Thank you for reading Issue 2 of Volume 32 of the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy. As the nation’s first law journal dedicated to publishing critical scholarship focused on solutions to end poverty and economic injustice, we are excited to share these five pieces with our readers.

This Issue is focused on discarding practices that harm us and building up new structures that serve us. We can pave the way toward prison abolition by first getting rid of the public criminal record. We can end coercive practices targeting low-income women and repeal the Hyde Amendment, while also funding maternal healthcare resources, facilities, and experts. We can transform thousands of Baby Boomer-owned small businesses into worker-owned cooperatives to help address wealth inequality and improve workplace democracy. We can develop a praxis that utilizes the theory of transition design to create a world in which socio-economic status no longer serves as a barrier to accessing the social determinants of health. And we can build the legal and physical infrastructure needed to bring access to justice closer to home for thousands of poor and working-class people in the U.S. who live untenably far from legal services and courts.

In our first Article of the Issue, Professor Tomar Pierson-Brown writes powerfully about health justice praxis, and uses her own research, theory, and transition design workshop to articulate practical means for producing community-led policy and problem-solving in the field. Professor Pierson-Brown’s award-winning work reminds us of the rigorous commitment to both theory and practice required of public interest lawyers. Our second Article, written by Professor Julie Cortes, presents a bold and exciting vision for the future—one in which retiring small business owners transform their companies into worker-owned cooperatives. After depicting a gripping narrative of U.S. economic history and the American Dream, Professor Cortes poses that the conditions are ripe for an equitable, democratic response to both the impending “silver tsunami” and growing wealth inequality. The third Article, by Isabel Lafky, fills a crucial gap in the robust scholarly dialogue about rural inequalities related to the legal system. This piece shows just how dire the landscape of access to justice is for thousands of people in the U.S. on the West Coast alone, merely due to their physical distance from legal services or courts. Through novel research, Lafky outlines achievable solutions in the movement to stop the civil legal system from further exacerbating poverty conditions for so many.

Our two Notes are written by current Georgetown University Law Center students. First, Anna Kutbay writes critically about the oft-overlooked intersection of anti-poverty strategies and equitable, non-coercive healthcare. Kutbay highlights timely issues in health justice spaces—from long-acting reversible contraceptives to Medicaid to maternal health deserts—to reframe the conversation about both policy and care for low-income women. Next, in Oliwia Lukacz’s Note, we are reminded, in the spirit of abolitionism, that sometimes there is no need to recreate or replace a broken facet of a system. Lukacz argues that our nation’s practice of making criminal records public and integrated into every part of our social and political lives severely harms those impacted by the carceral system—including by increasing the likelihood of recidivism and the scourge of poverty.

The stakes feel higher than ever in this moment. We are proud to publish such an active, solution-driven Issue. We hope these ideas situate you for the work ahead, but also inspire you to use our great privilege as attorneys to support the most vulnerable in our communities.

Thank you, always, to our phenomenal staff and senior editors and to our pod leaders for doing the meticulous work of leading our editing process. Thank you to all of the GJPLP staff, our Board of Advisors, and our Faculty Advisors for keeping the ship moving. Thank you to our authors for trusting us with your brilliant ideas and writing, and for your partnership on this Issue. Finally, thank you to our readers—we hope you enjoy.

Sincerely,

Sarah Clements, Editor in Chief, Vol. 32

Renée Cordio, Co-Managing Editor, Vol. 32

Maya Hamblin, Co-Managing Editor, Vol. 32