Through lyrics about violence, illicit drugs and relationships between the powerful and the powerless, hip-hop music offers a wealth of perspectives on the law and the U.S. Constitution.
Hip-hop has emerged as a topic of interest among legal scholars in recent years, and will take center stage in a path-breaking course and lecture series Professor Donald Tibbs will launch in the spring.
"A lot of professors are writing about hip-hop and the law, but other law schools have not organized a lecture series or offered a specific class on the subject," said Tibbs, whose article, "From Black Power to Hip Hop: Discussing Race, Policing, and the Fourth Amendment Through the 'War On' Paradigm," is forthcoming in the Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice.
A lecture series will bring leading scholars to campus:
• Imani Perry, professor of African American studies at Princeton University and author of "Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop," published by Duke University Press
• Paul Butler, Carville Dickinson Benson Research Professor of Law at George Washington University School of Law and author of "Let's Get Free: a Hip-Hop Theory of Justice," published by the New Press
• andré douglas pond cummings, professor of law at the University of West Virginia College of Law and author of "A Furious Kinship: Critical Race Theory and the Hip Hop Nation," published in University of Louisville Law Review
• Anthony Paul Farley, James Campbell Matthews Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at Albany Law School
• Akilah Folami, professor of law at Hofstra University School of Law and author of "From Habermas to 'Get Rich or Die Tryin,' Hip Hop, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the Black Public Sphere," published in Michigan Journal of Race and Law
• Tryon Woods, professor of sociology, criminal justice and policy at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and author of "Hip Hop and the Post-Racial Legal Un-Conscious," forthcoming in the Southern University Journal of Race, Gender and Poverty
• Pamela Bridgewater, professor of law at American University Washington College of Law Bret Asbury, professor of law at the Earle Mack School of Law and author of "Anti-Snitching Norms and Community Loyalty," published in the Oregon Law Review
• Kim Chanbonpin, professor of law at the John Marshall Law School and author of the forthcoming "Legal Writing, the Remix: Plagiarism and Hip Hop Ethics," in Mercer Law Review
• Andre Smith, professor of law at Widener University School of Law and author of "The Hidden Costs of Textualism: Does It Matter What Slaves Thought 'Direct Tax' Meant?" published in the Widener Journal of Law Economics and Race
"I want to give students access to multiple voices about the same subject matter," Tibbs said. "Tying the lecture series into a course cements it as an intellectual enterprise."
Through writing assignments and discussions, the course will explore perspectives on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights embedded in hip-hop lyrics. The course will examine the genre's blend of law and culture in evaluating themes like Fourth Amendment searches and seizures, First Amendment free speech and association, Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and a speedy trial.
The course will also cover critical race theory and themes of crime and punishment, as interpreted in the idiom of hip-hop.
Ethical, commercial and fiscal issues will be examined in the context of sampling, in which artists incorporate other performers' beats and rhythms in their own work.
"The debate about sampling provides a brilliant conceptual framework for talking about plagiarism and intellectual property," Tibbs said. "I hope students will get an opportunity to think about law in some fresh and exciting ways."
Tibbs hopes to compile materials from the lecture series into an anthology that will go beyond legal doctrine to incorporate a critique of law in action.
"That's a process that is sorely overlooked and undervalued in the legal academy," he said.