Fumbling towards legal mobilization in the community college classroom

In this chapter I present a pedagogical approach that draws from legal mobilization methodologies and argue that we can and should attempt to co-construct a nomos of radical law with students. Urban community college students were able to evidence they understood there was a gap between law as lived and law as an ideal but had not challenged roles based in power-powerlessness. They seemed to be accepting their fate as powerless. In response, I designed an exploratory zone for students that linked the three dimensions of law to an advocacy or transformative model of learning: individuals would need to bind what was important to them with allies within the classroom in a way that utilized their existing skills and that co-constructed spaces for ongoing dialogue with the intention to advocate change across their differences. By bringing the injustices from “out there” as experienced by students to “in here,” new practices and collaborations were imagined, practiced, and documented. This chapter suggests legal mobilization requires a nomos and construction of alternative social practices for agency to be activated among powerless groups.