CFP: Arkansas Law Review Symposium on Cesar Garcia Hernandez’s Welcome the Wretched
The below call for papers for a symposium on the notion of the “criminal alien” engages Cesar Garcia Hernandez’s recent book, Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the “Criminal Alien.” The symposium will be held at the University of Arkansas Little Rock on April 4, 2025, and papers will be published in the UA Little Rock Law Review. The Law Review will cover travel and accommodations costs for presenters. More details from the CFP below and attached. Download CFP – Welcome the Wretched Symposium 2025
2025 SYMPOSIUM: IMMIGRATION LAW, ACCESS TO JUSTICE, AND RETHINKING THE
“CRIMINAL ALIEN”
CALL FOR PAPERS
The William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the UA Little
Rock Law Review invite paper proposals for the 2025 Ben J. Altheimer Symposium, to be held at the
Bowen School on April 4, 2025.
The annual Altheimer Symposium brings together prominent scholars and speakers to explore topics of
significant interest to the legal and scholarly community. The 2025 Altheimer Symposium invites
participants to address the intersection of immigration and criminal law – or “crimmigration” – focusing
particularly on questions of access to justice.
The point of departure for the 2025 Altheimer Symposium will be a reflection upon the notion of the
“criminal alien.” In early 2024, Professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández published Welcome the
Wretched: In Defense of the “Criminal Alien,” in which he argues that “a deeply flawed and racist criminal
legal system and immigration system [has] converged to senselessly cruel effect.” In a book that draws
upon a wide range of interdisciplinary sources, García Hernández “counters the fundamental assumption
that criminal activity has a rightful place in immigration matters, arguing that instead of using the
criminal legal system to identify people to deport, the United States should place a reimagined sense of
citizenship and solidarity at the center of immigration policy.”
Professor García Hernández will launch the 2025 Altheimer Symposium with a brief reflection on the
book and the concerns that led him to write it.
The 2025 Altheimer Symposium invites scholars to respond to García Hernández’s arguments and to
explore the theme of access to justice for immigrants in the criminal and immigration systems. The
Symposium thus aims to address the widespread recognition that the immigration system is broken, and
the related recognition that the criminal legal systems, at both the federal and state levels, are often,
erratically, and imperfectly used to enforce immigration law and policy. The Symposium therefore seeks
paper proposals that address any aspect of the intersection of immigration and criminal law and policy,
with solutions for addressing and improving failing aspects of U.S. immigration law. Following the
Symposium in the spring of 2025, accepted papers will be published in the UA Little Rock Law Review.
Proposals should be submitted no later than Friday, September 6, 2024. Accepted paper proposals and
details of the 2025 Altheimer Symposium will be delivered no later than Monday, September 30, 2024.
Questions should be directed to the UA Little Rock Law Review Symposium Editor, Alycia Jameson, at
acjameson@ualr.edu.
MHC