Kenneth J. Nachbar

At the height of the political turmoil of the late 1960s, a group of activist students and professors at N.Y.U. School of Law came together and discussed the ways in which legal scholarship could respond to the injustices suffered by those relegated to society’s margins. These students and faculty felt that the dominant legal discourse found in countless law reviews failed to address sufficiently the gross inequities that existed (and continue to exist) along the lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, age, and ability. The response of these students and academics was to establish the N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change. As the foreword to the first issue states, Social Change was “created to provide an outlet for student scholarship and analysis in areas of the law of particular interest to socially concerned attorneys.” That first issue contained four student-written articles, the commitments of the authors reflected in their topics: ineffective assistance of counsel for the poor, tactics for squatters in abandoned New York City buildings, reformation of laws regarding retaliatory evictions, and the legality of maximum grant regulations for welfare recipients. As stated in the foreword to that first issue, the founding members of Social Change sought to “provide a forum for law students at New York University, and perhaps others, who are anxious to develop creative solutions through law to social problems.” Over the past thirty years, Social Change has remained true to that commitment, while growing in scope and stature. Originally an annual publication, Social Change now publishes four issues per year. In addition to publishing the work of N.Y.U. students, we also now publish articles by nationally-recognized scholars, legal practitioners, and activists.