For Immediate Release
October 11, 2005

Contact:
Greg Langlois , (202) 662-9500

Professor Emma Coleman Jordan

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Georgetown University Law Center Professor Emma Coleman Jordan and Professor Angela Harris of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) have authored a new book, " Economic Justice: Race, Gender, Identity and Economics" (Foundation Press), which aims to engage two areas of legal thought – critical legal scholarship and law and economics – in addressing questions of economic inequality in which race, class, language, culture, and identity are important variables contributing to persistent inequality.

"This is a remarkable book," says Georgetown Law Professor Michael Seidman. "Original in its very inception, there is nothing else like it in the legal literature.  It is analytically rigorous, endlessly interesting, and deeply disturbing."

"Economic Justice" explores the single most important set of questions that are most frequently left out of law school dialogue, according to Jordan. These questions include: Why doesn't the Constitution contain economic rights? Does traditional legal analysis play a role in reinforcing the rational choice, efficiency and wealth maximization rationales of conventional market theory? Can psychology, sociology, and anthropology contribute to more robust accounts of human decisionmaking, and thus provide more accurate accounts of the environment in which legal rules operate? How do race, gender, or sexual identity and class status operate in market transactions?

Jordan points out that in his State of the Union address to Congress in 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "We cannot be content, no matter how high [our] general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people – whether it be one-third, or one-fifth or one-tenth – is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure…true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence…people who are hungry and out a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."  And she observes that "today, the powerful vision of President Franklin D. Roosevelt sits nearly forgotten on the ash heap of history. Our book is designed to revive Roosevelt's vision for a new generation of law students."

Jordan says the topics the book addresses are particularly relevant now, after the nation and the world witnessed the stark racial and class consequences of leaving our poorest fellow citizens to their own limited market resources in the aftermath of natural disasters such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita in September. "Much of this book is directed to the legal issues of economic and social inequality that are emerging in the forefront of the national debate about the treatment of the Katrina victims," Jordan says.

Jordan is well known for her work in the fields of financial services and civil rights. Prior to her arrival at Georgetown Law, she was a professor at the University of California, Davis and a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School. At Georgetown, she teaches courses in economic justice, commercial law, and financial institutions.

She is the author or co-author of many articles and the following books,: "A Woman's Place is in the Market Place: Gender and Economics"; "When Markets Fail: Race And Economics"; "Cultural Economics: Markets and Culture"; "Beyond Rational Choice: Alternative Perspectives on Economics"; and “Race, Gender and Power in America," with Brandeis University Professor Anita Hill, for whom Jordan served as counsel during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

With the publication of "Economic Justice: Race, Gender, Identity and Economics," Jordan has returned to work on her manuscript, "Lynching: The Dark Metaphor of American Law," which is about the legal history of lynching and its impact on the contemporary problem of racially divided trust in the fairness of democratic institutions.

About Georgetown University Law Center

Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world’s premier law schools. It has the largest full-time faculty in the nation and is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means; justice is the end. With this principle in mind, the Law Center has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body.

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