The Equal Justice Society is a national organization of scholars, advocates and concerned individuals advancing creative legal strategies and public policy for enduring social change.EJS will marshal our forces to defeat the right wing assault on social and racial justice. Our goal is to reshape jurisprudence to ensure that the rights of all are expanded, rather than diminished, by our courts and policy makers.

The History of EJS

In the Fall of 2000, several individuals from the progressive legal community began meeting to discuss their mounting concerns about the rightward tilt of the courts and of legal doctrine in such fields as civil rights, environmental protection, voting rights, criminal law, immigration law, and federalism. Like many progressives around the country, we were tired of despairing separately about the rollback of decades of achievements in case precedent, social justice lawyering, and organizing.

Drawing upon the strength of existing progressive legal organizations and forging new alliances with think tanks and research institutes, the EJS core group concluded that the time is ripe for a new coalition of practitioners, academics, think tanks and students to develop and implement innovative legal theories and strategies.

Our Guiding Principles

We believe that the regressive right-wing bias of our federal judicial system is a threat to constitutional democracy, due process, and equality. We believe in a representative, impartial, and independent judiciary. We believe in the role of courts to provide full access to the legal system and to promote equal justice for all.

Guided by these principles, the Equal Justice Society aims to unify and organize those who are interested in generating, developing, and supporting innovative legal theories and strategies to eliminate the conservative bias of our legal system. Specifically, the Equal Justice Society seeks to: