On (Not) Queering Legal Writing

Abstract

The author reflects on the contradictions of his attempts to queer legal writing pedagogy. He introduces a lesbian couple into a hypothetical, but students do not recognize them as lesbian or a couple. He takes steps to make the classroom safer for trans students, but realizes he may have no trans students in his classroom. Meanwhile, students read his performance as queer in unexpected ways. The author offers provocative questions about the relationships among systemic injustice, queer forms of resistance, legal writing, and the academy. If it is impossible to teach people to write effectively for a deeply biased and hierarchical legal system in subversive and liberatory ways, then how can we do it anyway, or what might we want to do instead?