Murray on Performance Artist Rafa Esparza's Work and a Legal Analysis of Police Brutality and Police Killings of People of Color

Yxta Maya Murray, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, is publishing Rafa Esparza's Red Summer in the Fordham Urban Law Journal Online. Here is the abstract.

This essay analyzes the contributions that performance artist Rafa Esparza’s 2016 action “Red Summer” offers to legal analyses of police brutality and police killings of people of color. Building on the Demosprudence jurisprudence of Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres, as well as the author’s work on “artifacts” (studying relationships between visual and performance art and law), the author considers how Esparza’s invocation of grief and anguish combats official disdain of anti-police brutality social movements and etiolated legal responses to police killings.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.