Rising Above Themselves: Why Today’s Lawyers of Color Must Look Beyond Color

This way particular sympathies, biases, and prejudices are replaced by the judge's non-discriminatory appreciation of the rule of law and the obligation of courts to both respect elected authorities and to behave as a check against democracy run amok. Lawyers of color could contribute to society by the awareness that their promise is greater than race or color and by channeling race as a means but not as an endpoint to understand (and to aspire to remedy inasmuch as the relevant constitutional, positive law, or regulatory provision permits) discrimination in all its forms. In other words, minority lawyers must rise above themselves. That will be a necessary, even if not a sufficient, fulfillment of "a more perfect [U]nion." The Author argues that lawyers of color, just like women and other groups once heavily disadvantaged both by law and in the legal profession, do sometimes bring a comprehensive awareness benefiting the particular legal provision.