Uniting Diverse Voices

Jeffrey Jamison

The Harvard Law & Policy Review is posed to be that forum that will unify and reinvigorate the innovative energies of progressives and become a driving force in the development of new progressive policy alternatives that depart from the liberal orthodoxies of the past while remaining true to progressive values.

As a progressive and a member of the American Constitution Society, I am proud to be a part of a diverse movement that speaks with many voices, encompasses various viewpoints and represents numerous hopes and aspirations for a society that will ensure that the fundamental principles of human dignity, individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, and access to justice enjoy their rightful, central place in American law. This diversity, however, as then Governor Mario Cuomo remarked in 1984, has its price. “The different people that we represent have different points of view. And sometimes they compete and even debate, and even argue.”

Since its founding in 2001, the American Constitution Society (ACS) sought to revitalize and transform these debates. The creation of the Harvard Law & Policy Review is an important step in realizing this objective. The Harvard Law & Policy Review will provide progressives with a much needed and long overdue forum to debate policy, create and cultivate a new governing philosophies and policies for the 21st century and challenge the current orthodoxy of both progressives and conservatives. As a constructive forum, it will help to unite progressives as we work towards creating a new progressive agenda for America. As a student run journal, HLPR will also play a vital role in the education and cultivation of the next generation of progressive leaders.

For most of America’s recent history, America has relied on progressive values as the compass that guided many of the our nations most important and innovative policy initiatives - Clinton’s welfare reform; Carter’s Camp David Peace Accord; Johnson’s civil rights; Kennedy’s Peace Corp and Alliance for Progress; Truman’s GI Bill of Rights and National Security Act; and Roosevelt’s New Deal and alphabet programs. For the last decade, progressives have become distracted and unfocused due to a lack of a cohesive vision and agenda for America, caused in part by the divisions among progressives. The Harvard Law & Policy Review is posed to be that forum that will unify and reinvigorate the innovative energies of progressives and become a driving force in the development of new progressive policy alternatives that depart from the liberal orthodoxies of the past while remaining true to progressive values.

* Jeffrey Jamison is a former president of the Harvard Law School student chapter of the American Constitution Society.

Preferred Citation: Jeffrey Jamison, Uniting Diverse Voices, 1 HARV. L. & POL'Y REV. (Online) (Sept. 18, 2006), http://www.hlpronline.com/2006/07/jamison_01.html.