Living History Interview With Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic
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One of the unique features of Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems ("TLCP") is the publication of a "Living History Interview" with a person of international accomplishment and renown. The Living History Interview complements the symposium format of TLCP by blending theory and practice, thus giving a practical perspective to the questions examined in the symposium. The purpose of the Living History Interview is to invite the responses of a prominent international scholar, jurist, or politician-not to explore his or her professional point of view, but to gain insight into his or her personal perspectives as shaped by historical events in order to better understand the complex nature of international law. For this feature of TLCP, we conducted an interview with two pioneers of critical race legal theory, Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado. Page 222
One of the leading commentators on race in the United States, Richard Delgado has appeared on Good Morning America, the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, PBS, NPR, the Fred Friendly Show, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Author of over 150 journal articles and twenty-seven books, his work has been praised or reviewed in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. His books have won eight national book prizes, including six Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards for books on human rights in North America, the American Library Association's Outstanding Academic Book, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Stanley Fish described Delgado's career and book, THE RODRIGO CHRONICLES, in the following terms:
Richard Delgado is a triple pioneer. He was the first to question free speech ideology; he and a few others invented critical race theory; and he is both a theorist and an exemplar of the importance of storytelling in the workings of the law. This volume brings all of Delgado's strengths together in a stunning performance.
Delgado lives with his wife, legal writer Jean Stefancic, in Seattle, Washington, where he holds the title of University Professor at Seattle University School of Law. Page 223
Jean Stefancic is Research Professor of Law at Seattle University, where she writes about civil rights, law reform, social change, and legal scholarship. She has written and co-authored over forty articles and fifteen books, many with her husband Richard Delgado, with whom she shared writing residencies at Bellagio, Bogliasco, and Centrum. Their book, CRITICAL WHITE STUDIES: LOOKING BEHIND THE MIRROR, won a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. Her latest book, HOW LAWYERS LOSE THEIR WAY, examines how law practice can stifle creativity. Stefancic and Delgado also serve as co-editors for three book series.
Before joining the Seattle University faculty, Stefancic spent ten years at the University of Colorado Law School, where she was affiliated with the Latino/a Research & Policy Center and served on the advisory committee of the Center of the American West. During her five years at the University of Pittsburgh, she was a Research Professor of Law and a Derrick Bell Scholar. Page 224
Members of the TLCP Editorial Board conducted the following interview on Saturday, April 4, 2009, during the Critical Race Theory at 20 Conference held at the University of Iowa College of Law on April 2-4, 2009. The Conference commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the first critical race conference, held in 1989 in Madison, Wisconsin.
The preeminent scholar and Pulitzer Prize nominee Richard Delgado, a founder of critical race theory, gave the keynote address. Jean Stefancic, renowned for her work on civil rights, law reform, social change, and legal scholarship, participated in a roundtable discussion regarding critical race theory and interdisciplinarity.
Critical race theory emerged in legal scholarship in the 1980s as a framework to analyze and understand how race and America's racial history shape American law. This field is one of the most important and revolutionary developments in legal scholarship in the last century. Critical race theory has recently taken root in other academic disciplines, including sociology, social work, and education. Recently, it has begun influencing areas of U. S. law with an international nexus, such as the laws and policies of U. S. immigration.
our interview with Professors Delgado and stefancic touches on the founding of critical race theory, race in America after the election of President Obama, immigration, U. S. foreign policy, and international human rights.
TLCP: Last night in your keynote address you talked for some time about the beginnings of critical race theory, highlighting some of the conditions that explain why it took off the way it did, when it did. We would like to memorialize that in the Journal. Can you talk about how you personally found your way to focusing on this academic subject and tell us, a bit more broadly, about what your contemporaries were doing at the same time?
DELGADO: My father was an immigrant from Mexico, probably undocumented, and we kept on the move when I was young. I've always been interested in the rights of immigrants and asylees, and, having lived through the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, I was very much caught up in the ideas...
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