Gerald López

Professor of Law Emeritus

  • B.A. University of Southern California, 1970
  • J.D. Harvard, 1974
  • UCLA Faculty Since 1978

In earlier decades, López served on the faculties of NYU, Stanford, Harvard, and California Western law schools. In 2003, he founded the Center for Community Problem Solving in New York City. From 1985-1994, he helped develop and co-launched the Lawyering for Social Change Concentration at Stanford. In 1975, with Tom Adler, Roy Cazares and Napoleon Jones, he formed a radical storefront law firm in San Diego.

Over the years, López’s practice, his clinical teaching, and his writing have focused on whatever challenges subordinated communities face. Those challenges include the routinely brutal criminal justice and immigration systems. The often vile health care and educational institutions. The predatory financial, housing, labor, and consumer markets. The absence of favorable economic development and the presence of deadly environmental racism. The everyday failures to provide public benefits and to enforce anti-discrimination laws. The cold-blooded dismissal of the prevalence of domestic violence and sexual harassment. The rejection and weakening of self-determination, and so much more. Across all these fronts, López has emphasized how we can and should most ambitiously work with one another (practice rebelliously) in addressing often messy, entangled problems. He has called attention to how struggles of every sort (including dealing with ostensibly mundane hassles) express the largely ignored experiences of communities targeted as genetically and culturally sub-human by the bi-partisan mainstream as much as by the far right.

In all his work, he aims accurately to describe the ruthless contemporary and historical realities of everyday life governed by White Supremacist and authoritarian regimes (across the globe, transnationally, and within constitutional democracies like the United States). And he highlights constantly the need imaginatively to pursue varied strategies (familiar and improvised ensembles) to have a shot at changing situations and traditions that appear too formidable to alter. If we open up to the truth that everyone can teach us, López has stressed, we can always find others – from nearby to afar – demonstrating we can stand up to and sometimes take down godlike bullies and invincible networks. We can always discover in others and in ourselves, periods where we foreshadow and embody, through work and life, the transformed worlds that otherwise can feel hopelessly beyond our reach. López’s latest publication is Gerald P. López, "Growing Up in Authoritarian 1950s East LA," 66 UCLA Law Review (2019).

Bibliography

  • Books
    • The Center for Community Problem Solving Reentry Guide: a Handbook for People Coming out of Jails and Prisons and for Their Families and Communities. The Center for Community Problem Solving Press (2005).
    • Rebellious Lawyering: One Chicano's Vision of Progressive Law Practice. Westview Press (1992).
    • Contract Law and Its Application (with Mueller and Rosett). 3rd ed. Foundation Press (1983).
    • Teaching Suggestions for Instructors Using Contract Law and Its Application (with Mueller and Rosett). 3rd ed. Foundation Press (1983).
  • Articles And Chapters
    • Growing Up in Authoritarian 1950s East LA, 66 UCLA Law Review 1532 (2019).
    • Transform--Don't Just Tinker With--Legal Education (Part II), 24 Clinical Law Review 247 (2018). Full Text
    • Transform--Don't Just Tinker With--Legal Education, 23 Clinical Law Review 471 (2017). Full Text
    • How Mainstream Reformers Design Ambitious Reentry Programs Doomed to Fail and Destined to Reinforce Targeted Mass Incarceration and Social Control, 11 Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal 1 (2014).
    • The Health of Undocumented Mexicans in New York City, 32 Chicano/a-Latino/a Law Review 1 (2013). Full Text
    • Don't We Like Them Illegal?, 45 UC Davis Law Review 1711-1816 (2012). Full Text
    • Changing Systems, Changing Ourselves, 12 Harvard Latino Law Review 15-39 (2009).
    • A Rebellious Philosophy Born in East L.A., in A Companion to Latina/o Studies, 240-50 (edited by Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo, Blackwell Publishing, 2007).
    • Why Should We Honor Steve Shiffren?, 41 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 41-44 (2007).
    • Living and Lawyering Rebelliously, 73 Fordham Law Review 2041-2054 (2005).
    • The Center for Community Problem Solving Guide to Hiring People with Criminal Records, ( Center for Community Problem Solving, 2004). Book Manuscript
    • Shaping Community Problem Solving Around Community Knowledge, 79 New York University Law Review 59-114 (2004).
    • Working with Communities and Organizations, in Social Justice: Professionals, Communities, and Law, 158-171 (edited by Martha R. Mahoney, John O. Calmore, Stephanie Wildman, American Casebook Series, 2003).
    • The Center for Community Problem Solving Guide to Being Streetwise About Money, ( Center for Community Problem Solving, 2003). Book Manuscript
    • The Center for Community Problem Solving Guide to a Fair & Just Workplace, ( Center for Community Problem Solving, 2003). Book Manuscript
    • The Los Angeles Living Wage Ordinance, ( Center for Community Problem Solving, 2002). Working Paper
    • The Transformation of Port Richmond, ( Center for Community Problem Solving, 2002). Working Paper
    • Conceiving and Implementing the Neighborhood Legal Needs & Resources Project, ( Center for Community Problem Solving, 2001). Working Paper
    • The Work We Know So Little About, in Critical Race: The Cutting Edge, 592-599 2nd ed. (edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Temple University Press, 2000).
    • The American Dream, ( Latino Studies Program, 1999). Working Paper
    • Learning About Latinos, 19 Chicano/Latino Law Review 363-416 (1998). LatCrit Symposium Issue.
    • Still Looking for America: Beyond the Latino National Political Survey (with Luis Fraga, Herman Gallegos, Mary Louis Pratt, Renato Rosaldo, Jose Saldivar, Ramon Saldivar, and Guadalupe Valdes), in The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader, 240-6 (edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, New York University Press, 1998).
    • How Much Responsibility Does the U.S. Bear for Undocumented Mexican Immigration?, in The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader, 92-98 (edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, New York University Press, 1998).
    • An Aversion to Clients, 31 Harvard Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review 315-323 (1996). Symposium on Political Lawyering.
    • Living with 187, Living with Ourselves, ( Chicano Research Center, 1996). Working Paper
    • Economic Development in the "Murder Capital of the Nation", 60 Tennessee Law Review 685-705 (Summer, 1993).
    • The Lawyering For Social Change Program, ( Chicano Research Center, 1990). Working Paper
    • Reconceiving Civil Rights Practice: Seven Weeks in the Life of a Rebellious Collaboration, 77 Georgetown Law Journal 1603-1717 (1989).
    • Scholars' Reply to Professor Fried (with Kenneth L. Karst, Susan W. Prager, et al.), Yale Law Journal 163-168 (1989).
    • Training Future Lawyers to Work with the Politically and Socially Subordinated: Anti-Generic Legal Education, 91 West Virginia Law Review 305-387 (1989).
    • The Work We Know So Little About, 42 Stanford Law Review 1-13 (1989). Reprinted in The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader 339-46 (edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, New York: NYU Press, 1998).
    • The Idea of a Constitution in the Chicano Tradition, 37 Journal of Legal Education 162-166 (1987).
    • Book Review, A Declaration of War by Other Means: Disabling America: The `Rights Industry' in Our Time, 98 Harvard Law Review 1667-1678 (1985).
    • Lay Lawyering, 32 UCLA Law Review 1-60 (1984).
    • Foreword: Latinos and Latino Lawyers, 6 Chicano Law Review 1-6 (1983). Symposium on Latinos in the Law: Meeting the Challenge.
    • Undocumented Mexican Migration: In Search of a Just Immigration Law and Policy, 28 UCLA Law Review 615-714 (1981).
  • Other
    • Lay Lawyering, The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader 271-75 (edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, New York University Press, 1998).
    • Rebellious Lawyering: One Chicano's Vision of Progressive Law Practice, in Clinical Anthology Readings for Live-Client Clinics 192-193 (edited by Hurder, Alex J., Frank S. Bloch, Susan L. Brooks, and Susan L. Kay, Anderson Publishing Co., 1997).
    • (with Enid Colson and Courtney Schaberg), in An Affirmative Action Manual (1996).
    • Visions, Coalitions, Mobilizations, in Working Paper Series (Stanford Center for Chicano Research, 1996).
    • What We've Only Begun to Learn About Latinos and the Political Economy, in Working Paper Series (Berkeley Chicano/Latino Policy Project, 1995).
    • Still Looking for America: Beyond the Latino/a National Political Survey, in Working Paper Series (Stanford Center for Chicano Research, 1994).
    • Cleaning Up Our Own Houses, in Working Paper Series (Stanford Center for Chicano Research, 1994).
    • I'll Tell You What's Pathological, in Working Paper Series (Stanford Center for Chicano Research, 1993).
    • Big Time Players, Newsweek (Oct. 8, 1992). Reprinted in The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader 237-39 (edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, New York: New York Univ. Press, 1998).
    • Latino Political Visions, in Working Paper Series (Stanford Center for Chicano Research, 1992).
    • The Well-Defended Academic Identity, in Working Paper Series (Stanford Center for Chicano Research, 1991). Reprinted in The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader 408-12 (edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, New York: NYU Press, 1998).
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