Prompted by widespread protests over police behavior in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y., Stanford Law School in January expanded its curricular and co-curricular offerings related to racial issues, criminal justice and policing. A series of open events and educational programming continued through the spring quarter. "Responding quickly and creatively to student interest and our own sense of responsibility as legal educators is something we do," says Law School Dean M. Elizabeth Magill. (For more on Stanford students' recent participation in protests, see the cover story.)
The school sought to offer forums in which the whole Stanford community could "learn and share ideas as part of this important national conversation," Magill adds. In addition to courses, clinics and public service volunteer opportunities that were already on the calendar, Magill moderated a panel discussion, Race and Policing: Moving Forward, with speakers Ronald L. Davis, director of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and former chief of the East Palo Alto Police Department; Yale Law School professor Tracey L. Meares; and Stanford law professors Ronald C.Tyler and David A. Sklansky.
Professor Robert Weisberg, faculty co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, and former judge LaDoris Cordell, JD '74, independent police auditor for San Jose, took part in another discussion, Grand Juries: An Arcane Institution or Sacred Cow? Both sessions drew participants from across campus and beyond.
Weisberg explains that efforts to incorporate current events into the school's work aim to "encourage critical nonpartisan thinking about how legal institutions operate [through real-world examples]." In his criminal law course, Weisberg used a high-profile New York City stop-and-frisk lawsuit as a case study when discussing searches and seizures. Other professors rallied to teach seminars or hold discussion groups on race and policing in the winter and spring quarters—for example, Professor Richard Ford's course on comparative civil rights. Sklansky and psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt are working with students on long-term projects investigating these issues, and many more students are doing directed research sponsored by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.
