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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Racist Roots Of The War On Drugs & The Myth Of Equal Protection For People Of Color, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
The Racist Roots Of The War On Drugs & The Myth Of Equal Protection For People Of Color, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
Faculty Publications & Other Works
By 2021, the costs and pain arising from the propagation of the American racial hierarchy reached such heights that calls for anti-racism and criminal justice reform dramatically expanded. The brutal murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police vividly proved that the social construction of race in America directly conflicted with supposed American values of equal protection under law and notions of basic justice. The racially-driven War on Drugs (WOD) fuels much of the dissonance between American legal mythology—such as the non-discrimination principle and the impartial administration of the rule of law—and the reality of race in the United States. …
Roadmap For Anti-Racism: First Unwind The War On Drugs Now, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
Roadmap For Anti-Racism: First Unwind The War On Drugs Now, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
Faculty Publications & Other Works
The War on Drugs (WOD) transmogrified into a war on communities of color early in its history, and its impact has devastated communities of color first and foremost. People of color disproportionately suffer incarceration in the WOD even though people of color use illegal narcotics at substantially lower rates than white Americans. As a result, the WOD led to mass incarceration of people of color at many times the rate of white Americans. Indeed, as a stark illustration of the power of race in America, even after Illinois and Colorado legalized cannabis, over-policing in communities of color resulted in a …
The Demise Of The Bivens Remedy Is Rendering Enforcement Of Federal Constitutional Rights Inequitable But Congress Can Fix It, Henry Rose
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A federal statute, 42 U.S.C. 1983, allows a person whose federal constitutional rights are violated by state actors to sue them for damages to compensate for the harm caused by the constitutional violations. There is no analogous federal statute that allows a person whose federal constitutional rights have been violated by federal actors to sue them for damages to compensate for the harm caused by the constitutional violations. The United States Supreme Court allowed Webster Bivens, a man who sued federal law enforcement officials for falsely arresting and physically abusing him in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, to sue …
Toward A Socially Just Peace In The War On Drugs?: The Illinois Cannabis Social-Equity Program, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
Toward A Socially Just Peace In The War On Drugs?: The Illinois Cannabis Social-Equity Program, Steven A. Ramirez, Andre Douglas Pond Cummings
Faculty Publications & Other Works
Laudably, when Illinois legalized the recreational use of cannabis, it also sought to repair the damage wrought by the War on Drugs (WOD) through its social-equity initiatives. That harm included excessive and disproportionate incarceration in communities of color, over-policing within those communities, and all of the social and economic harms implicit in those realities. This harm necessarily creates intergenerational harm, as parents and children lose necessary pillars of support. Moreover, compelling evidence suggests that the progenitors of the WOD intended this harm. Measured against this historic social injustice, the social equity efforts in Illinois fail to secure a material unwinding …