Berkeley Law Faculty Statement Expresses "Despair and Outrage" About the Police Killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner
January 27, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following is a statement issued in December by members of the faculty and staff at the University of California, Berkeley, Law School (also known as Boalt Hall). The full list of signatories and a slide show of some of the signers with signs like "I Can't Breathe" and "Black Lives Matter," is at the Berkeley Law School web site.
As members of the Berkeley Law faculty and staff, we write to express our despair and outrage about the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in Missouri and New York. These cases again exposed the failure of the criminal justice system to value Black lives. The Brown and Garner cases have undermined our trust as legal scholars, advocates, and educators in the fundamental fairness of our legal system. We share with our students the struggle to reconcile the constitutional values that we teach in the classroom with the reality that race determines how communities of color experience our legal system. We support the members of our community who are exercising their constitutional right to free speech through protest and peaceful civil disobedience. We call on the United States Department of Justice and other authorities to investigate further. As a community of legal scholars and advocates, we commit to addressing these issues in the days to come.
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