The Center for Law, Policy, and Social Action creates avenues for engaging and empowering students, faculty and alumni of the Law School community to build interdisciplinary connections across the Drexel community and beyond to promote justice and equality for all members of society.

The center provides opportunities for study and reflection on the relationships between law and justice. It also facilitates action-oriented research, scholarship and community engagement on law, legal systems and social change from local concerns to national policies. By linking scholars, legal practitioners, community activists and community members, the center seeks to better understanding of the real-world impacts of legal policies and practices, and to promote legal processes that prioritize justice and fairness.

Activities

The center hosts a range of activities, including talks and conferences. Visiting scholars from around the world provide guest lectures. The Law & Society Reading Group is a works-in-progress series that includes law students and faculty from across the campus and around the region. In 2019, the center will host a conference on the use of algorithms and big data in policy-making. The center also collaborates with faculty to develop working groups focused on important policy issues involving topics such as women’s health, environmental regulation and human rights.

Opportunities for Law Students

Consistent with the University’s commitment to learning beyond the traditional classroom, students have the opportunity to plan and participate in events, workshops and off-campus activities that relate to policy and social change.

The center also sponsors unique learning opportunities such as a semester-long course taught at the Federal Detention Center in Center City Philadelphia, where law students study alongside incarcerated individuals.

Community Engagement

The center promotes engagement in the community, launching efforts such as a partnership with the Philadelphia Education Fund to provide law-related programming and information to low income, first generation college-bound students from Philadelphia public high schools. This partnership will help to promote diversity in the legal profession, an important strategy for advancing justice.

The center also sponsors a Practitioner’s Reading Group, which provides an informal space for Law School alumni and their colleagues to reflect on difficult ethical issues related to public interest legal practice.