Law Commons^™

Korematsu As The Tribute That Vice Pays To Virtue, Jack M. Balkin

Arkansas Law Review

Mark Killenbeck wants to (partially) rehabilitate the reputation of one of the Supreme Court’s most despised legal decisions, Korematsu v. United States. He argues that “[w]e should accept and teach Korematsu as an exemplar of what thelaw regarding invidious discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and national origin should be.” In both Korematsu (and Hirabayashi v. United States) the Court asserted that classifications based on race were subject to strict scrutiny. But “[t]he majority,” Killenbeck explains, “refused to heed their own mandate. In Hirabayashi they held that the government policy was ‘reasonable.’ In Korematsu, . . . they failed …

Sober Second Thought? Korematsu Reconsidered, Mark R. Killenbeck

Arkansas Law Review

How to best describe and treat Korematsu v. United States? A self-inflicted wound? It is certainly an exemplar of a case that in key respects tracks Justice Stephen Breyer’s caution about decisions that have “harm[ed] not just the Court, but the Nation.” Part of an “Anticanon,” resting on “little more than naked racism and associated hokum” and “embod[ying] a set of propositions that all legitimate constitutional decisions must be prepared to refute”? Perhaps. Or is it simply an opinion and result that “has long stood out as a stain that is almost universally recognized as a shameful mistake”?

Symposium: Giving Korematsu V. United States A Sober Second Thought, Nick Bell, Emily Levy, Julian Sharp

Arkansas Law Review

We are elated to present Professor Mark Killenbeck’s thought provoking article, Sober Second Thought? Korematsu Reconsidered. Killenbeck dives into the Korematsu opinion and its history with great care to determine whether it truly “has no place in law under the Constitution” as Chief Justice John Roberts declared in Trump v. Hawaii.1 While Korematsu’s result provides an understandable “impulse to condemn” it, Killenbeck shows us that focusing solely on the case’s result “stands apart from and in stark contrast to its most important place in the constitutional order: articulation of precepts and terminology that provide the foundations for strict scrutiny.”

The Future Of The Americans With Disabilities Act: Website Accessibility Litigation After Covid-19, Randy Pavlicko

Cleveland State Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted in 1990 to eliminate discrimination against individuals with disabilities. Over time, as society has become more reliant on the internet, the issue of whether the ADA’s scope extends beyond physical places to online technology has emerged. A circuit split developed on this issue, and courts have discussed three interpretations of the ADA’s scope: (1) the ADA applies to physical places only; (2) the ADA applies to a website or mobile app that has a sufficient nexus to a physical place; or (3) the ADA broadly applies beyond physical places to online technology. …

Bostock’S Paradox: Textualism, Legal Justice, And The Constitution, Marc Spindelman

Buffalo Law Review

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia—recognizing that anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination are forms of sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act—has already gained a steady reputation as a textualist statutory interpretation decision. The reality of the ruling is far more complicated than that. Bostock is a textualist decision, but, as the argument here shows, Bostock also offers a construction of Title VII’s sex discrimination rule that sounds in a rule-of-law norm of legal justice about LGBT equality that itself traces roots to the Supreme Court’s constitutional LGBT rights jurisprudence. Bostock’s rule-of-law norm …

Law School News: A Juneteenth Message From The Dean, Gregory W. Bowman

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Interview: Black Lives Matter—A Discussion With Two Civil Rights Attorneys, Justin C. Trimachi

Golden Gate University Law Review

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable . . . every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle, the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” The Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) movement has a formal presence in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The founders’ outrage at the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who they believed murdered Trayvon Martin in 2013, fueled BLM’s mission to empower Black communities to intervene in the violence inflicted on those communities by both the State and vigilantes and to eradicate white …

Petitions From The Grave: Why Federal Executions Are A Violation Of The Suspension Clause, Taran Wessells

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Note will address the intersection of wrongful convictions, the federal death penalty, and habeas corpus to conclude that the federal death penalty is an unconstitutional violation of the Suspension Clause of the United States Constitution. Part I of this Note will establish that Congress may not suspend the writ of habeas corpus outside of wartime. Then, Part II will show that wrongfully convicted prisoners therefore have a constitutional right to a habeas petition if they discover new, exonerating evidence. Part III will argue that because executed prisoners cannot file a habeas petition for release, executing wrongfully convicted prisoners is …

The President And Individual Rights, Mark Tushnet

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

When I Was A Young Girl: Gender And Race In The Life Archives Of Criminal Transportation, Nick Townsend

University Honors Theses

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the carceral system in England shifted away from corporal punishment and moved towards containing and policing those deemed criminal in different ways. One notable way was transportation, the practice of moving convicts out of the imperial core into a colony. This practice became a way to remove "lesser" populations from England and regulate social behavior while also expanding the British Empire and allowed convicts a new purpose in expanding the carceral state. This developed alongside the broader trends of racialization and colonization in the British Empire, which drew a global color line separating "white" …

Reducing Prejudice Through Law: Evidence From Experimental Psychology, Roseanna Sommers, Sara Burke

Law & Economics Working Papers

Can antidiscrimination law effect changes in public attitudes toward minority groups? Could learning, for instance, that employment discrimination against people with clinical depression is illegal cause members of the public to be more accepting toward people with mental health conditions? In this Article, we report the results of a series of experiments that test the effect of inducing the belief that discrimination against a given group is legal (vs. illegal) on interpersonal attitudes toward members of that group. We find that learning that discrimination is unlawful does not simply lead people to believe that an employer is more likely to …

Resilience Justice And Community-Based Green And Blue Infrastructure, Craig Anthony Arnold, Resilience Justice Project Researchers

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

The environmental conditions of marginalized communities, particularly low-income communities of color, make those communities disproportionately more vulnerable to major disturbances and changes, such as climate change, health crises, pollution releases, disasters, economic shocks, and social and political upheaval. Many of the most important movements for justice with respect to environmental conditions, including environmental justice, disaster justice, and climate justice, are connected to broader movements for racial and social justice, asserting that Black and Brown lives matter. These movements seek to confront, dismantle, and reform systems of racism, colonialism, and structural inequality.

In particular, low-income communities of color have inequitably less …

A Prelude To A Critical Race Perspective On Civil Procedure, Portia Pedro

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, I examine the lack of scholarly attention given to the role of civil procedure in racial subordination. I posit that a dearth of critical thought interrogating the connections between procedure and the subjugation of marginalized peoples might be due to the limited experiences of procedural scholars; a misconception that procedural rules are a technical, objective, neutral area; and avoidance of discussion of race or other aspects of identity unless there is a case, material, or scholarly topic that meets an unreasonably high standard. I emphasize the importance of a critical race analysis of civil procedure.

A Firm Pillar Of Local Justice: The Failures Of The New York Town And Village Justice Courts Supporting Statewide Adoption Of The District Court Model, Noah Sexton

Journal of Law and Policy

Town and village justice courts have been the center of municipal law, both civil and criminal, since the mid-nineteenth century. However, in the modern world, they have become corrupt, poorly managed institutions, creating issues involving procedural integrity and civil rights. In order to remedy these failures and modernize the New York State Unified Court System, state legislators must look to the district court model as it currently exists in Nassau and Eastern Suffolk Counties. The district court model offers several benefits, including the imposition of educational and experiential requirements for judges, the creation of internal and external oversight institutions, the …

Beyond “Children Are Different”: The Revolution In Juvenile Intake And Sentencing, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Washington Law Review

For more than 120 years, juvenile justice law has not substantively defined the core questions in most delinquency cases—when should the state prosecute children rather than divert them from the court system (the intake decision), and what should the state do with children once they are convicted (the sentencing decision)? Instead, the law has granted certain legal actors wide discretion over these decisions, namely prosecutors at intake and judges at sentencing. This Article identifies and analyzes an essential reform trend changing that reality: legislation, enacted in at least eight states in the 2010s, to limit when children can be prosecuted …

“A Dollar Ain’T Much If You’Ve Got It”: Freeing Modern-Day Poll Taxes From Anderson-Burdick, Lydia Saltzbart

Journal of Law and Policy

How much should it cost to vote in the United States? The answer is clear from the Supreme Court’s landmark opinion in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections—nothing. Yet more than fifty years later, many U.S. voters must jump over financial hurdles to access the franchise. These hurdles have withstood judicial review because the Court has drifted away from Harper and has instead applied the more deferential Anderson-Burdick analysis to modern poll tax claims—requiring voters to demonstrate how severely the cost burdens them. As a result, direct and indirect financial burdens on the vote have proliferated. Millions of voters …

رسالة على منهج المنار (وريقات في اختصار منار النسفي), جعفر قصاص استاذ مساعد

Journal of Al-Azhar University – Gaza (Humanities)

الملخص:

هذا البحث نتناول فيه بالدراسة والتحقيق رسالة في اختصار متن (المنار) لأبي البركات النسفي (ت710هـ)، لمحب الدين أبي القاسم محمد بن جُرُباش بن عبد الله الحنفي (توفي نحو 909هـ)، وقع اختيارنا عليها؛ لكونها لم تحقق ولم تطبع من قبل، ومؤلفها علامة متفنن، لم ينل حقه من التعريف والترجمة، وما تزال سائر مصنفاته مخطوطة، وقد أبان المصنف فيها عن إلمامه بأصول مذهبه، وقدرته على التعبير عنها بأسلوبه، وبراعته في اختصارها على طريقته.

هذا واعتمدنا في تحقيقها على نسخة خطية فريدة، استغرقت سبع صفحات، وقد بذلنا جهدًا كبيرًا في دراسة نصها وتحقيقه، واعتنينا بضبطه وتقويمه وتنظيمه؛ ليكون أقرب إلى النحو الذي …

Landlord Bounty Hunters: Qui Tam As An Effective Tool For Housing Code Enforcement, Alex Ellefson

Journal of Law and Policy

Millions of American renters live in substandard housing. Conditions in these homes not only affect individual renters’ quality of life, but in the aggregate create enormous burdens on public resources in the form of higher healthcare costs, demand for public benefits, and lower economic productivity. Furthermore, the legacy of racist housing policies in the United States has concentrated poor housing conditions in low-income communities of color. This Note argues that existing methods of housing code enforcement are inadequate. Instead, housing advocates should turn to an ancient remedy that has been used to prosecute fraud, labor violations, and even pirates: qui …

Mobile-Based Transportation Companies, Mandatory Arbitration, And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Tamar Meshel

Journal of Law and Mobility

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and similar mobile-based transportation network companies (TNCs) have been involved in numerous legal battles in multiple jurisdictions. One contested issue concerns whether TNC drivers are employees or independent contractors. Uber recently lost this battle to some extent in the UK, but won it in California. Another issue concerns the TNCs’ use of mandatory (pre-dispute) arbitration clauses in their standard form service agreements with both drivers and passengers. These arbitration clauses purport to obligate such future plaintiffs to resolve any dispute with the defendant TNC outside of court and, typically, on an individual rather than a class basis. …

'Who' Or 'What' Is The Rule Of Law?, Steven L. Winter

Law Faculty Research Publications

The standard account of the relation between democracy and the rule of law focuses on law’s liberty-enhancing role in constraining official action. This is a faint echo of the complex, constitutive relation between the two. The Greeks used one word – isonomia – to describe both. If democracy is the system in which people have an equal say in determining the rules that govern social life, then the rule of law is simultaneously before, after, concurrent and synonymous with democracy: It contributes to the formation of citizens with the capacity for self-governance, serves as the instrument through which democratic decisions …

Tempering Glass Armor: A Demand For Improved Anti-Discrimination Housing Laws To Protect Homeless Transgender People, Jack Beasley

Student Scholarship

Homelessness is a nationwide problem that affects hundreds of thousands of people a year. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals face unique, additional issues in their day-to-day lives that heterosexual and cisgender individuals do not. Homeless shelters across the country are full of transgender youth and adults who are subject to more sexual violence, criminal acts, and discrimination than other homeless individuals in the same shelters. The Obama administration’s rule protecting homeless transgender people in shelters is in danger. In essence, Housing Secretary Ben Carson’s proposed rule would put homeless transgender people at a higher risk of discrimination. Agency …

The Torch (June 2021), Crtp

Torch: The Civil Rights Team Project Newsletter

The Maine Office of the Attorney General administers the Civil Rights Team Project (CRTP). The CRTP’s mission is to increase the safety of elementary, middle school, and high school students by reducing bias-motivated behaviors and harassment in our schools. CRTP accomplishes this by supporting student civil rights teams in Maine schools. The CRTP and student teams are active in engaging school communities in thinking and talking about issues related to:

• Race and skin color
• National origin and ancestry
• Religion
• Disabilities
• Gender (including gender identify and expression)
• Sexual orientation

The Attorney General’s Office created the CRTP in 1996 as a pilot …

Benevolent Exclusion, Anna Offit

Washington Law Review

The American jury system holds the promise of bringing common sense ideas about justice to the enforcement of the law. But its democratizing effect cannot be realized if a segment of the population faces systematic exclusion based on income or wealth. The problem of unequal access to jury service based on socio-economic disparities is a longstanding yet under-studied problem—and one which the uneven fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated. Like race- and sex-based jury discrimination during the peremptory challenge phase of jury selection, the routine dismissal of citizens who face economic hardship excludes not only people but also the …

Visible Policing: Technology, Transparency, And Democratic Control, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Law enforcement has an opacity problem. Police use sophisticated technologies to monitor individuals, surveil communities, and predict behaviors in increasingly intrusive ways. But legal institutions have struggled to understand—let alone set limits on—new investigative methods and techniques for two major reasons. First, new surveillance technology tends to operate in opaque and unaccountable ways, augmenting police power while remaining free of meaningful oversight. Second, shifts in Fourth Amendment doctrine have expanded law enforcement’s ability to engage in surveillance relatively free of scrutiny by courts or by the public. The result is that modern policing is not highly visible to oversight institutions …

Unrwa And Palestine Refugees, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter studies the relationship between Palestinian refugees and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). UNRWA’s role is to provide humanitarian ‘relief’ and to provide economic opportunities—‘works’—for refugees in the areas of major displacement: the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Initially, the definition of Palestine refugee for UNRWA’s purposes was a sub-category of the United Nations Conciliation Commission on Palestine definition for purposes of relief provision, but it also included other categories of persons displaced from later conflicts. Following the passage of the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, the …

(Re)Framing Race In Civil Rights Lawyering, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Anthony V. Alfieri

Faculty Scholarship

A review of Henry Louis Gates, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (Penguin Press, 2019). The Review proceeds in four parts. Part I parses Gates’s analysis of the rise of white supremacist ideology and the accompanying concept of the “Old Negro” during the Redemption era and the countervailing emergence of the concept of a “New Negro” culminating in the Harlem Renaissance. Part II examines the lawyering process as a rhetorical site for constructing racialized narratives and racially subordinating visions of client, group, and community identity through acts of representing, prosecuting, and defending people of …

To “Defund” The Police, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Much public debate circles around grassroots activists’ demand to “defund the police,” raised in public consciousness in the summer of 2020. Yet confusion about the demand is pervasive. This Essay adopts a literal interpretation of “defund” to clarify and distinguish four alternative, substantive policy positions that legal reforms related to police funding can validate. It argues that the policy debates between these positions exist on top of the ideological critique launched by grassroots activists, who use the term “defund the police” as a discursive tactic to make visible deeper transformations in government practices that normalize the structural marginalization of black …

Pathological Racism, Chronic Racism & Targeted Universalism, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Race and law scholars almost uniformly prefer antisubordination to anticlassification as the best way to understand and adjudicate racism. In this short Essay, we explore whether the antisubordination framework is sufficiently capacious to meet our present demands for racial justice. We argue that the antisubordination approach relies on a particular conception of racism, which we call pathological racism, that limits its capacity for addressing the fundamental restructuring that racial justice requires. We suggest, in a manner that might be viewed as counterintuitive, that targeted universalist remedies might be more effective to address long term racial inequality but might also be …

Foreword, Patricia E. Roberts

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

Foreword written by Patricia E. Roberts upon her first year as the 10th dean of St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas.

House Bill 3: An Iou Texas Public Schools And Communities Of Color Cannot Afford, Candace L. Castillo

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

A history of school finance litigation and legislation shows there are inherent and structural problems in Texas’s education finance system. Like many government and social structures, the Texas school finance system is built to benefit school districts that have greater access to wealth to begin with and creates inequalities between rich and poor populations as well as between people of color and Caucasians. House Bill 3 went into effect in 2019 and promises improvements to “recapture” calculations, increases in certain allotments, as well as salary increases for some Texas teachers. Some changes to education finance were sorely needed such as …