Libby Kao

October 23, 2015

Delineating “The Fight for Civil Rights” through Legal Advocacy in Government and Policy

At each stirring call for action, lobbying movement and social media news blast, “the fight for civil rights” continues to be redefined—expanded and codified and interrogated again, perhaps never intended to be defined in the first place. This inconstancy generates energy and versatility, to be sure, but also forces us to ask: what is a sustainable vehicle for civil rights work? What can bring continuity, instigate authoritative change, apply viable legal methods and engage the community? This summer, through my internships at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Civil Rights Center, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Asian American Bar Association of New York, I encountered a powerful intersection that poses one answer to this inquiry: “fighting for civil rights” through not only the broader field of employment law and labor policymaking, but also through legal instruments like alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and activist scholarship that reaches from classroom discussions on critical race theory to cases currently being heard by Supreme Court. Along the way, this work must probe the sites and sources of discrimination and inequity, open itself to new program design, and interconnect private legal practices, nonprofits, and government agencies as dynamic professional spheres. This work must draw upon more than history or theory, in order to shape the way our society grapples with the very definition of civil rights—be it tentatively undefined, recently redefined, or unfettered by definition altogether.