Patricia Williams

Patricia Williams, born in 1951, is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She currently writes a column for The Nation. Williams receives her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1975 and teaches at Dartmouth College thereafter. Williams is a well-known member of the critical legal studies movement and a famous defender of crucial race theory. This theory defends structuring law in part around a fundamental category of race.

Williams' first book is The Alchemy of Race and Rights, which explains her unique perspective on the critical legal studies movement as a black woman. While the book defends many of the movement's main ideas, Williams adds some of her own.

While Williams' book, at its most general level, concerns the connection between the concepts of race and rights, she puts herself on prominent display and opens up her emotions and details of her personal...