CIVILITY AS MORALLY JUSTIFIED OPPRESSION, 30 Tex. J. on C.L. & C.R. 89

Abstract

Contemporary legal education's predominant focus on civility within the Professional Identity Formation (PIF) framework perpetuates systemic racism, cloaking it in a guise of moral certitude. Civility, as an offshoot of moral philosophy, functions as a formidable instrument of oppression, ratifying behavioral norms and ideological constructs imposed by the powerful to sustain society's entrenched hierarchical structures, thereby obfuscating pervasive inequities that undergird the social fabric. This Article critically interrogates the contexts in which civility catalyzes the perception of inhumanity, oppression, and systemic inequity as morally sanctioned, thereby elucidating how civility normalizes brutality and cruelty. Further, PIF's emphasis on individual civility diminishes the imperative of the lawyer's role in societal reformation, excessively valorizing the lawyer's obligations to clients and professional counterparts, and in so doing, fortifies the systemic inequities endemic to legal education and the profession at large. Instead of perpetuating the existing paradigm, PIF pedagogy ought to reorient its focus towards the disruption and dismantling of systemic inequities.

Keywords: Systemic Racism, Civility, Professional Identity Formation, System Justification, Legal Education, Critical Race Theory