The Law and Inequality Project at the Widener University School of Law is dedicated to understanding the relationship between law and inequality, and to the use of law to remedy inequality. Through its academic component, the Project encourages and facilitates research, writing, and teaching that focuses on the intersection between law and inequality. Through its action component, the Project undertakes and supports efforts to redress inequality in the community, including community education programs; legal needs assessments; the provision of legal services to needy individuals; impact litigation; and legislative or administrative advocacy. The focus of both components of the Project is on wealth inequality, and on trait-based inequalities-chiefly, inequalities correlated with disability, gender, race, and sexual orientation.
In pursuing its mission, the Law and Inequality Project advances the goals of the School of Law, as defined by the of the School of Law Strategic Plan,
[1] by the Strategic Plan of Widener University,
[2] and by the standards of the American Bar Association covering the accreditation of law schools.
[3] [1] The relevant goals include the following:
- Design a curriculum that educates our students to be successful lawyers who are professionally skilled, intellectually engaged, and involved in their communities.
- Develop a Law School Community whose diversity enriches the lives of all members and where our students are prepared for living and working in a pluralistic and ever-changing world.
- Aggressively enhance our Reputation and promote Widener Law as an excellent academic institution which is student centered and committed to serving the community.
- Develop distinctive programs that enhance the intellectual experience and practical skills of a diverse student body, advance the law, and strengthen relations with the legal, academic, and other communities we serve.
[2] The relevant goals include the following:
- Goal 1: Develop a university community whose diversity enriches the lives of all members and where our students are prepared for living in a pluralistic and ever-changing world.
- Goal 4: Transform Widener into a university known for distinctive educational programs that effectively use experiential and collaborative learning, mentoring, and engaged teaching and that emphasize the linkage between curricula and societal needs.
- Goal 7: Implement strategies to strengthen the integration of liberal arts and sciences and professional programs, and enrich our general education offerings to ensure that every undergraduate student has common educational experiences involving civic engagement and experiential learning.
- Goal 9: Raise the profile of Widener University among metropolitan leaders, the general public, the academic disciplines and the national educational community.
- Goal 11: Address the metropolitan region's most pressing concerns and enhance our program offerings to respond to the educational needs of our community.
- Goal 12: Actively promote the development of leadership skills and provide opportunities for leadership experience for members of the university community so that they may demonstrate civic and professional leadership.
[3] (Standard 301(a) requires that a law school "maintain an educational program that prepares its students for admission to the bar, and effective and responsible participation in the legal profession"; the curriculum of that program must provide instruction "in the history, goals, structure, duties, values, and responsibilities of the legal profession and its members,"
(302(b)), and shall include "live-client or other real-life practice experiences." (
302(c)(2)). Additionally, a law school "should encourage and provide opportunities for student participation in pro bono activities,"(
302(e)), and must establish policies that address a faculty member's "obligations to the public, including participation in pro bono activities." (
404 (a)(5)).