The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) convened an Expert Symposium on Social Justice and Equality Law Education on 19 December 2023. The symposium, which took place on the Teams platform, brought together legal academics currently offering courses on Social Justice and Equality Law or Social Justice and the Law, to share good practices while reflecting on current approaches, challenges, and prospects to improve and scale offerings. Symposium participants were drawn from 11 leading institutions, among them international academic institutions and the chairperson of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Committee on Freedom of Association (CFA) in Switzerland.
The core objectives of the symposium were to:
- Review the Social Justice and Law short courses offered by the CSJ, benchmarking the same against comparable approaches on social justice and equality law education.
- Share information on social justice and equality law courses, including short courses, modules, master’s, and doctoral studies and reflect on what has worked.
- Identify and reflect on overlaps and gaps; and
- Share perspectives on the future of social justice and equality law pedagogy and collaboration opportunities.
- Establish a Social Justice and Equality Law Educators Association (SOJELEA) as a platform for learning and growing together.
The dialogue enriched and diversified the conscious conversation on social justice and equality law pedagogy. The symposium exceeded expectations, particularly regarding the exceptional level of commitment to social justice among participants, depth of empathy and richness of the shared good practices. The symposium concluded with a vote on a resolution to constitute itself as a professional association called the Social Justice and Equality Law Educators’ Association (SOJELEA). SOJELEA was established as a specialist network platform for learning and growing together as social justice and equality law educators and practitioners. It was also agreed that SOJELEA will serve as a platform to facilitate collaboration on levelling up social justice and equality law to catalyse progress in the advancement of social justice and contribute to the achievement of relevant aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda by 2030.