By Alexander Mulligan

Law schools must do better. When I signed up to write this post, I was planning on talking about AI and the law. But the wave of demonstrations over the deaths of countless black folks at the hands of the state raises the question: what law schools are doing to combat racism against BIPOC folks. As I reflect on my first year, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that law schools must do better at educating students on racial inequities in the law.

At Osgoode, first-year students take eight courses. Except for my seminar class – Law and Poverty – race was rarely discussed in class. When I refer to race, I don’t mean discussing charter jurisprudence on equality rights, or section 35 jurisprudence on Indigenous rights. These, of course, are important conversations and lessons that must continue. I am referring to critically examining how the legal system interacts with race. The first-year curriculum must include the experiences of racialized litigants, participants, lawyers, judges, and activists.

Recognizing the flaws of the legal systems must be a starting point for legal education. First-year students should learn how race impacts damages awards in torts, how race impacts the credibility of the accused, complainants, and witnesses, and how bias interferes with mediation. As students, it’s important to hear non-legal perspectives on the law and see how the legal system impacts people as a result of their race. We should not worry whether law students will become too critical of the legal system, that criticism is necessary for change.

The first-year curriculum is abstract. The real-world impacts of the law are not. We read cases that are hundreds of years old that still impact life today, we focus on the decisions of judges and often gloss over the facts. We are told there is an access to justice crisis, but we rarely are told the true extent of it, who it impacts the most, and what solutions are proposed. We never discuss why racialized individuals are disproportionally affected by the law.

First-year is a busy time, I emphasize with the challenge professors must have at distilling hundreds of years of legislative and legal history into a four-month course. One might ask how we could ever include explicit examples of race. The concern should not be how much information professors can pack into a course but ensuring that students come out of their first year with a clear foundation in the law and how the law impacts people in the real world. This will make us better lawyers, judges, advocates, and allies. There is room to discuss race in first-year. Anti-black racism can be specifically addressed. Osgoode’s Black Law Student’s Association wrote a powerful report of anti-black racism at Osgoode with specific recommendations regarding education. The report should at minimum be the starting point for building a more inclusive curriculum. Indigenous law is discussed in class without any real context to the indigenous world view, experiences, and history in Canada. Instead of requiring students to take an indigenous law course before graduation, Indigenous law should be a first-year course to give students a better understanding of the Indigenous peoples and their history with the Canadian legal system.

I’m constantly amazed by the advocacy and impact my BIPOC classmates at Osgoode make, but addressing systemic racism is on all of us. Law schools, in partnerships with advocates, would be right to re-examine their first-year curriculum to ensure that conversations on race and law are being had right from the beginning.