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Law and Race

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Boston University School of Law

Faculty Scholarship

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Racial profiling

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Rewriting Whren V. United States, Jonathan Feingold, Devon Carbado Apr 2022

Rewriting Whren V. United States, Jonathan Feingold, Devon Carbado

Faculty Scholarship

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Whren v. United States—a unanimous opinion in which the Court effectively constitutionalized racial profiling. Despite its enduring consequences, Whren remains good law today. This Article rewrites the opinion. We do so, in part, to demonstrate how one might incorporate racial justice concerns into Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, a body of law that has long elided and marginalized the racialized dimensions of policing. A separate aim is to reveal the “false necessity” of the Whren outcome. The fact that Whren was unanimous, and that even progressive Justices signed on, might lead one to conclude that …


Martin Luther King Jr. And Pretext Stops (And Arrests): Reflections On How Far We Have Not Come Fifty Years Later, Tracey Maclin, Maria Savarese Jun 2018

Martin Luther King Jr. And Pretext Stops (And Arrests): Reflections On How Far We Have Not Come Fifty Years Later, Tracey Maclin, Maria Savarese

Faculty Scholarship

By January, 1956, the Montgomery Bus boycott was in full-swing. Black citizens in Montgomery, Alabama were refusing to ride the city’s private buses to protest racially segregated seating. On the afternoon of January 26, 1956, twenty-seven-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. had finished his day of work at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. On his drive home, King stopped his vehicle to offer a ride to a group of bus boycotters standing at a downtown car-pool location. After the boycotters entered King’s car, two motorcycle policemen pulled-in behind King’s vehicle. While everyone in King’s car tried to remain calm, …


Toward A Critical Race Theory Of Evidence, Jasmine Gonzales Rose Jun 2017

Toward A Critical Race Theory Of Evidence, Jasmine Gonzales Rose

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars, judges, and lawyers have long believed that evidence rules apply equally to all persons regardless of race. This Article challenges this assumption and reveals how evidence law structurally disadvantages people of color. A critical race analysis of stand-your-ground defenses, cross-racial eyewitness misidentifications, and minority flight from racially-targeted police profiling and violence uncovers the existence of a dual-race evidentiary system. This system is reminiscent of nineteenth century race-based witness competency rules that barred people of color from testifying against white people. I deconstruct this problem and introduce the original concept of “racialized reality evidence.” This construct demonstrates how evidence of …


Defusing Implicit Bias, Jonathan Feingold, Karen Lorang Jan 2012

Defusing Implicit Bias, Jonathan Feingold, Karen Lorang

Faculty Scholarship

The February 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin has slowly reignited the national conversation about race and violence. Despite the sheer volume of debate arising from this tragedy, insufficient attention has been paid to the potentially deadly mix of guns and implicit bias. Evidence of implicit bias, and its power to alter real-world behavior, is stronger now than ever. A growing body of research on “shooter bias” reveals that, as a result of implicit bias, White and Black Americans are more likely to shoot unarmed Black men than unarmed White men. The problem has been diagnosed. What remains to be determined …


The Aftermath Of September 11, 2001: The Targeting Of Arabs And Muslims In America, Susan M. Akram Jul 2002

The Aftermath Of September 11, 2001: The Targeting Of Arabs And Muslims In America, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

THE DEMONIZING OF ARABS AND Muslims in America began well before the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001. It can be traced to deliberate mythmaking by film and media,2 stereotyping as part of conscious strategy of 'experts' and polemicists on the Middle East,3 the selling of a foreign policy agenda by US government officials and groups seeking to affect that agenda,4 and a public susceptible to images identifying the unwelcome 'other* in its midst.5 Bearing the brunt of these factors are Arab and Muslim non-citizens in this country. A series of government laws and policies since …