INTRODUCTION: THREE RESPONSES TO REWRITTEN OPINIONS IN CRITICAL RACE JUDGMENTS.

• Author: Chess, Gabe

CRITICAL RACE JUDGMENTS: REWRITTEN U.S. COURT OPINIONS ON RACE AND THE LAW. Edited by Bennett Capers, Devon W. Carbado, RA. Lenhardt and Angela Onwuachi-Willig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2022. Pp. xxx, 694. Cloth, $84.75; paper, $39.19.

Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law invites us to imagine. Imagine what could have been; imagine what could be. Imagine a legal landscape where judges not only consider but actively seek to dismantle the racist regime that has preceded them. Such a landscape may seem impossible, particularly given the recent polemicization of critical race theory. (1) But Professors Bennett Capers, (2) Devon W. Carbado, (3) Robin A. Lenhardt, (4) and Angela Onwuachi-Willig (5) have invited us to imagine. Through a collection of thirty-seven rewrites of landmark Supreme Court (and a sprinkling of lower federal court) cases using a critical race theory lens, the rewriters show us that racial consciousness in judicial decisionmaking is both possible and necessary. For those seeking a way to use the law as a real tool for social change, Critical Race Judgments provides an essential manual. Sitting alongside the 2016 Feminist Judgments collection, (6) this new body of scholarship proves that the law is not--and has never been--neutral or objective, and that through this recognition we can create a more just legal system.

Critical Race Judgments opens with Derrick Bell's imagined dissent in Brown v. Board of Education. Bell's spirit and legacy animate the pages that follow. The choice to open with the dissent also sets the stage for a collection of rewritten opinions that confront American law's fundamental relationship with white supremacy. Bell dissents from a decision often celebrated as the high mark of America's march towards racial equality. In so doing, he imagines the path not taken in Brown: a true account of America's racial hierarchy, and a choice to reckon honestly and deal earnestly with the change required to upend that hierarchy. Bell's candid accounting unfolds throughout the subsequent opinions.

The book is structured around five themes: Membership and Inclusion, Participation and Access, Property and Space, Intimate Choice and Autonomy, and Justice. That structure works alongside the opinions themselves to reorient our understanding of race in American law. By placing judgments from seemingly disparate doctrinal areas alongside each other, and by placing...