Digital Commons Network^™

Judges Need To Exercise Their Responsibility To Require That Eligible Defendants Have Lawyers, Robert C. Boruchowitz

Faculty Articles

There are many courts in the United States, particularly misdemeanor courts, in which accused persons appear and often plead guilty without ever receiving the advice of counsel, even when they are eligible for a public defender. In various states, between twenty-five and sixty-eight percent of the defendants in misdemeanor cases do not have lawyers. In many courts in South Carolina, there is no public defender ever available. The American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) has filed a class action lawsuit against two South Carolina cities, alleging that they are unconstitutionally denying counsel to eligible accused persons.

There is no question that …

Invidious Deliberation: The Problem Of Congressional Bias In Federal Hate Crime Legislation, Sara Rankin

Faculty Articles

The intersection of power and prejudice can control the shape of statutory law, and yet a dearth of legal scholarship investigates it. Invidious Deliberation addresses that deficit. It tackles the problem of prejudice in Congressional deliberations at a particularly critical point: when Congress decides which groups to protect under federal hate crime legislation. The article contends that Congress’s own bias may exclude the most vulnerable groups from hate crime protection. To illustrate the point, this article systematically reviews over two decades of Congressional decisions with respect to expansions of the Hate Crime Statistics Act, a “gateway” for groups seeking protection …

Drug Panics In The Twenty-First Century: Ecstasy, Prescription Drugs, And The Reframing Of The War On Drugs, Deborah Ahrens

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court has failed to clarify this important procedural exception to the clear error standard. More than this, the Court has failed to explain why it refuses to apply independent judgment to all constitutional facts. The results of the differential treatment of these two legal concepts are: 1) Rule 52, and the Supreme Court’s approach to its constitutional fact exception is another type of denial of structural due process, preventing the legal norming of intentional discrimination jurisprudence; 2) institutional interests of doctrinal coherence and decisional accuracy are minimized in favor of reducing direct costs to the judicial system; 3) …

Promoting Language Access In The Legal Academy, Gillian Dutton, Beth Lyon, Jayesh Rathod, Deborah Weissman

Faculty Articles

Since the 1960s, the United States government has paid increasing attention to the rights of language minorities and to the need for greater civic and political integration of these groups. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the issuance of Executive Orders, and intervention by the federal judiciary, progress has been made in the realm of language access. State and local courts have likewise taken steps (albeit imperfectly) to provide interpretation and translation assistance to Limited English Proficient persons. Most recently, responding to both lack of services and inconsistent practices, the American Bar Association has set out …

Transforming Domestic Violence Representation, Jane Stoever

Faculty Articles

The dominant theories used in the law to explain domestic violence, namely, the Power and Control Wheel and the Cycle of Violence, provide only limited insight into intimate partner abuse. Both theories focus exclusively on the abusive partner' wrongful actions, consistent with recent decades' concentration on criminalization, but fail to educate about the survivor's needs and efforts to end violence. The Stages of Change Model, conversely, reveals that domestic abuse survivors seek an end to relationship violence through a five-stage cyclical sequence and identifies the survivor's needs and actions at each stage. This critical information should inform the representation of …

Preliminary Report On Race And Washington’S Criminal Justice System, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

For this Report, the Research Working Group reviewed evidence on disproportionality in Washington’s criminal justice system and considered whether crime commission rates accounted for this disproportionality. They found that crime commission rates by race and ethnicity are largely unknown and perhaps unknowable, but that some researchers simply take arrest rates as good proxies for underlying commission rates for all crimes. They found that use of arrest rates likely overstates black crime commission rates for several reasons. But even if arrest rates are used as a proxy for underlying crime commission rates, the extent of racial disproportionality is not explained by …

Disparately Seeking Jurors: Disparate Impact And The (Mis)Use Of Batson, Anna Roberts

Faculty Articles

This Article, "Disparately Seeking Jurors: Disparate Impact and the (Mis)use of Batson," uncovers a stark inequality within Equal Protection jurisprudence. On the 25th Anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Batson v. Kentucky, which established a three-step test for assessing claims of purposeful discrimination in jury selection, I present the first comprehensive research on the application by the lower federal courts of Batson’s disparate impact analysis. The results are striking. Whereas the test was developed to prevent the discriminatory removal of African American jurors from the trials of African Americans, the courts now use disparate impact analysis only to …

The Fred T. Korematsu Center For Law And Equality And Its Vision For Social Change, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

The Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law takes its name and inspiration from Fred Korematsu. Entrusted with honoring and furthering his legacy, the Korematsu Center, although not speaking as or for him, constructs its identity through its activities as an actor in the legal community and more broadly in the public. The Korematsu Center is very self-consciously engaged in developing a distinct personality as a collective entity that exists not just as a collection of the individuals or projects within the center.

The Korematsu Center is constituted by its commitments, by what …

Meeting Across The River: Why Affirmative Action Needs Race And Class Diversity, Deirdre M. Bowen

Faculty Articles

This paper is a response to Richard Sander’s latest work challenging the notion that race based affirmative action is still relevant and demanding that institutions of higher education consider class based affirmative action. To support his thesis, Sander conducts an empirical study on who benefits from affirmative action.

This Article is divided into three sections, each containing a critique of Sander’s arguments and analysis. First, I briefly reframe and reiterate the history of race and ethnicity in affirmative action’s origins to directly confront the assumption that Sander makes about what affirmative action’s original purpose entailed. The goal of Part I …

Rodrigo’S Reconsideration: Intersectionality And The Future Of Critical Race Theory, Richard Delgado

Faculty Articles

The author presents a discussion between him and his friend Rodrigo Crenshaw on intersectionality and the future of critical race theory. They discuss the three core critical-race theory ideas which include narrative jurisprudence, integroup coalitions and intersectionality. The author also explains the concept of classical liberalism.

Rodrigo's Portent: California And The Coming Neocolonial Order, Richard Delgado

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Trans Law Reform Strategies, Co-Optation, And The Potential For Transformative Change, Dean Spade

Faculty Articles

This paper considers two critiques of how law and rights struggles co-opt social movements and applies them to the example of the emergent law reforms in the area of transgender rights. First, it considers the limitations of the discrimination principle. Second, it looks at the emergent critique of "nonprofitization." Examining how the focus on formal legal equality and the growth of non-profit formations that centralize the concerns and experiences of white and upper class people have impacted gay and lesbian rights work, the paper suggests that these avenues present dangers to creating meaningful transformation of conditions facing trans population, including …

Stories Absent From The Courtroom: Responding To Domestic Violence In The Context Of Hiv And Aids, Jane Stoever

Faculty Articles

HIV/AIDS dramatically impacts domestic violence survivors' needs and demands reconceptualization of current responses to domestic violence. This article aims to illuminate the problem of domestic violence in the context of HIV/AIDS and to prompt further development of legal response systems. Specifically, this article brings together the worlds of law, public health, and women's lived experiences to argue for recognizing and responding to domestic violence in the context of HIV/AIDS in the United States. Utilizing accounts of clients' experiences and data from public health studies, this article sets forth eight categories of HIV/AIDS-related domestic violence: repercussions from partner notification, use of …

Civil Gideon As A Human Right: Is The U.S. Going To Join Step With The Rest Of The Developed World?, Raven Lidman

Faculty Articles

This article will discuss the scope of services and rationale for the right to a free lawyer in civil matters as is the case in criminal cases. This right is currently provided in the 49 European member countries in the Council of Europe (COE), Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, Zambia, South Africa, and Brazil. Frequent reference will be made to a chart in the appendix, which condenses extensive information about programs in each of these countries. The article’s general conclusion regarding the foreign programs is that the right to a free lawyer in civil matters is a …

Latinos And American Law: Landmark Supreme Court Cases, Steven W. Bender

Faculty Articles

In this review, the author advocates for a work which provides much needed attention to Latinos in the context of American Law. Specifically, the review outlines key elements of Soltero’s work, which highlights Latino Supreme Court cases.

Freedom In A Regulatory State?: Lawrence, Marriage And Biopolitics, Dean Spade, Craig Willse

Faculty Articles

This paper attempts to trace the links between the Lawrence v. Texas decision and campaigns for gay marriage rights in order to envision movements that seek justice for more than just the most racially and economically privileged lesbians and gay men. The authors outline the limits of the agenda represented by Lawrence and propose alternative modes for resisting the coercive regulation of sexuality, gender, and family formations.

Business As Usual? Brown And The Continuing Conundrum Of Race In America, Robert S. Chang, Jerome M. Culp Jr.

Faculty Articles

In this article, Professors Robert Chang and Jerome Culp examine the state of race in America in the aftermath of the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, focusing on the ten-year window preceding its fiftieth anniversary. Their findings reveal that while Brown established fundamental precedent in the area of race relations, racial inequality remains entrenched in a number of modern social institutions. Chang and Culp analyze this dilemma by focusing on three distinct trends. First, a cycle of inequality is driven by racial disparities in wealth and perpetuated by interlocking systems of education, housing, family, healthcare, …

(Racial) Profiles In Courage, Or Can We Be Heroes, Too?, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

This article begins with the controversy over a proposed monument based on a widely disseminated photograph of three firefighters raising the American flag over the ruins of the World Trade Center. The three firefighters were White. The proposed monument would have had one White firefighter, one Black, and one Hispanic. This article argues that the controversy over the proposed monument serves as a microcosm for the larger and more important struggle over racial and gender diversity within fire departments, generally.

Undeserving Addicts: Ssi/Ssd And The Penalties Of Poverty, Dean Spade

Faculty Articles

Since the late 1980's, American media and politicians have produced and participated in a moral panic around the issue of illegal drug use. This panic has generated vivid pictures in the American imagination of drug users as a morally depraved, irresponsible, and willfully criminal underclass. Such images have fueled the "war on drugs," a multi-faceted rhetoric and policy approach to drug use that focuses on incarceration, interdiction, and other criminal justice strategies. The punitive approach of the war on drugs has bled into poverty and disability policy with alarming persistence. The trend has influenced numerous poverty alleviation and disability programs …

Confronting The Limits Of Gay Hate Crimes Activism: A Radical Critique, Dean Spade, Craig Willse

Faculty Articles

Questioning the emancipatory potential of hate crimes activism for sexual and gender non-normative people, this paper outlines the limits of criminal justice remedies to problems of gender, race, economic and sexual subordination. The first section considers some of the positive impacts of hate crimes activism, focusing on the benefits of legal "naming" for disenfranchised constituencies seeking political recognition. In the next section the authors outline the political shortcomings and troubling consequences of hate crimes activism. First, they examine how hate crimes activism is situated within a "mainstream gay agenda," a term they use to designate the set of projects prioritized …

Reverse Racism!: Affirmative Action, The Family, And The Dream That Is America, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

In this essay, Professor Chang explores the interaction of race and family in the affirmative action debate. Although discrimination against women remains rampant in our society, and despite the fact that white women have been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action, white women are being told that affirmative action hurts them because it hurts their husbands, brothers, and sons. Familial loyalty is being invoked to do the work of an explicit call for white racial solidarity. This strategy may be successful because as late as 1987, even with the increasing rate of interracial marriage, 99% of white Americans were married …

Blacks, Due Process And Efficiency In The Clash Of Values As The Supreme Court Moves To The Right, Henry Mcgee

Faculty Articles

Professor McGee examines the move by the Supreme Court to limit rights for minority defendants. Led by its law enforcement-oriented Chief Justice, an emerging majority of the Court has managed to reverse or seriously abridge precedents - both recent and time-honored - which ensured some fairness for minority defendants. Professor McGee addresses the implications of these decisions, and how they have affected due process for Black defendants.

The Problems And Promise Of Black Men Of Law, Henry Mcgee

Faculty Articles

Professor McGee discusses the Black legal community's fight from the 1930s through the 1950s that eliminated the constitutional support of racial segregation and discrimination. Given the monumental obstacles which historically have plagued black lawyers, it is remarkable how many have succeeded despite the discrimination. While this article touches on some of the difficulties and limitations of the black bar, it must be stressed that there is a tradition of leadership and service among black lawyers that provides a solid foundation for the relatively large numbers of advocates that return to their communities. Building on this tradition of leadership, there are …

Arrests In Civil Disturbances: Reflections On The Use Of Deadly Force In Riots, Henry Mcgee

Faculty Articles

Professor McGee examines the use of deadly force in quelling recurrent communal rioting of alienated black urban masses in 1968. Napoleon fired “grapeshot” into a rioting Parisian crowd in 1795, and while his brutality may have quieted the rioters it should not be set as an example for our modern day police forces. Deadly force used against large numbers of citizens, who just prior to the riots were for the most part law-abiding and peaceful, can have crushing social consequences. In this article Professor McGee discusses police departmental policy, the limits of deadly force in arrests, excessive force and liability, …