Yesterday, we were joined by Professor Kathryn Banks, who directs the Children’s Rights Clinic at Washington University School of Law. Professor Banks is a former public defender, and she is also a St. Louis native. We covered a wide range of topics related to courts and lawyers in the St. Louis region, including questions about access, fairness, and notice. Penina missed our podcast below when a tree fell on the power line adjacent to her house.

Apologies for the long break from the podcast as we’ve worked to transition to online teaching. Our students are now underway exploring the contours of their final design projects. In the meantime, we continue to explore various aspects of the intersection of law, race, and design. Today we turned to the complicated issue of policing, and we were privileged to be joined by our law school colleague, Professor Trevor Gardner. . . .

We’ve all seen some extraordinary developments since our last podcast, and we are working hard to reimagine our course for the rest of the semester. Today, the two of us met to discuss the plan forward. Three key points: (1) stay human, and keep everything in perspective: we are all going to be making judgments in the coming days and weeks that we can’t yet anticipate; (2) design constraints represents not only challenges but also opportunities; and (3) we are grateful to have started this course with a community-directed online engagement that now charts a natural path forward with both our student and community participants.

Last week, our class was joined by Jonathan Smith, Assistant Professor of Practice and Director of the Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic at Washington University’s Law School. For the past few years, Professor Smith has also helped lawyers think about how to integrate law and design: Law can be a design question from the get-go, evidenced for example, in the context of drafting contracts. . . .

Today’s class featured our law school colleague, Professor Kim Norwood. Among her many accomplishments, she is the editor of Ferguson’s Fault Lines, one of the primary texts for our class. Penina and I sat down with Professor Norwood after class to talk about law, race, design, education, and . . . hair.

Our colleague Heidi Kolk joined us for our last two classes. We began with a class visit to the Dred Scott courthouse. We then asked our students to return on their own to consider the broader site—the old levy and riverfront; the Arch; the former site of Harriet Scott’s residence; Eugene Field House at 600 block of Broadway (home of Roswell Field); the courthouse steps; street signs; the statues; historical markers—and plan a 3-minute presentation based on their experiences. On Wednesday, 12 of our 16 students presented a range of impressions and explorations. Professor Kolk observed the presentations, and we spoke with her afterward. Podcast below, and you’ll want to listen to this one to the end.

Audrey Western is a 2018 graduate of the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, currently working in St. Louis as a Ux/Ui designer at Capacity. She joined our class and shared important themes from her undergraduate senior capstone project, Narrative of Absence—a book she designed as a way to reflect on issues of vacancy and housing segregation in St. Louis . . .

As we mentioned in our last post, we had our students revisit Shelley v. Kraemer and Jones v. Alfred Mayer with some visual thinking and design research methods. . . .

We have spent the past three classes digging into two important cases, Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) and Jones v. Alfred Mayer Co. (1968). Lots to cover in this post . . .

We were delighted to have Dannie Boyd join us for today’s class. Dannie shared about the art of storytelling through images, spoken word, and written word. Afterward, Penina and John chatted with Dannie for a few minutes. Listen below!

Our second class explored the role of images in capturing protests. We reviewed and discussed six images in the public domain. Afterward, Penina and John continued our very low-budget, no editing podcast: this episode even includes an interruption when we learned we were in the wrong room. Listen below (works best in a browser other than Safari).

Our first class of the semester included a discussion of the Abdullah case described and linked in the previous blog post. After class, we spent a few minutes talking about the challenge of non-lawyers engaging with legal opinions. We recorded our 18-minute dialogue (which will make much more sense if you have read and reflected on Abdullah). Listen below.

We are kicking off our course with an initial reflection that focuses on the federal district court’s opinion in Abdullah v. County of St. Louis. The court enjoins St. Louis County and the Missouri Highway Patrol from enforcing a “keep moving” rule against protesters that would have prevented them from standing in one place for more than five seconds.  As you read the opinion, notice how the case raises important questions about law enforcement, the First Amendment, and expressive rights. In addition, note that this opinion is more than just a legal pronouncement. It also tells a story, evokes emotions, and tugs at the imagination.