BERKELEY JOURNAL OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN LAW & POLICY

University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

The Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy (BJALP)(formerly the African-American Law & Policy Report) is published annually each spring by students at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). The JOURNAL was founded in 1992 and is a forum for scholars, practitioners and students to address law and policy issues relating specifically to the African-American community and people of color, generally.

Our Mandate:

BJALP is dedicated to addressing legal and policy issues that affect the African-American community and people of color in general. BJALP deals with such matters as constitutional law, criminal justice, civil rights, African-American participation in the political process, the death penalty, fair housing, economic development in the African-American community, African and Caribbean immigration to the United States, health issues that affect African Americans, as well as issues affecting Africa and the African Diaspora.

Our History:

The African-American Law & Policy Report (ALPR) was founded at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 1992 to provide an alternative forum to address legal and policy issues of concern to African Americans. But, its roots hearken back to the Black Law Journal (presently the National Black Law Journal) established in 1971 at UCLA School of Law.

The Black Law Journal represented a collaborative effort, with students at other schools occasionally publishing individual issues of the Black Law Journal with the assistance of UCLA and their home law schools. In 1987, UCLA and Boalt Hall published a joint issue of the Black Law Journal. Just five years later, with the founding of ALPR, students at Boalt expanded and institutionalized their roles as contributors to black legal scholarship.

In 1994, the first volume of the African-American Law & Policy Report was published. At that time, ALPR was one of only three black law journals in the nation. Those three journals occupied a unique space in legal academia because they attended to scholarship and topics that were otherwise ignored. The Editors-in-Chief of ALPR’s inaugural issue, Mario Barnes and Angela Watkins, recognized that “if the stories of minority scholars were widely accepted and published in majority law journals, if the problems strangling minority communities were often the focus of scholarly discourse, then we probably would not need this journal.” We need this journal now as much as then.

The 1996 passage of Proposition 209 marked the end of race-conscious admissions in California’s public schools. Proposition 209 paved the way for the re-segregation of higher education and hampered the possibility of a healthy and striving black law journal. In 1997, Boalt Hall enrolled one black student. That same year, ALPR published its third volume. The conspicuous absence of African Americans at Boalt had a debilitating effect on ALPR, making regular publication difficult. For the next several years ALPR departed from its normal annual publication schedule and published only two volumes both of which were in collaboration with other law journals on campus.

In 2003, we published our first independent volume since the passage of Proposition 209. Although the publication was not without difficulty, it signified the rebirth of the African-American Law & Policy Report. In Spring 2004, we followed with Volume 6 -the Reparations issue- while producing a national symposium: The Role of Law & Policy: Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. In Spring 2005, we published Volume 7--our most far-reaching issue to date. For example, our lead article by Professors Kevin Johnson and Angela Onwuachi-Willig responds to a Stanford Law Review article by Professor Richard Sander attacking affirmative action policies that are designed to enhance admissions rates of African Americans at elite law schools.

In fall 2005, we changed our name to the Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy. In 2007, we hosted a symposium -- Setting the Agenda: Examining the Critical Legal Issues Facing African-Americans and Minority Communities in the 2008 Elections. For more information, visit www.settingtheagenda2008.com.

Our past several volumes clearly illustrate that BJALP has decisively reclaimed its rightful place as one of the preeminent scholarly journals for and about the African-American community. This academic year, BJALP will publish two independent editions for the first time in the history of the journal.