Law Commons^™

Pioneering The Lens Of Comparative Race Relations In Law: A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. As A Model Of Scholarly Activism Symposium: Race, Values, And The American Legal Process - A Tribute To A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.'s scholarly legacy is one that continues to provide guidance for civil rights activism in the American legal process today. While the Judge's work as a legal scholar is justifiably lauded for its significant contribution to the development of a legal history of slavery and its consequences in the United States, his work also serves another significant role for legal scholars. I refer to Judge Higginbotham's pioneering use of comparative race relations in legal scholarship. In his examination of the South African racial context, the Judge methodically demonstrated the commonalities between the United States and South …

Comparative Judging Of Civil Rights: A Transnational Critical Race Theory Approach, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

Studies consistently demonstrate that the act of judging is influenced by judges personal perspectives and experiences. For instance, research has demonstrated that empirically U.S. Supreme Court justices' behavior is motivated, in large part, by their individual attitudes or judicial philosophies.' In addition, research on the U.S. chief justice's distribution of opinion assignments also suggests that ideology plays a role inasmuch as those justices whose preferences are more closely aligned with the chief justice will be assigned to author opinions. Furthermore, empirical research indicates that the influence of ideology on judges also extends to federal appellate court judges in race relations …

Environmental Justice In An Era Of Devolved Collaboration , Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental decision-making is undergoing a profound shift. Traditional forums and processes are being displaced by mechanisms emphasizing local, "place-based" decision-making. These emerging decision-making mechanisms are orchestrated through collaborative processes featuring stakeholders from both the public and private sectors. This transformation is evident in a number of recent governmental initiatives, including those by the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA"), most notably its Community-Based Environmental Protection ("CBEP") initiative. Other federal agencies, particularly those with land or species management responsibilities, have similarly advocated a greater role for local decision-makers and collaborative problem-solving. This Article examines the points of convergence and divergence between devolved collaboration …

On The Path To Inclusion, John D. Feerick

Faculty Scholarship

It is an honor for me to be invited to address you at this Annual Luncheon. You have worked hard to bring opportunities to members of the minority community. You have made possible the realization of many aspirations while continuing the struggle toward equal opportunity for all people.* Thirty-nine years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke to the soul of the nation, sharing his vision of an America that would "one day...rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed-'We hold these truths to be self evident, that all [persons] are created equal." His idea and the opportunity …

Demography And Desegregation In The Cleveland Public Schools: Toward A Comprehensive Theory Of Educational Failure And Success, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In recent years, courts and commentators have routinely assumed that the desegregation era caused white flight and contributed to the deterioration of urban schools. Cleveland is often cited as a prototypical example of this misguided policy. The empirical basis for this belief, however, has been assumed rather than proven. This article uses the critical case study method to assess how the 1976 Cleveland desegregation order altered pre-existing demographic patterns within the Cleveland metropolitan area. Specifically, the article draws upon the social science literature to construct two theories of central city decline: (1) studies that link increased rates of white flight …

On Making Anti-Essentialist And Social Constructionist Arguments In Courts, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

One of my most intense disagreements with another lawyer during nearly a decade of lesbian and gay rights litigation concerned social constructionism. The lawyer (a law professor, if truth be told) wanted to argue in an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court that sexual orientation, like race, was a social constructed category. He reasoned that since the Court had condemned race discrimination even while recognizing the "socio-political, rather than biological" nature of race, it would similarly be willing to invalidate a measure discriminating against lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, even while recognizing the socially constructed nature of sexual …

Feminism And International Law: An Opportunity For Transformation, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this essay, the author wants to outline briefly both some of the ways in which the assumptions and categories of international law can be damaging to women, and also some of the ways in which creative feminists could use international law to transform both international policy and the domestic political and legal discourse. In the wake of September 11, a robust feminist engagement with international law and policy is more urgent than ever before.

Drifting Apart: How Wealth And Race Segregation Are Reshaping The American Dream, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Sometime after mid-century, no one racial or ethnic group will be in the majority in the United States. America therefore has two choices in terms of how it will respond to complex diversity. It can forge a new, exciting, multi-cultural identity. Or it can balkanize.

Our Economy Of Mothers And Others: Women And Economics Revisited, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Canaries In The Mine: Work/Family Conflict And The Law, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fretting In The Force Fields: Why The Distribution Of Social Power Has Proved So Hard To Change, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Interests Diverge, Robert S. Chang, Peter Kwan

Faculty Articles

In this review of Mary Dudziak's important book, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton Univ. Press 2000), Professors Chang and Kwan find the book to provide compelling historical narratives about the intersection of the Cold War and civil rights struggles. Dudziak demonstrates through an amazing array of historical evidence a story that runs counter to the standard narrative of racial sin followed by racial redemption, which helps us to reassess who we are and to be cognizant of the work that remains.

Closing Essay: Developing A Collective Memory To Imagine A Better Future, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

This closing essay to a symposium inaugurating UCLA Law School's Program in Critical Race Studies suggests that the racialized Asian American body can operate as a site for collective memory and thus serve as reminders of past mistakes in order to restrain current and future abuses of power. One of the lessons to be learned is from World War II when extreme subordination of one Asian American group, Japanese Americans, was accompanied by the elimination of certain barriers for another Asian American group, Chinese Americans. A similar dynamic may be happening now following September 11. With the increase in legal …

Introduction To The Symposium: Homophobia In The Halls Of Justice: Sexual Orientation Bias And Its Implications Within The Legal System, Brenda V. Smith, Pamela Bridgewater

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The gay moment is unavoidable. -Andrew Kopkind

Gay activist, journalist and political commentator Andrew Kopkind made this profound observation at a critical moment in the queer rights movement, in the midst of the March on Washington, pride rallies, queer organizing and the ever strengthening movement to address the AIDS crisis within the queer community. The moment, however, meant different things to participants in the movement. Over the years, the queer or sexual liberation movement transformed itself into a much more equality-based movement with the most energy focused on securing recognition of gay marriage and equal access to the military. As …

Parallel Lives: Women's Rights And Lesbian Rights Litigation, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

I love the title of this panel because it gave me a chance to think about the historical themes and emerging issues in law related to women's rights, which of course is a mere endless set of possibilities.

I spent much of the last decade doing lesbian and gay civil rights litigation, and the question that I will focus on today grows out of that work and is a comparative one or at least a relational one. The question is this: What is the relationship between women's rights litigation as it has evolved in the last thirty years and lesbian …

Racial Profiling Under Attack, Samuel R. Gross, Debra A. Livingston

Faculty Scholarship

The events of September 11, 2001, have sparked a fierce debate over racial profiling. Many who readily condemned the practice a year ago have had second thoughts. In the wake of September 11, the Department of Justice initiated a program of interviewing thousands of men who arrived in this country in the past two years from countries with an al Qaeda presence – a program that some attack as racial profiling, and others defend as proper law enforcement. In this Essay, Professors Gross and Livingston use that program as the focus of a discussion of the meaning of racial profiling, …

Enemy Aliens, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the wake of September 11, many have argued that the new sense of vulnerability that we all feel calls for a recalibration of the balance between liberty and security. In fact, however, much of what our government has done in the war on terrorism has not asked American citizens to make the difficult choice of deciding which of their liberties they are willing to sacrifice for increased security. Instead, the government has taken the politically easier route of selectively sacrificing the rights of aliens, and especially Arab and Muslim aliens, in the name of furthering national security. This is …