Echoes of Slavery: A Deep Dive into the Citing Slavery Project

Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series with Professor Justin Simard

Join Professor Nicole P. Dyszlewski and Professor Justin Simard for an engaging session where we delve into the Citing Slavery Project. This important project traces how legal cases citing slavery-era precedents continue to shape modern law. By mapping these citations, the project illuminates the persistent legal legacies of slavery, often hidden within seemingly neutral rulings. Attendees will gain an understanding of how the project started and how it continues to uncover the legal legacies of slavery. The conversation will allow us all to rethink the importance of citations to these cases and will spark critical discussions on justice, race, and the rule of law. We will discuss how the project has influenced reform, academic discourse, and public consciousness about the legal system’s entanglements with slavery. 

Finally, the session will offer practical insights into how the Citing Slavery Project can be integrated into law school curricula. Attendees will learn strategies for teaching with and about the project, using it as a powerful tool to enrich classroom discussions. This conversation will also highlight how the project encourages law students (and clerks and attorneys and judges) to critically examine the historical roots of contemporary legal principles, fostering a more nuanced understanding of the law’s ongoing relationship with systemic inequality.

Professor Justin Simard and Professor Nicole P. Dyszlewski will be joined by Citing Slavery Project Editors:

• Nina Jeffries, Duke University School of Law Student
• Misty S. Nichols, University of Oregon School of Law Alum
• Torence Witherspoon, Michigan State University College of Law Student

This event is co-sponsored by Roger Williams University School of Law, City University of New York School of Law, George Washington University Law School, Berkeley Law, JURIST, and Antiracist Development Institute.

1:00 - 2:00 PM EST

Register - November 6 - Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series

In 2021, RWU Law began sponsoring an ongoing Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series in collaboration with CUNY School of Law and JURIST. Each previous installment has been attended by hundreds of legal education professionals from across the country.

View Previous Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series Sessions

Meet the Speaker

Justin Simard is an Associate Professor of Law at the Michigan State University College of Law. At MSU he teaches Professional Responsibility, Contracts, Commercial Law, and legal history and directs the Citing Slavery Project and the Kelley Institute for Ethics and the Legal Profession. His research traces the transactional work of lawyers in the nineteenth century and the legacy of the law of slavery. Professor Simard received his bachelor’s degree in History from Rice University, and he completed his Juris Doctor and Ph.D. programs at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has been published in journals including the Law and History Review, Law and Social Inquiry, the NYU Review of Law and Social Change, the Stanford Law Review, and the Journal of Southern History. 

Meet the Moderator

Nicole P. Dyszlewski is one of the editors of Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom. She currently serves as Assistant Dean of Academic Innovation at Roger Williams University School of Law. She received a B.A. from Hofstra University, a J.D. from Boston University School of Law, and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She is a member of the Massachusetts State Bar and the Rhode Island State Bar. Her areas of interest are mass incarceration, access to justice, and systems of race and gender inequality in law. Nicole was the 2020 recipient of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Volunteer Service Award and the 2015 recipient of the AALL Emerging Leader Award.