Introduction

• Author: Colleen Sheppard
• Pages: 1-9

1

Introduction

She told me that our ories are the ladders that make it easier for us to touch

the ars.

— Donovan Livingston, 20161

   years ago, I was asked to give a speech at a conference

organized by high-school girls about the role of law in young women’s

lives. I focused on the law, coercion, and young women and discussed

various ways in which the law played a coercive role, using examples

from actual legal cases. At the end of my talk, the f‌irst question I was

asked was, “What is coercion?” Needless to say, I hadn’t def‌ined the

meaning of coercion — “the action or practice of persuading some-

one to do something by using force or threats”2 — at the outset and

had simply assumed that everyone knew what it meant. I was taken

aback and realized the mistake that I had made. I explained it as

clearly as I could but was left humbled by the experience. It raised

an important question: How can we ensure that we communicate

the meaning of legal concepts in ways that make sense to broad and

diverse audiences? If we want scholarly work to be accessible, we

need to think carefully about how we communicate the things we

learn in our research.

In my work, I have focused a lot of my teaching and research

on discrimination and equality rights. While the organizing theme

throughout the chapters is discrimination, the underlying animating

principle is equality. The two concepts are closely related — equality