Critically addressing race

Professor Juan Perea studies the ways racial inequality and the law interact

“It’s important for everybody—but especially for law students—to understand that the law has been used as a vehicle for oppression and discrimination,” says Juan Perea, Curt and Linda Rodin Professor of Law and Social Justice. From Constitutional protections for slavery to legalized segregation to facially neutral laws that disproportionately affect marginalized communities, “the law has been used throughout our history to deprive racial minorities, women, and others of rights.”

Perea, who joined the School of Law’s full-time faculty in 2011, has spent his academic career studying and teaching about racial inequality, civil rights, and the legal history of race relations. His early scholarship focused on antidiscrimination law—“I went to law school because, as a Latino man, I was treated quite unfairly in workplaces without redress,” he says—and has steadily broadened from there.

Perea’s recent scholarship focuses on the ways Native American history has been erased “to make the dominant American society appear democratic and nonviolent,” he says. “Relations with native people influenced the development of the Constitution; then its powers were used to conquer Native Americans and enable other conquests, like Mexico and Puerto Rico. There’s a whole body of Constitutional law that purports to justify American military conquests, and it hasn’t been recognized.” His article “Denying the Violence: The Missing Constitutional Law of Conquest” will appear this fall in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law.

His scholarly work informs the way he teaches his courses: Constitutional Law, Employment Law, and Race and the Law. “I use a lot of my research in the classroom, presenting the evidence I’ve found that debunks a lot of the mythology surrounding the Constitution and American law,” he says. “It’s eye-opening for students, and most are open to it, but it’s uncomfortable sometimes. The process of learning something new can be uncomfortable in some ways.”

“It’s important for everybody—but especially for law students—to understand that the law has been used as a vehicle for oppression and discrimination.”

Perea’s belief that effective learning requires leaving a comfort zone applies as much to himself as to his students.

“I’m always learning and that’s why I love being a scholar and a law professor,” Perea says. “I get to follow up on the questions I have, end up learning a lot, and am able to share it in my writing and in the classroom. It’s a pretty good way to be in the world.” –Gail Mansfield (August 2022)