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In November 1993, a group of student-activists at Georgetown Law founded the Georgetown Journal on Fighting Poverty to confront the legal systems that perpetuate wealth inequality and shed light on the experiences of people living in poverty. Though our name has changed, we remain steadfast in our commitment to eradicating poverty and the legal, political, and social structures that maintain it. The Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy (GJPLP) is an interdisciplinary forum for scholars, attorneys, policymakers, artists, poets, organizers, and impassioned citizens to contribute to the field of anti-poverty scholarship and offer solutions for a more equitable society.
GJPLP has grown into a robust team of sixty dedicated journal members who work to publish one volume of three issues each year, with pieces spanning disciplines, genres, and forms. As the nation’s first law journal dedicated to publishing critical scholarship focused on eradicating wealth inequality and economic injustice, we encourage submissions from authors with diverse experiences and strive to highlight the perspectives of people living in poverty.
GJPLP also hosts a bi-annual Poverty Law Symposium, tackling a particularly salient issue by bringing together experts in the field for a day-long conference and publishing a symposium issue of the journal. Recent symposium themes include The Future of Work: The Intersection of Poverty and Labor and Fulfilling Olmstead: Community Living for People with Disabilities. GJPLP also provides a space for journal members to volunteer with local mission-aligned organizations and contribute to broader anti-poverty work in the nation’s capital.
Since GJPLP’s founding, the journal has pushed the bounds of legal academia by publishing traditional law review articles by nationally recognized scholars alongside practitioner perspectives, student notes, and directly impacted voices. It is our hope that the legal theories, policy proposals, and litigation strategies addressed in this journal will prove constructive in tackling the structural inequalities experienced by marginalized communities and achieve more just socioeconomic outcomes.