Faced with seismic shifts in society, law students are taking action through protests, petitions and even sit-ins. While often controversial, the actions are helping future leaders see how change can happen.
At Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., last February, students were enraged when a conservative professor, Ilya Shapiro, said President Biden would nominate a “lesser black woman” to fill Justice Stephen Breyer’s Supreme Court seat.
But rather than just complain, students organized, protested and demanded that the school take action. It was just the latest in a series of protests during the past few years.
Law students at UC Hastings (now University of California College of Law, San Francisco) and University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia have demanded changes to school and building names because of donor name ties to racism and slaveholding. Law students elsewhere have created petitions to protest university actions and ban controversial professors. And students at Harvard Law School held a sit-in to demand that the school add reproductive justice offerings.
While student activism at law schools is not new, it has taken on a new life in recent years.
“The current reality, informed by COVID, the ongoing racial reckoning and significant changes to women’s rights, invites [students] to question the way the world is, to query whether things should or could be better and to explore how they might contribute to any needed changes,” said Tanya Washington, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law. “They are not waiting until they graduate to exercise their agency. They are more inclined to do so as they are studying the law because these changes are directly affecting them right now.”
In the past, student protests led to significant changes in law school policies, the government and the minds of others. The past year has seen a resurgence of protest, with students standing up and speaking out about events such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the continued fight for equal rights.
“Student activism has totally increased in recent years, especially when it comes to advocating for basic human rights,” said Grant Patterson, a third-year student at Samford University, Cumberland School of Law in Alabama. “I’m incredibly proud of my generation and the generations below me who aren’t simply accepting the status quo
Patterson is one student who has taken action. After his school declined to recognize OUTLaw, an LGBTQ+ group, as an official student organization on the grounds that it does not align with the Baptist university’s beliefs, he created a petition to collect signatures.
Social media has taken student activism to a new level. It has made it much easier for students to share their opinions and stories with the world. A protest isn’t always a case of marches and megaphones. It can be as simple as a signature or a tweet.
This past fall, Jonathan Kay, a student at The George Washington University School of Law in Washington, D.C., started a petition to have Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas removed from teaching a constitutional law seminar at the school.
Kay said his petition spread like wildfire as people posted it on social media. It got more than 1,000 signatures the first day, and more than 6,000 after two days.
“Gen Z activists are going to be the generation that never gives up and institutes the meaningful change this country has desperately needed,” Kay said.
In March 2022, more than 100 Yale Law School students participated in a demon stration against the Federalist Society’s plan to host Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom on campus. Students were against Waggoner’s visit because of her stance on LGBTQ rights.
The protest was controversial and started a debate on freedom of speech, which led to a rebuke from the dean.
“I expect far more from our students, and I want to state unequivocally that this cannot happen again,” said Heather Gerken, dean of the law school, in a public statement.
Other protests have also been criticized. Some of today’s students “are not behaving the way law school students should be behaving,” said Keith Whittington, a politics professor at Princeton University. “They should be able to handle more serious debate.”
Whittington is also chair of the Academic Committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the rights of college and university faculty members to speak, instruct and publish without fear of sanction or punishment.
He said that recent attacks on professors have caused considerable concern and that professors should be protected under longestablished rules governing free speech and academic freedom.
But despite the backlash against protests regarding speakers and professors, most student activists are focused on other matters.
The Education Advisory Board reports that student activists’ demands spiked in 2020, with 55% being related to racial justice.
“I think sometimes people put off advocating for things because they’re worried about the effects that it will have on their career in the future,” said Morgan Carmen, a student and vice president of the Alliance for Reproductive Justice at Harvard Law School. “I think people hold themselves back often because they’re sort of like saving their voice for when they become professionally successful, or when they have a platform.”
Activism and the law
Georgia State professor Washington said many people regard the terms “activism” and “activist” in a negative light. She defines activists as “people who see a need and act to meet it.”
After 20 years of experience as a law professor, Washington said she believes that this generation of students, especially law students, is more motivated to participate in activism and challenge the status quo.
The study of law is not a spectator sport, she said, adding that the true value of the law lies in how it affects or improves the human condition.
“Law students are not studying the law in a vacuum, and they are expected to know the law and discern how its use affects the lived experiences of people who are affected by it,” Washington said. “As future power brokers, it is incumbent upon students to understand law in action. In other words, their role as activists is to be expected and should be encouraged.”
She said she doesn’t see how it is possible for students to study a system of laws without applying that knowledge and acting on what they see around them.
She notes that students of this generation are witnessing numerous seismic shifts in society. It’s only natural for law students to consider the role of law when responding to these events.
“In the context of Supreme Court decisions, students are witnessing changes in the interpretation of the law that gives them the opportunity to experience the law as an evolving thing,” Washington said. “This enables them to regard the law as something that can be shaped in ways that respond to the human condition and empowers them to regard themselves as potential change agents.”
Students demand reproductive justice education
This past October, as a part of the Graduate Student Action Network’s Day of Action, members of Harvard Law School’s Alliance for Reproductive Justice staged a sit-in, demanding that the school offer reproductive justice education. Their demand letter received more than 1,100 signatures from students and faculty
The letter demanded that the school create a reproductive rights clinic, hire at least one full-time, tenure-track law professor with a history of scholarship in reproductive justice and reproductive rights, and provide several lecture courses on reproductive rights and justice.
“We have no consistent opportunity to practice this kind of law,” Carmen said. “We want the knowledge to be able to go out and practice it ourselves after law school, but we don’t have any mentors here. We want to be able to make an impact now, because this is such an important area of work, and those opportunities just simply aren’t available.”
Carmen and alliance co-presidents Vandana Apte and Kirin Gupta said that for nearly a decade, Harvard Law students have been advocating for more reproductive justice offerings. With the recent changes brought about by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, they believed it was time to push harder in this 10-year-long fight.
Gupta said the group wanted to present a demand letter with more than 1,000 signatures and to stage a disruptive yet respectful event.
Before the sit-in, the students met with school officials to propose these ideas. During the meetings, they were told a demand letter wouldn’t be enough. They were asked to draft lengthy proposals on curriculum and include surveys to be distributed to students.
Carmen said administrators regularly put together surveys to poll students and faculty. She said she felt that asking her group to perform the task was creating more hoops for them to jump through. The activists believe that Harvard Law has the resources to make these offerings happen. Other law schools, including Yale, New York University School of Law and Cornell Law School, have reproductive rights clinics and offerings.
“I definitely have felt more pressure to try to get the ball rolling, at least with the proposal, before I graduate,” said Apte, who will graduate this spring. “So I definitely think that it instills a sense of urgency in students. That’s a little bit unfair, because it’s a pretty large burden, especially in my last semester of law school, to take on. But I do feel like I have an obligation to do this, because I feel like if we, as a class, don’t do it, then it might never happen.”
Apte said the alliance took steps during the sit-in to make sure it honored the student handbook and campus rules.
“I think that if any of us were concerned about backlash, we were very quickly convinced otherwise,” Carmen said. “I feel like this was the best way for us to get the message out there.
“It was also very inspiring to me, and I think to a lot of other people there, because we were just able to see everybody. We essentially created a community. It was just a community of people sitting on the floor, who were really, really excited about the prospect of reproductive justice offerings here.”
During the sit-in, the students said, a professor approached the group and signed the letter. He talked to the students about how the communal spaces at Harvard were meant to be places of discussion and protest, and he said he wished students were more active in such efforts.
“I think students are more politically polarized now than they used to be,” Apte said. “There has been more anger that has resulted in more student activist demonstrations and protests. And there’s this feeling that as law students, we have a responsibility to make sure that we’re getting the legal education that’s going to be most useful in the world right now.”
The students submitted their demand letter to the administration on Nov. 1, 2022, and requested a response by Dec. 1. At press time, they were still waiting, and the law school had not responded to The National Jurist’s request for comment.
Students demand Clarence Thomas be gone
Kay’s petition to remove Clarence Thomas from teaching a constitutional law seminar at George Washington University read: “With the recent Supreme Court decision that has stripped the right to bodily autonomy of people with wombs, and with his explicit intention to further strip the rights of queer people and remove the ability for people to practice safe sex without fear of pregnancy, it is evident that the employment of Clarence Thomas at George Washington University is completely unacceptable.”
Circulated shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the petition received more than 11,000 signatures from students and community members.
Kay said he believed the administration would do nothing without pressure from the student body and alumni.
About a month later, it was revealed that Justice Thomas had told the school he would not be available to teach the seminar. Many believe this was because of the petition and other protests by students.
“This petition has taught me that the greatest opponent to the changes we want to see in the world is apathy,” Kay said.
People in power, he said, will throw as many obstacles as they can at the people trying to facilitate change.
“And while those challenges need to be overcome themselves, the real purpose of them is to make change seem unachievable, make it seem like our fight is hopeless,” Kay said. “But a bunch of 20-year-olds just pressured one of the most powerful people on the planet to step down, and that happened because even after [the school] announced they were going to keep him on staff, we never let up.”
George Washington Law student leaders also created a letter that called for the school to remove Thomas. In the letter, students urged the university not to give Thomas a platform because of his recent actions with regard to Roe v. Wade.
“We, the student leaders of the George Washington University, find it quite difficult to imagine Professor Clarence Thomas wouldn’t be biased in the classroom if he is actively trying to strip individuals with uteruses of the right to medicine and queer individuals their right to legally exist,” the letter said.
It was signed by more than 50 students who hold leadership positions in organizations at GW Law. When it was revealed that Thomas would not be teaching, students celebrated through social media posts.
“I think collective action is absolutely the most impactful form of activism,” Kay said. “When large groups of people can make the bottom line of whoever/whatever is being protested against hurt, either through boycotts, strikes or any other method of collective action, that is when you start seeing real change being made.”
Students demand to be recognized
After Beck Taylor, the president of Samford University, told OUTLaw students that recognizing their group as an official organization would give the group an opportunity for students to “advocate for a larger agenda,” Patterson created a petition to recognize OUTLaw as an official student group at Cumberland School of Law.
OUTLaw’s leaders began the process of becoming an official campus organization back in the fall of 2021, but after a year of conversations with university officials, their application was denied on the basis of the group’s LGBTQ+ identity.
Patterson drafted a response in late October 2022, and it was shared on Change.org as a petition.
He said Christianity has played an enormous part in his life. He was raised in Southern Baptist churches, and his family is devout.
“When Samford’s president told us face-to-face that our identity conflicts with what they believe to be God’s design for us, I just couldn’t accept it,” Patterson said. “The endorsement of these attitudes by well-respected faith leaders like President Beck Taylor is precisely why LGBTQ+ people are 2.5 times more likely to experience depression, anxiety and substance abuse when compared to heterosexuals.”
He said he wishes he could just focus on finishing his third year of law school and passing the bar, but he can’t let this denial go without challenging it.
Angela Whitlock, president of the group, said the petition received a lot of supportive feedback from students and faculty members.
“It’s easier to motivate change when you have a mass number of individuals standing alongside you,” she said.
Patterson said anyone interested in taking on any form of advocacy should know two things: You can’t do it alone, and burnout is real.
“You’ll be no help to anyone if you can’t help yourself,” he said. “I’ve turned off my email notifications and muted GroupMe at several points throughout this campaign because sometimes you just need to protect your peace.”
At last count, the petition had close to 600 signatures and the number continues to grow.
The group hopes it will bring about change. But if not, the protest goes on.
This story originally ran in the Winter issue of The National Jurist magazine.
