Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 22 of 22
Full-Text Articles in Law
Beyond More Accurate Algorithms: Takeaways From Mccleskey Revisited, Ngozi Okidegbe
Beyond More Accurate Algorithms: Takeaways From Mccleskey Revisited, Ngozi Okidegbe
Michigan Law Review
A Review of McCleskey v. Kemp. By Mario Barnes, in Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law 557, 581. Edited by Bennett Capers, Devon W. Carbado, R.A. Lenhardt and Angela Onwuachi-Willig.
Free-Ing Criminal Justice, Bennett Capers
Free-Ing Criminal Justice, Bennett Capers
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Free Justice: A History of the Public Defender in Twentieth-Century America. By Sara Mayeux
Origin Stories: Critical Race Theory Encounters The War On Terror, Natsu Taylor Saito
Origin Stories: Critical Race Theory Encounters The War On Terror, Natsu Taylor Saito
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Stories matter. They matter to those intent on maintaining structures of power and privilege, and to those being crushed by those structures. In the United States, the space to tell, and to hear, our stories has been expanding. This means that the histories and lived realities of those who have been excluded, particularly people of color, are seeping into mainstream discourse, into the books our children read, the movies and television shows they watch, and the many websites comprising social media. Critical race theory has played a role in this expansion. It insists that we recognize the legitimacy of the …
When Critical Race Theory Enters The Law & Technology Frame, Jessica M. Eaglin
When Critical Race Theory Enters The Law & Technology Frame, Jessica M. Eaglin
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Michigan Technology Law Review is proud to partner with our peers to publish this essay by Professor Jessica Eaglin on the intertwining social construction of race, law and technology. This piece highlights how the approach to use technology as precise tools for criminal administration or objective solutions to societal issues often fails to consider how laws and technologies are created in our racialized society. If we do not consider how race and technology are co-productive, we will fail to reach substantive justice and instead reinforce existing racial hierarchies legitimated by laws.
How Critical Race Theory Marginalizes The African American Christian Tradition, Brandon Paradise
How Critical Race Theory Marginalizes The African American Christian Tradition, Brandon Paradise
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article offers the first comprehensive account of the marginalization of the African American Christian tradition in the movement of race and law scholarship known as critical race theory. While committed to grounding itself in the perspectives of communities of color, critical race theory has virtually ignored the significance of the fact that the civil rights movement came out of the Black church and that today more than eighty percent of African Americans self-identify as Christian. In practical terms, critical race theory’s neglect of the Christian tradition has meant that arguments developed in race and law scholarship are sometimes incompatible …
Reading, Writing, And Reparations: Systemic Reform Of Public Schools As A Matter Of Justice, Verna L. Williams
Reading, Writing, And Reparations: Systemic Reform Of Public Schools As A Matter Of Justice, Verna L. Williams
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article analyzes Virginia's effort to remedy massive resistance and posits that, under reparations theory, a broader remedy is necessary to redress the scope of the state's wrongdoing. To do this, Part I briefly examines reparations theory, which provides the tools to identify the proper scope of the injury to be addressed, and, in turn, informs the proper choice of remedy. With this background, Part II discusses the Brown Fund Act and the massive resistance it seeks to remedy. In this connection, the Article demonstrates that the school shutdowns were part of a statewide decision to defy Brown and maintain …
Race Nuisance: The Politics Of Law In The Jim Crow Era, Rachel D. Godsil
Race Nuisance: The Politics Of Law In The Jim Crow Era, Rachel D. Godsil
Michigan Law Review
This Article explores a startling and previously unnoticed line of cases in which state courts in the Jim Crow era ruled against white plaintiffs trying to use common law nuisance doctrine to achieve residential segregation. These "race-nuisance" cases complicate the view of most legal scholarship that state courts during the Jim Crow era openly eschewed the rule of law in service of white supremacy. Instead, the cases provide rich social historical detail showing southern judges wrestling with their competing allegiances to both precedent and the pursuit of racial exclusivity. Surprisingly, the allegiance to precedent generally prevailed. The cases confound prevailing …
Accumulation, Anthony Paul Farley
Accumulation, Anthony Paul Farley
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Anthony Farley brings a focus on class back to Critical Race Theory by exploring the intersection of race and class as a singular concept that finds its creation in the marking of difference through the primal scene of accumulation. Professor Farley's Essay contends that the rule of law is the endless unfolding of that primal scene of accumulation. By choosing to pray for legal relief rather than dismantling the system, the slave chooses enslavement over freedom. Professor Farley discusses the concept of ownership as violence and explains that property rights are the means of protecting the master class until everything …
From Race To Class Struggle: Re-Problematizing Critical Race Theory, E San Juan Jr.
From Race To Class Struggle: Re-Problematizing Critical Race Theory, E San Juan Jr.
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
The misconstrual of "class" as a theoretical and analytic concept for defining group or individual identity has led, especially during the Cold War period, to its confusion with status, life-style, and other ideological contingencies. This has vitiated the innovative attempt of CRT to link racism and class oppression. We need to reinstate the Marxist category of class derived from the social division of labor that generates antagonistic class relations. Class conflict becomes the key to grasping the totality of social relations of production, as well as the metabolic process of social reproduction in which racism finds its effectivity. This will …
Si Se Puede, But Who Gets The Gravy?, Richard Delgado
Si Se Puede, But Who Gets The Gravy?, Richard Delgado
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In this piece, the author writes in two alternating voices: the voice of rap and the voice of standard academic discourse. The rap passages are rude, direct, even raunchy, while the prose passages are rendered in academic English. This dichotomy is intentional: Rap represents the voice of the people, the voice from below, the voice of those who live in neighborhoods filled with broken glass, an impatient, insurgent voice that bears little in common with the complex, jargon-filled sentences of most contemporary left discourse. The latter voice, in my view, has become too detached from that of our many constituents …
Engaging The Spirit Of Racial Healing Within Critical Race Theory: An Exercise In Transformativethought, Rebecca Tsosie
Engaging The Spirit Of Racial Healing Within Critical Race Theory: An Exercise In Transformativethought, Rebecca Tsosie
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This essay posits that Critical Race Theory (CRT) must operate at both the "idealist" and "materialist" levels. Although the emphasis may be in one direction or another at particular times, both domains are continually engaged. This essay links the debate between the "materialist" and "idealist" views to another central theme within CRT, which is the need for "justice" and how the law relates to justice. This essay focuses on the contemporary debate surrounding the status of Native Hawaiians to show how "race" is being used to construct the civil and political rights of Native Hawaiian people. CRT is a jurisprudence …
The Sacred Way Of Tibetan Crt Kung Fu: Can Race Crits Teach The Shadow's Mystical Insight And Help Law Students "Know" White Structural Oppression In The Heart Of The First-Year Curriculum? A Critical Rejoinder To Dorothy A. Brown, Reginald Leamon Robinson
The Sacred Way Of Tibetan Crt Kung Fu: Can Race Crits Teach The Shadow's Mystical Insight And Help Law Students "Know" White Structural Oppression In The Heart Of The First-Year Curriculum? A Critical Rejoinder To Dorothy A. Brown, Reginald Leamon Robinson
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Part I of this Article uses a quasi-parable, in which Dorothy Brown is a Tibetan Master who teaches law students CRT Kung Fu, the monastic fighting skills by which they will acquire the Shadow's mystical insight to "know" the heart of the first-year curriculum. Part II challenges the organizing principles and content on which Brown's Critical Race Theory purports to critically interrogate traditional legal doctrine, applying a New Age Philosophical critique as well as agency theory to crack dealing in Spanish Harlem. I use this case study to argue that crack dealers deliberately and purposefully choose extra-legal economic opportunities, even …
From Discourse To Struggle: A New Direction In Critical Race Theory, Megan K. Whyte
From Discourse To Struggle: A New Direction In Critical Race Theory, Megan K. Whyte
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
To commemorate the Michigan Journal of Race & Law's tenth anniversary, they hosted a symposium in February 2005 that marked a shift within critical race theory. Entitled "Going Back to Class?: The Reemergence of Class in Critical Race Theory," the symposium brought together speakers, students, Journal alumni, and members of the community to begin a fuller examination of the relationship between race and class.
The Paradox Of Silence: Some Questions About Silence As Resistance, Dorothy E. Roberts
The Paradox Of Silence: Some Questions About Silence As Resistance, Dorothy E. Roberts
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In Part I, I note the difficulty in distinguishing between silencing and silence as resistance. This difficulty has often led people in power to misinterpret the silence of people of color. Part II further explores the complications of incorporating the study of silence into resistance scholarship. I illustrate this complexity by discussing the silencing of welfare mothers and the use of language by women of color to challenge dominant medical discourse. Part III considers Professor Montoya's proposal to use silence as a pedagogical tool. Continuing my examination of silence as both liberating and accommodating, I distinguish between silence in the …
Silencing Culture And Culturing Silence: A Comparative Experience Of Centrifugal Forces In The Ethnic Studies Curriculum, Steven W. Bender
Silencing Culture And Culturing Silence: A Comparative Experience Of Centrifugal Forces In The Ethnic Studies Curriculum, Steven W. Bender
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Using the metaphor of silencing, Professor Margaret Montoya documents the irrelevance of race, gender, and socio-historical perspectives both in legal education and, more broadly, in legal discourse. Although others have invoked this metaphor, Professor Montoya's charting of the physical, rather than merely metaphorical, space of silence moves beyond this legal literature in several respects. Viewing silence not just as dead space, Professor Montoya enlivens and colors silence and other nonverbal aspects of communication as positive cultural traits. She demonstrates how silence can be used as a pedagogical tool (a centrifugal force) in the classroom and in client interviews to bring …
Silence And Silencing: Their Centripetal And Centrifugal Forces In Legal Communication, Pedagogy And Discourse, Margaret E. Montoya
Silence And Silencing: Their Centripetal And Centrifugal Forces In Legal Communication, Pedagogy And Discourse, Margaret E. Montoya
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Language and voice have been subjects of great interest to scholars working in the areas of Critical Race Theory and Latina/o Critical Legal Theory. Silence, a counterpart of voice, has not, however, been well theorized. This Article is an invitation to attend to silence and silencing. The first part of the Article argues that one's use of silence is an aspect of communication that, like accents, is related to one's culture and may correlate with one's racial identity. The second part of the Article posits that silence can be a force that disrupts the dominant discourse within the law school …
Lawyering For Social Change: What's A Lawyer To Do?, Kevin R. Johnson
Lawyering For Social Change: What's A Lawyer To Do?, Kevin R. Johnson
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This article analyzes two questions that are raised by Professor Yamamoto's provocative article. Part I argues that any significant transformation of the social structure of United States society is far more likely to occur through mass political movements than through litigation. Consequently, advocates of social change, especially those trained in law, should not expect too much reform from the courtrooms. They instead should consider how traditional legal action might complement and encourage-not replace-community activism and political involvement. Put simply, an exclusive focus on litigation will not accomplish fully the desired objective. Part II contends that attorneys' ethical duties to their …
Lynching Ethics: Toward A Theory Of Racialized Defenses, Anthony V. Alfieri
Lynching Ethics: Toward A Theory Of Racialized Defenses, Anthony V. Alfieri
Michigan Law Review
So much depends upon a rope in Mobile, Alabama. To hang Michael Donald, Henry Hays and James "Tiger" Knowles tied up "a piece of nylon rope about twenty feet long, yellow nylon." They borrowed the rope from Frank Cox, Hays's brother-in-law. Cox "went out in the back" of his mother's "boatshed, or something like that, maybe it was in the lodge." He "got a rope," climbed into the front seat of Hays's Buick Wildcat, and handed it to Knowles sitting in the back seat. So much depends upon a noose. Knowles "made a hangman's noose out of the rope," thirteen …
Vampires Anonymous And Critical Race Practice, Robert A. Williams Jr.
Vampires Anonymous And Critical Race Practice, Robert A. Williams Jr.
Michigan Law Review
I can only explain what Vampires Anonymous has done for me by telling my story. I know, stories, particularly autobiographical stories, are currently being dissed by some law professors. Raised in an overly obsessive, objectively neutralized cultural style, they are plain and simple Storyhaters. Their middle to upper class parents had money, a home in the burbs, and nice kids who were going to go on from their fancy grade schools and college preparatory gigs to Harvard/Stanford/Yale - all those types of pricey places where law professors usually come from. These kids were raised to be objective, neutral, neutered, fair, …
Foreword: "Racialism" And Reason, Frank I. Michelman
Foreword: "Racialism" And Reason, Frank I. Michelman
Michigan Law Review
Clueless, I am not; but still I can wonder why I, of all people, was recruited to write a foreword for this symposium - sight unseen, before its component papers had even been submitted. Neither legal representation nor the teaching of it has ever been for me a main activity or focus of scholarly reflection. Although I have written occasionally about race - in defense of busing, on the side of affirmative action - no one could mistake me for a critical race theorist. I am the original-model imperial scholar, as of last report only partially redeemed. "Liberal" is the …
Afterword: Other Americas, Angela P. Harris
Afterword: Other Americas, Angela P. Harris
Michigan Law Review
In an article published by Harper's Magazine in July 1991, James Traub, a white journalist, reported that participants on "The Gary Byrd Show," a New York City-based black radio talk show, insisted on attributing nearly every event adversely affecting African Americans to racist conspiracies. Traub titled his article "A CounterReality Grows in Harlem," and he was clearly shocked and dismayed by what he saw as the widespread irrationalism, even paranoia, of Harlem's black residents. His article suggested that the emergence of this counterreality was a measure of the dangerous isolation of certain segments of African America from the rest of …
The Underrepresentation Of Minorities In The Legal Profession: A Critical Race Theorist's Perspective, Alex M. Johnson Jr.
The Underrepresentation Of Minorities In The Legal Profession: A Critical Race Theorist's Perspective, Alex M. Johnson Jr.
Michigan Law Review
Over the last four years, I have taught a course in Critical Race Theory at the University of Virginia School of Law three times. Although each course is different, given the interplay between the teacher and the students and the integration of new developments into the course, there has been one constant subject that the students and I address: Of what import is the development of Critical Race Theory for the legal profession and larger society? Can Critical Race Theory have a positive or any effect for those outside legal academia? This article represents an attempt to explore that question …