Law Commons^™

“Improve Your Privileges While They Stay”: A Guide To Improve The Privileges Of U.S. Citizenship For Everybody, Joshua J. Schroeder

Touro Law Review

In 1767, the young Phillis Wheatley wrote from her position of slavery in the Wheatley home of Boston to “ye sons of Science” at Harvard College, telling them to “improve your privileges while they stay.” She beheld the startling privileges of learning and discovery bestowed upon an elite group of young, rich white men in Boston and celebrated their privileges. Neither did she scorn those whose luck had placed a bounty of privilege upon their laps, for she likely planned to share in that bounty herself, one day. When she was only 13 or 14, Wheatley sublimely encouraged grown men …

Roberts's Revisions: A Narratological Reading Of The Affirmative Action Cases, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

In a seminal article published nearly twenty years ago in the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, Professor Peter Brooks posed a critical yet underexplored question: "Does the [flaw [n]eed a [n]arratology?"⁵ In essence, he asked whether law as a field should have a framework for deconstructing and understanding how and why a legal opinion, including the events that the opinion is centered on, has been crafted and presented in a particular way.⁶ After highlighting that "how a story is told can make a difference in legal outcomes," Brooks encouraged legal actors to "talk narrative talk" …

Camera-Enforced Streets: Creating An Anti-Racist System Of Traffic Enforcement, Katie O'Brien

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

On July 10, 2015, Sandra Bland was pulled over while driving in Prairie View, Texas, for failure to signal a lane change after moving to allow a trooper’s vehicle to pass her car. As the stop progressed, the trooper ordered Bland to get out of her car. When she refused, the trooper threatened to “yank [Bland] out” of her car and “light [her] up” with his taser. After Bland left her vehicle, Trooper Encinia handcuffed her, wrestled her to the ground, and kneeled on her. He later falsely claimed that Bland assaulted him. Three days later, police found Bland …

Testimonios Of Latinas In The Federal Government Senior Executive Service: Honoring Women Who Excel In Public Service, Amarylis Lopez

Theses & Dissertations

The Senior Executive Service (SES) is the highest tier of executive management and leadership in the federal government. The Latino/a population has significantly increased in the past three decades with no corresponding increase in the federal workforce and the number of Latinos/as serving in the SES remains low. As Latinos/as in the SES are largely underrepresented, their ability to influence federal policies is significantly undermined. The purpose of this study is to explore the testimonios (testimonies) of Latinas in the SES to better understand their experiences while navigating entry into the SES and maintaining their respective positions.

This study used …

(A)Woke Workplaces, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

With heightened expectations for a reckoning in response to the broad support for the Black Lives Matter movement after the senseless murder of George Floyd in 2020, employers explored many options to improve racial understanding through discussions with workers. In rejecting any notions of the existence of structural or systemic discrimination, let alone the need to address the consequences of such discrimination, certain groups have begun to oppose BLM by seeking to diminish any social justice actions. One of those key resistance efforts includes labelling in pejorative terms any employers that pursue anti-racism objectives via social justice statements or internal …

A New Deal For A Right To Work: Confronting Racism And Inequality In The U.S., James A. Gross

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Whites have always controlled the country’s major economic and political institutions at all levels. Starting with slavery, the enduring and pervasive dogmas of White superiority and Black inferiority, once openly asserted as “keeping Negroes in their place,” were also used to restrict Black men and women to subordinate “negro jobs.” The vast riches of the United States “were available to all who had the enterprise to take them and the good fortune to be White.”

This denial of the right to work in freely chosen endeavors continues to have immense consequences for Black men, women, and children in every aspect …

Transforming The Future Of Work By Embracing Corporate Social Justice, Andrea Giampetro-Meyer

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Professionals from Generations Y (millennials) and Z (Gen Z or zoomers) expect their employers to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). They want to work for companies that support individuals of various races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders, and sexual orientations. Professionals from these generations are seeking employers that have created a diverse workforce, clear promotion track, and a commitment to dismantling systemic racism. Companies that want to attract top talent are making DEI a priority. They are also implementing action plans to demonstrate their serious commitment to DEI because millennials and zoomers are quick to recognize and criticize performative approaches. …

Law School News: A Voice For Justice 3-1-2023, Janine L. Weisman, Roger Williams University School O Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Murder Of George Floyd: A Case Study Examining How The Policing Of Black Men And Grassroots Activism Influence The Will Of Black Women To Lead, Ella Gates-Mahmoud

Doctorate in Education

This study's objective investigates the viewpoints held by Black women in two urban areas of Minnesota about the social upheaval that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 for using a counterfeit $20 bill. In the last decade, police killings of innocent Black people in the United States have received more attention, and Floyd's death is only one example of this phenomenon. In the U.S., the likelihood of a police officer taking the life of a Black man is higher than that of a White man. Between 2013-2019 there have been 1,641 fatal shootings of defenseless Black men by …

How They Get Away With Murder: The Intersection Of Capital Punishment, Prosecutor Misconduct, And Systemic Injustice, Rushton Davis Pope

Emory Law Journal

Black defendants are executed at a disproportionately high rate, an injustice quietly persisting in the shadow of America’s dark history of slavery and Jim Crow. While a variety of intersectional factors have perpetuated this injustice, the role of prosecutors who commit misconduct to secure a conviction is significant. Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, but when the prosecutors who carry the burden of proving that guilt choose not to play by the rules, they wantonly and recklessly embrace the risk of convicting—even killing—an innocent person.

This Comment focuses on two primary forms of prosecutor misconduct: Batson violations that occur …

Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …

Un-Erasing Race In A Medical-Legal Partnership: Antiracist Health Justice Advocacy By Design, Danielle Pelfrey Duryea, Peggy Maisel, Kelley Saia

Faculty Scholarship

This Article covers a potential response to a Massachusetts state law which has been interpreted to require health care providers and birthing hospitals to report to state authorities any infant born to a person taking medication of opioid use disorder. While the statute mandates reports where a professional has "reasonable cause to believe that a child is suffering physical or emotional injury" as a result of substance dependence at birth, the Article highlights that many institutions report all infants born to persons with substance abuse disorders, regardless of risk of harm, for fear of penalty for failure to report. As …

Understanding An American Paradox: An Overview Of The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Spearit

Articles

In The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Sahar Aziz unveils a mechanism that perpetuates the persecution of religion. While the book’s title suggests a problem that engulfs Muslims, it is not a new problem, but instead a recurring theme in American history. Aziz constructs a model that demonstrates how racialization of a religious group imposes racial characteristics on that group, imbuing it with racial stereotypes that effectively treat the group as a racial rather than religious group deserving of religious liberty.

In identifying a racialization process that effectively veils religious discrimination, Aziz’s book points to several important …

The Conflict Among African American Penal Interests: Rethinking Racial Equity In Criminal Procedure, Trevor George Gardner

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article argues that neither the criminal justice reform platform nor the penal abolition platform shows the ambition necessary to advance each of the primary African American interests in penal administration. It contends, first, that abolitionists have rightly called for a more robust conceptualization of racial equity in criminal procedure. Racial equity in criminal procedure should be considered in terms of both process at the level of the individual, and the number of criminal procedures at the level of the racial group—in terms of both the quality and “quantity” of stops, arrests, convictions, and the criminal sentencings that result in …

Men's Rights, Gun Ownership, Racism, And The Assault On Women's Reproductive Health Rights: Hidden Connections, Walter S. Dekeseredy

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In this current era characterized by much fear of, and anxiety about, the political influence and actions of the U.S. alternative right (alt-right), only a small number of men’s rights organizations receive attention from the media, the Democratic Party, or a large cadre of progressives. This article demonstrates that ignoring all-male anti-feminist organizations is a flawed strategy for challenging the recent rise of the alt-right because these misogynistic groups are heavily involved in the gun rights movement, major contributors to racist practices and discourses, and active participants in efforts to criminalize and curtail women’s access to abortion. Another, but equally …

White Picket Fences & Suburban Gatekeeping: How Long Island’S Land Use Laws Cement Its Status As One Of The Most Segregated Places In America, Jessica Mingrino

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The average wealth of Black families is one-seventh that of white families in the United States today. Homeownership—the primary avenue through which Americans accumulate personal and generational wealth—is the leading driver of the wealth disparity between white and Black American families, known as the “racial wealth gap.” The systematic and intentional exclusion of Black people from developing communities during the twentieth century largely excluded people of color from the housing boom and denied them the opportunity afforded to white people to multiply their assets. Contrary to widespread belief, however, legislation-backed oppression of Black Americans did not end in the …

Foreword: Centering Intersectionality In Human Rights Discourse, Johanna Bond

Washington and Lee Law Review

In the last decade, intersectionality theory has gained traction as a lens through which to analyze international human rights issues. Intersectionality theory is the notion that multiple systems of oppression intersect in peoples’ lives and are mutually constitutive, meaning that when, for example, race and gender intersect, the experience of discrimination goes beyond the formulaic addition of race discrimination and gender discrimination to produce a unique, intersectional experience of discrimination. The understanding that intersecting systems of oppression affect different groups differently is central to intersectionality theory. As such, the theory invites us to think about inter-group differences (i.e., differences between …

Comment: Understanding Xenophobia As Intersectional Discrimination, Shreya Atrey

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Comment examines the nature of xenophobia and why it seems to fall through the cracks of international human rights law, especially as a form of racial discrimination under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It considers an understanding of xenophobia as a sui generis case of intersectional discrimination because it has to do with racial grounds but also perhaps other grounds (such as nationality, religion, language, culture, and class), which makes it difficult to disentangle the basis of xenophobic discrimination as based on strictly racial grounds alone.

(G)Local Intersectionality, Martha F. Davis

Washington and Lee Law Review

Intersectionality theory has been slow to take root as a legal norm at the national level, even as scholars embrace it as a potent analytical tool. Yet, in recent years, intersectionality has entered law and policy practices through an unexpected portal: namely, local governments’ adoption of international norms. A growing number of local governments around the world explicitly incorporate intersectionality into their law and practice as part of implementing international antidiscrimination norms from human rights instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of …

The Watts Gang Treaty: Hidden History And The Power Of Social Movements, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

On the eve of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, a small group of gang leaders and community activists drafted an agreement to curtail violence in south Los Angeles. Several gangs in Watts accepted the truce and established a cease-fire agreement. By most accounts, the 1992 Watts Gang Treaty succeeded in reducing gang violence in Los Angeles. Local activists attributed the reduction in shootings to the Treaty. Even law enforcement officials grudgingly recognized the Treaty’s contribution to reducing gang violence and a corresponding decrease in homicides.

The origins of the Watts Gang Treaty can be traced to gang leaders recognizing that …

Race And Regulation Podcast Episode 1 - Black Families Matter, Dorothy E. Roberts

Penn Program on Regulation Podcasts

Drawing on her latest book, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, law and sociology expert Dorothy Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania examines the fundamental racism of the child welfare system, which she argues regulates families in ways that disproportionately and negatively affect people of color. She explains why this system of family regulation should be dismantled and replaced with one that better protects children.

The War On Drugs, Moral Panics, And The Groundhog Day Effect: Confronting The Stereotypes That Perpetuate The Cycle Of Disparity, Tasha Withrow

The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice

There has been a specter haunting America for over 400 years. That specter is an insidious and destructive beast that has found its way into every crevice and layer of all American institutions. Racism, racial stereotypes, racial stigma, biases, and White supremacy has infiltrated every power structure since the foundation of America and has created a system of social control that has perpetually oppressed, marginalized, and disenfranchised generations of people of color. One of the most catastrophic by-products generated from America’s historic racist ideology has been that of the over-criminalization of people of color for drug crimes justified by discriminatory …

Abortion, Sterilization, And The Universe Of Reproductive Rights, Melissa Murray

William & Mary Law Review

In recent years, a new narrative associating reproductive rights with the eugenics movement of the 1920s has taken root. As this narrative maintains, in the 1920s, Margaret Sanger, a pioneer of the modern birth control movement, joined forces with the eugenics movement to market family planning measures to marginalized minority communities.

Although the history undergirding this narrative is incomplete and misleading, the narrative itself has flourished as the debate over the continued vitality of reproductive rights has unfolded in the United States. Indeed, in just the last three years, a member of the United States Supreme Court and a number …

Resistance Is Not Futile: Challenging Aapi Hate, Peter H. Huang

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article analyzes how to challenge AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) hate—defined as explicit negative bias in racial beliefs towards AAPIs. In economics, beliefs are subjective probabilities over possible outcomes. Traditional neoclassical economics view beliefs as inputs to making decisions with more accurate beliefs having indirect, instrumental value by improving decision-making. This Article utilizes novel economic theories about belief-based utility, which economically captures the intuitive notion that people can derive pleasure and pain directly from their and other people’s beliefs. Even false beliefs can offer comfort and reassurance to people. This Article also draws on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary theories …

Reclaiming Safety: Participatory Research, Community Perspectives, And Possibilities For Transformation, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This paper offers the first known interdisciplinary, community-based participatory research study to focus directly on two questions that have drawn increased attention in the wake of global protests over racialized police violence: 1) What is the definition of safety? and 2) How can safety be made equally accessible to all? The study is part of a larger project that was co-designed by community members and academic researchers. The project aimed to strengthen local justice reform efforts by adding new data literacy skills to existing community-organizing capacity among Black residents of the Cincinnati, Ohio metropolitan area. Community-led roundtable discussions offered community …

White Vigilantism And The Racism Of Race-Neutrality, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Race-neutrality has long been touted in American law as central to promoting racial equality while guarding against race-based discrimination. And yet the legal doctrine of race-neutrality has perversely operated to shield claims of racial discrimination from judicial review while protecting discriminators from liability and punishment. This Article critiques the doctrine of race-neutrality by examining the law’s response to white vigilantism in the much-publicized criminal trials of Kyle Rittenhouse and that of Ahmaud Arbery’s assailants.

Book Review Of Shaping The Bar: The Future Of Attorney Licensing, Marsha Griggs

All Faculty Scholarship

In Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing, Professor Joan Howarth issues a clarion call to the academy, the legal community, and the judiciary to reform the way we license lawyers in the United States. In this book Howarth identifies the current crisis in law licensing, the history of racism that created this crisis, and the tools available to address it. Shaping the Bar challenges our entrenched notions of professional identity, and it forces us to confront vulnerabilities in attorney self-regulation. It does so in a manner that will stir even those not immersed in the current debate about …

Filing While Black: The Casual Racism Of The Tax Law, Steven Dean

Faculty Scholarship

The tax law's race-blind approach produces bad tax policy.' This Essay uses three very different examples to show how failing to openly and honestly address race generates bias, and how devastating the results can be.² Ignoring race does not solve problems; it creates them. ProPublica has shown, for example, that because of the perils of filing income taxes while Black, the five most heavily audited counties in the United States are Black and poor.

The racial bias long tolerated-and sometimes exploited-by tax scholars and policymakers affects all aspects of the tax law. In 1986, Sam Gilliam was denied tax …

Obergefell, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Fulton, And Public-Private Partnerships: Unleashing V. Harnessing 'Armies Of Compassion' 2.0?, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Fulton v. City of Philadelphia presented a by-now familiar constitutional claim: recognizing civil marriage equality—the right of persons to marry regardless of gender—inevitably and sharply conflicts with the religious liberty of persons and religious institutions who sincerely believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. While the Supreme Court’s 9-0 unanimous judgment in favor of Catholic Social Services (CSS) surprised Court-watchers, Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion did not signal consensus on the Court over how best to resolve the evident conflicts raised by the contract between CSS and the City of Philadelphia. This article argues that it …

The Myth Of The Great Writ, Leah M. Litman

Articles

Habeas corpus is known as the “Great Writ” because it supposedly protects individual liberty against government overreach and guards against wrongful detentions. This idea shapes habeas doctrine, federal courts theories, and habeas-reform proposals.

It is also incomplete. While the writ has sometimes protected individual liberty, it has also served as a vehicle for the legitimation of excesses of governmental power. A more complete picture of the writ emerges when one considers traditionally neglected areas of public law that are often treated as distinct—the law of slavery and freedom, Native American affairs, and immigration. There, habeas has empowered abusive exercises of …