Law Commons^™

Economic Interest Convergence In Downsizing Imprisonment, Spearit

Articles

This Essay employs a variation of the “interest convergence” concept to examine the competing interests at stake in downsizing imprisonment in the United States. In the last few decades, the country has become the world leader in both incarceration rates and number of inmates. Reversing these trends is a common goal of multiple parties, who advocate prison reform under different rationales. Some advocate less imprisonment as a means of tempering the disparate effects of imprisonment on individual offenders and the communities to which they return. Others support downsizing based on conservative values that favor reduced government size, spending, and interference …

Murder, Minority Victims, And Mercy, Aya Gruber

Publications

Should the jury have acquitted George Zimmerman of Trayvon Martin's murder? Should enraged husbands receive a pass for killing their cheating wives? Should the law treat a homosexual advance as adequate provocation for killing? Criminal law scholars generally answer these questions with a resounding "no." Theorists argue that criminal laws should not reflect bigoted perceptions of African Americans, women, and gays by permitting judges and jurors to treat those who kill racial and gender minorities with undue mercy. According to this view, murder defenses like provocation should be restricted to ensure that those who kill minority victims receive the harshest …

The Law And Economics Of Stop-And-Frisk, David S. Abrams

All Faculty Scholarship

The relevant economic and legal research relating to police use of stop-and-frisk has largely been distinct. There is much to be gained by taking an interdisciplinary approach. This Essay emphasizes some of the challenges faced by those seeking to evaluate the efficacy and legality of stop-and-frisk, and suggests some ways forward and areas of exploration for future research.

Brown's Dream Deferred: Lessons On Democracy And Identity From Cooper V. Arron To The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Lia Epperson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Unrelenting Libertarian Challenge To Public Accommodations Law, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

There seems to be a broad consensus that Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination in “place[s] of public accommodation,” was a remarkable success. But the consensus is illusory. Laws prohibiting discrimination by public accommodations currently exist under a significant legal threat. And this threat is merely the latest iteration in the controversy over public accommodations laws that began as early as Reconstruction. This Article begins by discussing the controversy in the Reconstruction and Civil Rights Eras over the penetration of antidiscrimination principles into the realm of private businesses’ choice of customers. Although the …

Conceptions Of Agency In Social Movement Scholarship: Mack On African American Civil Rights Lawyers [Comments], Susan Carle

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay examines the theory of individual agency that propels the central thesis in Kenneth Mack's Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer (2012)-namely, that an important yet understudied means by which African American civil rights lawyers changed conceptions of race through their work was through their very performance of the professional role of lawyer. Mack shows that this performance was inevitably fraught with tension and contradiction because African American lawyers were called upon to act both as exemplary representatives of their race and as performers of a professional role that traditionally had been reserved for whites …

Hiv, Violence Against Women, And Criminal Law Interventions, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

The growing calls for the “securitization of body and property,”[ii] documented by Jonathan Simon in his book Governing Through Crime, illustrates a deep tension in our understanding of the role of criminal law as a tool for societal transformation.[iii] For some, including communities of color, the criminal legal system is a place where inequality flourishes;[iv] for others, including those feminists who have support criminal law interventions, it has become a tool to realize equality.[v] The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, reauthorized in 2013 as an amendment to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA),[vi] relies heavily on the criminal law to obtain …

Race Inequity Fifty Years Later: Language Rights Under The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, Jasmine Gonzales Rose

Faculty Scholarship

As Latinos have become the largest racialized minority in the United States, we should ask whether the civil rights laws of yesterday are equipped to address the race problems of today. Half a century after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, racial discrimination still exists, but it manifests itself differently. Rather than explicitly barring someone from employment, education, public accommodations, or civic participation on the basis of his or her race, racially discriminatory exclusion is often couched in seemingly race-neutral terms. English language requirements are one example of this. A sign outside a restaurant stating, “No Mexicans, …

Retaining Color, Veronica Root

Faculty Scholarship

It is no secret that large law firms are struggling in their efforts to retain attorneys of color. This is despite two decades of aggressive tracking of demographic rates, mandates from clients to improve demographic diversity, and the implementation of a variety of diversity efforts within large law firms. In part, law firm retention efforts are stymied by the reality that elite, large law firms require some level of attrition to function properly under the predominant business model. This reality, however, does not explain why firms have so much difficulty retaining attorneys of color—in particular black and Hispanic attorneys.

And …

Brief Of Public Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Title Vii At 50: Contemporary Challenges For U.S. Employment Discrimination Law, Trina Jones

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Forget Sentencing Equality: Moving From The “Cracked” Cocaine Debate Toward Particular Purpose Sentencing, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

While a racial equality-themed discourse has traditionally fueled the crack-versus-powder cocaine sentencing debate, this Article asserts that seeking equality in sentencing outcomes is the wrong goal. This Article argues that reformers seeking racial equality in sentencing are misguided in using the cocaine sentencing standards as a benchmark of fairness, because the current cocaine sentencing standards do not effectively serve the purposes of punishment. Rather than focusing on equality, this Article advocates implementing Particular Purpose Sentencing, which involves developing a framework for drug offenses to be analyzed individually and matched with punishments that purposefully address the concerns associated with the particular …

Place, Not Race: Affirmative Action And The Geography Of Educational Opportunity, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The discourse in America about segregation is dishonest. On the surface, we pretend that the values of Brown v. Board of Education have been met, although most of us know in our hearts that the current system of public education betrays those values. In this essay, I reflect on how residual, defacto segregation and the stratified architecture of opportunity in our nation contribute to the achievement gap that has made race-based affirmative action necessary. Despite the Supreme Court's compromise decision in Fisher v. Texas, affirmative action is on life support. As this essay goes to print, the Supreme Court has …

Book Review: Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections Of Race And Class For Women In Academia, Sonia N. Lawrence

Articles & Book Chapters

This is a book review of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzalez, and Angela P. Harris, eds., Boulder, CO: Utah State University Press, 2012.

Red Law, White Supremacy: Cherokee Freedmen, Tribal Sovereignty, And The Colonial Feedback Loop, Jeremiah Chin

Articles

Sovereignty and self-determination are cornerstones of arguments for Indigenous rights in the geographic United States. Both concepts assert an existence as Indigenous peoples, and reinforce status as nations with citizens and governments, rights and responsibilities, determined by Indigenous communities. In 2006, the Judicial Appeals Tribunal of the Cherokee Nation recognized that Lucy Allen and fellow Cherokee Freedmen, descendants of African slaves once owned by Cherokee, are citizens of the Cherokee Nation and had been citizens of the Cherokee Nation since the 1866 treaty with the United States. Less than a year later, the Cherokee Nation amended its constitution to limit …

Sentencing, Drugs, And Prisons: A Lesson From Ohio, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Prison overcrowding has become a familiar story. Current data shows that more than 1 in 100 adults in America—over 2 million people—are incarcerated, earning the United States the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. It should not be a surprise, therefore, that state and federal prisons are reaching and exceeding capacity. Nor should it be a shock that drug offenders take up many of the beds in those overcapacity prisons. Relative to other crimes, drug sentencing in the United States has been increasingly harsh since the 1970s, and the prison population is feeling the effects …

Blind Injustice: The Supreme Court, Implicit Racial Bias, And The Racial Disparity In The Criminal Justice System, Tyler Rose Clemons

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” This statement by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2007 is alluring in both its grammatical symmetry and its logical simplicity. Yet it encapsulates the naiveté of the view of racial discrimination currently held by the majority of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Chief Justice Roberts’s assertion contains the implied assumption that the only racial discrimination that exists—or at least the only kind that matters under the Constitution—is explicit and susceptible to conscious control. Decades of …

Street Stops And Police Legitimacy: Teachable Moments In Young Urban Men's Legal Socialization, Tom Tyler, Jeffrey Fagan, Amanda Geller

Faculty Scholarship

An examination of the influence of street stops on the legal socialization of young men showed an association between the number of police stops they see or experience and a diminished sense of police legitimacy. This association was not primarily a consequence of the number of stops or of the degree of police intrusion during those stops. Rather, the impact of involuntary contact with the police was mediated by evaluations of the fairness of police actions and judgments about whether the police were acting lawfully. Whether the police were viewed as exercising their authority fairly and lawfully shaped the impact …