I have long felt that Peter Fitzpatrick's 1987 paper, ‘Racism and the innocence of law’, should be closely studied by all law students during, or shortly after, their induction to the study of law. These concise notes on the paper are written primarily in tribute to a friend, colleague and mentor but, in writing them, I hope also to demonstrate how this early instance of a theory about how law is intertwined in racial capitalism could be taught in those law schools that harbour ambitions to be not only critical, but also decolonial. Inevitably, in such a short piece, choices have had to be made about which aspects of the paper to foreground and which to leave out entirely. I trust that my decision to focus on those aspects that can be more readily comprehended by a student with limited knowledge of legal theory and substantive fields of law will not be thought to have unduly watered down its meaning.

中文翻译：

---

关于彼得·菲茨帕特里克（Peter Fitzpatrick）的“种族主义与法律的纯真”的简明说明

我一直认为彼得·菲茨帕特里克 1987 年的论文“种族主义和法律的纯真”应该由所有法学院学生在他们开始学习法律期间或之后不久进行仔细研究。论文上的这些简明笔记主要是为了向一位朋友、同事和导师致敬，但在写这些笔记时，我还希望证明这种关于法律如何与种族资本主义交织在一起的理论的早期实例可以在这些法律中教授雄心勃勃的学校不仅具有批判性，而且去殖民主义的. 不可避免地，在如此短的文章中，必须选择论文的哪些方面要突出，哪些方面要完全省略。我相信，我决定专注于那些对法律理论和法律实体领域知识有限的学生更容易理解的方面不会被认为过度淡化了它的意义。