As director of the Business Enterprise Law Clinic and assistant professor of law at The John Marshall Law School (JMLS), Renee C. Hatcher is redefining what it means to bring about sustainable economic justice through community development law.
The Gary, Indiana native recalls observing how the steel town’s nearly 30,000 jobs dwindled down to less than 3,000 after globalization and automation occurred, sparking her interest in thinking about how these different processes lead communities — particularly low-income and communities of color — to create innovative economic approaches that meet their material needs.
This framework of Hatcher’s scholarship and legal practice operates under the solidarity economy theory. In many ways, the work she does elevates “the good news” and not “just the resist work,” she adds.
This can look like people organizing around worker cooperatives, building innovative enterprises or using bartering services or time-banking, for example, to address worker exploitation.
“I like to say that a lot of it is really inspiring and is good news in terms of how people are using what they have in many cases because they have been neglected by the formal economy or because they’ve been left out of mainstream economic opportunities,” Hatcher says. “They are creating new kinds of economic arrangements that actually work for them and put them in a better position.”
Darby Dickerson, dean and professor of law at JMLS, says Hatcher’s Business Enterprise Law Clinic is about empowerment.
Hatcher is “a great listener and you can tell that she seriously considers all perspectives,” she adds. Students gravitate to her clinic, where she teaches doctrine about transactional practices and skills and values around representing clients, the dean says.
