to liberal ideals of equality and the rule of law. Australian legal education and lawyers lack racial literacy and an understanding of race as a social construct and how it operates within Australian law and jurisprudence. This chapter shares the author’s reflections on strategies to build racial literacy within legal education by applying a socio-legal approach that puts into context why and how law has been shaped by racial logics. The intent is to demystify the ‘rightness’ of law and examine law and the Australian legal system as a cultural practice.

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