Law Commons^™

Causation And Attenuation In The Slavery Reparations Debate, Kaimipono D. Wenger

ExpressO

Recent discussions of reparations have noted the difficulty reparations advocates have in showing causation. Criticisms of reparations have focused on the attenuated nature of the harm, suggesting that modern claimants are not connected to slaves, that modern payers are not connected to slave owners, and that modern disadvantages cannot be connected to slavery.

This Article examines attenuation concerns and finds that they come in three related but distinct varieties: Victim attenuation, wrongdoer attenuation, and act attenuation. These three components, defined in this Article, show themselves in a number of interrelated legal and moral arguments. They have important strategic consequences, and …

Reparations And Equal Opportunity, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

This paper offers a sympathetic interpretation of reparations claims made on behalf of African Americans and suggests how they could properly be honored. It reviews the federal government’s role in supporting racial subordination and its continuing failure to address the inequitable consequences, which public policy now largely ignores. It sketches a national rectification project, comprising a comprehensive set of public programs that would attack the persisting legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. The programs can be justified by the government’s duty to insure equal opportunity for our society’s children and, most urgently, by corrective justice, because the inequities are attributable …