The Future of Legal Education Will Be Queer

Abstract

This article explores how legal education can be made queer-er in the future. Drawing on personal experiences in law school, the author examines the potential of queering legal education to foster inclusivity and challenge heteronormative structures of learning and teaching. The article presents examples of spaces where queer approaches to teaching and learning may be deployed and examples of heteronormative, career-oriented, and individualistic practices in law school. Key themes of representation, non-futurity, failure, community, and utopia are employed to reveal biases inherent in various aspects of legal education, such as time, space, curriculum, faculty, and student experiences. Queer perspectives draw our attention to critically examine pervasive elements within law faculties such as productivity, excellence, adversarial processes, and individualism which prevent law schools from meaningfully integrating “outsider perspectives” such as queer theory. By embracing negativity, transgression, collectivity, and hope as philosophies of legal education, the author argues that law schools can provide students with the tools to articulate their relationship to the legal order in a more creative, politicized, and holistic manner. This article advocates for a future where law faculties actively embrace and integrate teachings from queer theory into their curriculum and pedagogical practices.