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Yick Wo Re-Revisited: Nonblack Nonwhites And Fourteenth Amendment History, Thomas W. Joo

Thomas W Joo

The 1886 Supreme Court case Yick Wo v. Hopkins is often viewed as a precursor of the racial civil rights era represented by Brown v. Board of Education. In fact, the case was primarily about economic rights. In a new article, Unexplainable on Grounds of Race: Doubts About Yick Wo, forthcoming in the Illinois Law Review, Professor Gabriel Chin argues that Yick Wo "is not a race case at all." I argue that it is a "race case" because the Court’s use of the Fourteenth Amendment to vindicate economic rights necessarily entangled economic rights with race--in an ultimately pernicious way. …