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Associate Professor of Law Jeremiah Ho, whose research focuses on issues of law and inequality, particularly in the context of race and sexuality, is the author of a chapter on teaching human rights law. contracts which incorporates the critical theory of law and race.
The chapter “Uncovering Bias: Teaching Contracts Critically” appears in the book titled Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom. The book will be used primarily by law professors as a guide to teaching law with a greater awareness of bias to instill more socially aware and justice-centered practitioners.
The editors of the book project are law librarians and faculty members of law schools at Roger Williams University, the City of New York University (CUNY), the University of San Diego and the Rutgers University (Camden). Prominent legal academics include Angela Onwuachi-Willig (Dean, BU), Nancy Leong (Denver), Ruthann Robson (CUNY), Joseph Singer (Harvard), Rebecca Tushnet (Harvard), and Noah Katz (UCLA).
“The book is relevant to our contemporary discussions of diversity in the legal academy, as issues of systemic inequality in our society have surfaced in our current national consciousness more than at any time before,” Ho said. “Especially with the extraordinary events of 2020 and our continued journey to deal with Covid-19, we are seeing structural inequalities in various parts of our society and the law has been complicit in making these inequalities worse.”
According to Ho, professor of contract, recourse, trust and estates law, legal education can affect the way students and faculty perceive law, which means the way we teach law can inadvertently leave some prejudices come into the classroom. “As a result, as lawyers, we sometimes inadvertently introduce such biases into the way law is created and practiced, which can reinforce various types of structural inequality,” he said. “The book and the various chapters, including mine, seek to enlighten other law professors on how to be more inclusive in teaching our respective law subjects. My subject happens to be in contract law; my chapter is about raising awareness of how the rules of American contract law can contain certain unconscious biases, to enable students to understand how these biases can transfer into the practice of law and why we should try to make American law less pernicious and exclusive contracts.
Ho’s most recent publication focuses on teaching contract law in the first year with a critical focus on anti-racism and inclusion. “In particular, I discuss how to teach contracts by highlighting the tendency in US contract law to overemphasize assumptions and biases regarding purchasing and bargaining power, especially when those assumptions and biases are ordered by an established objective theory of procurement that attempts to act. in a neutral way but in fact proliferates the norms of the status quo and reproduces racial, gender and class hierarchies.
Esteemed member of the Faculty of Law of UMass
Professor Ho joined UMass Law School in 2012. Last year he received the Manning Prize for Teaching Excellence, awarded annually to a faculty member from across the university, for his exemplary dedication to students and the campus community. He has been named Professor of the Year six times by the UMass Law Student Bar Association.
As the UMass Law Review A research and scholarship advisor, Professor Ho works closely with students on their research and scholarly writings. An article he co-wrote with the student editor was recently published in the Harvard Journal on Legislation.
Professor Ho has published in leading legal journals at Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, University of California, Davis, Marquette, Utah and Kentucky, as well as the Legal Education Journal. His two most recent articles on LGBTQ legal advancements merge critical legal studies and principles of racial theory in how to interpret progress for LGBTQ people. The articles are “Queer Sacrifice in Masterpiece Cakeshop” from the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism (published in spring 2020), and “Queering Bostock” from American University Journal of Law, Social Policy, and Gender (published fall 2021).
“Because contract law is so prevalent in the way we improve our daily lives – in our work, in our travels, in our purchases, in the way we support each other – it is important that law students recognize in how the prejudices that American contract law possesses towards marginalized groups can make human development difficult for some and not for others. In this way, my chapter offers a starting point for law professors who want to be more aware that the way we teach contract law can exacerbate these societal inequalities. I hope this will motivate my colleagues to be creative in their teaching when it comes to recognizing these issues and advancing pedagogy.
Departments Faculty of Law, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Law – Home
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