Law Commons^™

Startup Biases, Jennifer S. Fan

Articles

This Article provides an original descriptive account of bias in the startup context and explains why litigation is eschewed and what happens when it is used as a mechanism to combat bias in the venture capital ecosystem. Further, this Article identifies two particular phenomena in the startup context that exacerbate gender and racial bias. First, homophily—the idea that like attracts like—abounds and has been part of the DNA of venture capital since its inception. The thick networks that developed as venture capital made its way from the East Coast to the West Coast were limited to an elite group that …

Antimatters: The Curious Case Of Confederate Monuments, Jeremiah Chin

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Confederate monuments sit at a crossroads of speech frameworks as contested government speech, as concrete edifices of hate speech, and as key protest sites. The interplay of state law and speech doctrines in states like Alabama and Florida has cemented monuments as physical representations of government speech that municipal governments cannot speak on. To understand the confounding ways that doctrinal principles take on inverse implications, this Article draws on the concept of antimatter in physics—matter that has the same mass and properties of ordinary matter but with the opposite charge—to analyze doctrinal intersections of constitutional law that are made to …

Conditions Of Participation: Incorporating The History Of Hospital Desegregation, Sallie Sanford

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Our students ought to know about the history of formal hospital segregation and desegregation. To that end, this article urges those who teach foundational health law and policy courses to do three things. First, to teach the Simkins case. Second, to swap out the usual Medicare signing ceremony picture for one that includes W. Montague Cobb, M.D., Ph.D. Third, to highlight how the implementation of that program for the elderly led, in a matter of months, to the desegregation of hospitals throughout the country.

Modern Authorities From Brandies To Brnovich: For Jurists Who Have Considered Social Science / When Doctrine Was Not Enough, Jeremiah Chin

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While the Supreme Court is the final authority on the Constitution, its interpretations increasingly turn to outside, non-legal sources to authoritatively support its conclusions of law and fact. Particularly in cases involving racial discrimination, the Court relies on social science data presented by the trial record, amicus curiae, or its own research. However, the Court lacks explicit rules or methods of analysis for these data. To remedy this gap in analysis, this article proposes a critical methodology for analyzing the use of social science data in cases involving race. By outlining a historiography of the Court's invocation of extrinsic data, …

Violence Everywhere: How The Current Spectacle Of Black Suffering, Police Violence, And The Violence Of Judicial Interpretation Undermine The Rule Of Law, David B. Owens

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No abstract provided.

Antiracism, Reflection, And Professional Identity, Monte Mills, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries

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Intent on more systematically developing the emerging professional identities of law students, the professional identity formation movement is recasting how we think about legal education. Notably, however, the movement overlooks the structural racism imbedded in American law and legal education. While current models of professional development value diversity and cross-cultural competence, they do not adequately prepare the next generation of legal professionals to engage in the sustained work of interrupting and overthrowing race and racism in the legal profession and system. This article argues that antiracism is essential to the profession’s responsibility to serve justice and therefore key to legal …

Public (Ai)Ccomodations, Jevan Hutson, Deepak George, Aj Kidd, Sulaf Al-Saif, Mandy (Meiyun) Ku, Devin Glaser, Devin Glaser

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This Note discusses the use of Al surveillance in places of public accommodations and its implications for civil rights and antidiscrimination law. Part I documents the extensive Al surveillance employed in areas of public accommodation, where American antidiscrimination laws explicitly provide for elevated protection. Part II uses critical race theory to explore how contemporary antidiscrimination law marries two approaches to antidiscrimination in a way that undercuts its own ability to remedy injustice. Part III reveals how antidiscrimination law fails to address issues implicated by Al surveillance in areas of public accommodations, and Part IV proposes a simple solution: abolish it.

#Metoo Innovators: Disrupting The Race And Gender Code By Asian Americans In The Tech Industry, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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This Article focuses on how Asian American women innovators of the #MeToo generation are disrupting the code of conduct in the tech industry. The code is hard-wired into the tech bro culture of mirrortocracy, resulting in hiring practices that perpetuate existing company demographics and statistics that show that Asian American women face 2.91 times the disadvantage compared to white women. In addition, of all gender and racial groups, Asian American female innovators are the least likely to become executives. This Article identifies and explains how these innovators are the disruptors on several fronts. Utilizing everything from judicial means to traditional …

Uncompromising Hunger For Justice: Resistance, Sacrifice, And Latcrit Theory, Brenda Williams, Edwin Lindo, Marc-Tizoc González

Articles

In this Article, three law professors report on and theorize a nonviolent direct-action campaign of the kind discussed by Dr. King in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Using the basic steps of the nonviolent campaign as an organizing framework, they analyze and report on the 18-day hunger strike by the Frisco 5 (a.k.a., Frisco5). This direct action protested the extrajudicial killings of Amilcar Perez-Lopez, Alex Nieto, Luis Góngora-Pat, and Mario Woods by San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers and advocated for institutional change to reduce the risk of homicides against persons with similarly racialized minority-group identities. Two weeks …

Race, Racism, And American Law': A Seminar From The Indigenous, Black, And Immigrant Legal Perspectives, Monte Mills, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries

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Flagrant racism has characterized the Trump era from the onset. Beginning with the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has inflamed long-festering racial wounds and unleashed white supremacist reaction to the nation’s first black President, in the process destabilizing our sense of the nation’s racial progress and upending core principles of legality, equality, and justice. As law professors, we sought to rise to these challenges and prepare the next generation of lawyers to succeed in a different and more polarized future. Our shared commitment resulted in a new course, “Race, Racism, and American Law,” in which we sought to explore the roots …

"The More Things Change . . .": New Moves For Legitimizing Racial Discrimination In A "Post-Race" World, Mario L. Barnes

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No abstract provided.

Empirical Methods And Critical Race Theory: A Discourse On Possibilities For A Hybrid Methodology, Mario L. Barnes

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No abstract provided.

Book Review, Mario L. Barnes

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Reviewing Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship by Charles Epp, Steven Maynard-Moody, and Donald Haider (2014).

"Driving While Black" Redux: Illuminating New And Myriad Aspects Of Auto(Matic) Inequality, Mario Barnes

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Reviewing Charles R. Epp, Steven Maynard-Moody, and Donald Haider-Markel, Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship (2014).

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

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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 …

The "Nixon Sabotage": The Political Origins Of The Equal Protection Challenge To The Voting Rights Act, Danieli Evans

Articles

Critics of the Voting Rights Act argue that the anti-discrimination law requires states to engage in unconstitutional discrimination, as state decisionmakers must be conscious of race in order to ensure that voting policies do not weaken minority representation. This argument relies on the idea that subjective racial motivation is the essence of unconstitutional discrimination (even if benevolent, or to promote racial inclusion). The conventional understanding among constitutional scholars is that this “search for the bigoted decisionmaker” developed in employment and housing discrimination decisions between 1976 and 1979. Previous accounts have not recognized the role that the 1971 school desegregation decision …

Property, Privacy And Power: Rethinking The Fourth Amendment In The Wake Of U.S. V. Jones, Dana Raigrodski

Articles

This Article seeks to uncover invisible gender, race, and class biases driving modern Fourth Amendment discourse. Unlike traditional theories, which tend to view the Fourth Amendment through the lens of either privacy or property, this Article advances a theory focusing on the real issues of power and control that fuel Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Specifically, the Article exposes the private/public and home/market dichotomies that are central to the Supreme Court rhetoric as arbitrary and artificial. It finds that current Fourth Amendment discourse protects the interest of white, privileged men and perpetuates male ideology as well as male domination. That focus leaves …

Lockdown For Liberty: Black Masculinities, Mass Incarceration And Labor In The Georgia Prisoners Strike, Jeremiah Chin

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This article examines the Georgia prisoners’ protest and uses the prisoners’ list of demands to examine the relationship between historical and present notions of race, labor, rights and incarceration. Particular focus will be placed on how mass incarceration is racialized in the disproportionate imprisonment of men of color, specifically black men, and how this contributes to the invisibility of this population in the public eye. The next section offers a theoretical framework to understand how prisons and prisoner issues are removed from public discourse, the general assumptions undergirding public perceptions of prisons and how common sense assumptions of prisons can …

A Fresh Cut In An Old Wound–A Critical Analysis Of The Trayvon Martin Killing: The Public Outcry, The Prosecutors’ Discretion, And The Stand Your Ground Law, Tamara F. Lawson

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If the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case is to have value beyond its immediate facts, it is important to consider the case through a broad lens that encompasses law, politics, and culture and the relevant intersectionality of each. This essay gives a contextualized historical perspective with which to view the Black community’s reaction to the initial lack of criminal charges in the case. It explains why the circumstances surrounding Trayvon’s death were experienced as a fresh cut in an old, but deep, collective wound, for many Blacks. It addresses the exacerbation African Americans felt regarding law enforcement’s perceived indifference towards Trayvon, …

What A Load Of Hope: The Post-Racial Mixtape, Jeremiah Chin

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This Comment analyzes how Supreme Court decisions and recent legislation have used the language of post-racialism to re-center whiteness through the law. Rather than using explicit racist language, the post-racial project exploits the language of historical antiracist efforts to negate experiences with discrimination while continuing a hostile environment for racial groups and promoting white supremacy in the United States.

Beginning with Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger, and school desegregation in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, this Comment analyzes …

Rebellious State Crimmigration Enforcement And The Foreign Affairs Power, Mary Fan

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The propriety of a new breed of state laws interfering in immigration enforcement is pending before the Supreme Court and the lower courts. These laws typically incorporate federal standards related to the criminalization of immigration ("crimmigration'), but diverge aggressively from federal enforcement policy. Enacting states argue that the legislation is merely a species of "cooperative federalism" that does not trespass upon the federal power over foreign affairs, foreign commerce, and nationality rules since the laws mirror federal standards. This Article challenges the formalist mirror theory assumptions behind the new laws and argues that inconsistent state crimmigration enforcement policy and resulting …

The Once And Future Equal Protection Doctrine?, Mario L. Barnes, Erwin Chemerinsky

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This Essay is the third in a series of pieces assessing Equal Protection Doctrine and jurisprudence. Here, we endeavor to do two things: (1) to utilize constitutional structure, text, and history to interrogate the concept of equality protected under the Fourteenth Amendment; and (2) to critique the Supreme Court's present approach to adjudicating constitutional discrimination claims. With regard to the meaning of equality, we assert that if the text of the Reconstruction Amendments and the stated goals of Reconstruction are used to inform constitutional analysis, then equality should be understood as a substantive rather than formalist concept. Reconstruction, however, was …

Foreword: Latcrit Theory, Narrative Tradition And Listening Intently For A "Still Small Voice", Mario L. Barnes

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No abstract provided.

Racial Paradox In A Law And Society Odyssey, Mario L. Barnes

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No abstract provided.

A Post-Race Equal Protection?, Mario L. Barnes, Erwin Chemerinsky, Trina Jones

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No abstract provided.

“Whites Only Tree,” Hanging Nooses, No Crime?: Limiting The Prosecutorial Veto For Hate Crimes In Louisiana And Across America, Tamara F. Lawson

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News coverage of three nooses hanging from the "whites only tree" at Jena High School, in Jena, Louisiana, created public outcry. Criticism rose as the public learned that District Attorney Reed Walters exercised his prosecutorial discretion to decline to press charges against the white students that admitted hanging the nooses, yet over zealously charged black students with attempted murder for conduct normally considered a battery or a school-yard-fight. The apparent lack of equity in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion became the focus of heated debate. Although the Jena High School incidents occurred in 2006, the Jena story is unpleasantly reminiscent …

Be Careful What You Ask For: Educacion Para Todas/Os, The Perils And The Power, Jessica Solyom, Jeremiah Chin, Kristi Ryujin

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Demonstrations supporting human and civil rights, while often romanticized as a phenomenon of the past, are becoming more pervasive today, reflecting the continued forms of discrimination and oppression undocumented workers, individuals, and families experience. In the past few years, Utah residents have been engaged in their own battle to determine the level of support the state is willing to extend students of color interested in attending institutions of higher education. On the "frontstage" many of the state's universities echo a rhetoric of support for diversity. Some even go as far as to outline their commitment to diversity as part of …

By Any Other Name?: On Being "Regarded As" Black, And Why Title Vii Should Apply Even If Lakisha And Jamal Are White, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Mario L. Barnes

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Applying theories concerning the social construction of race, this Article borrows from the definition of disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and the courts' analyses of disability discrimination cases under the "regarded as" disabled provision of the ADA, which allows a plaintiff to bring a claim against an employer who regards the plaintiff as having an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. Using the "regarded as" provision as a model, this Article proposes a new method for recognizing discrimination claims based on the use of proxies for race-even when those proxies have been used …

Chain Gangs, Boogeymen And Other Real Prisons Of The Imagination, Lisa Kelly

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This narrative is a fictionalized account of real legal, historical, and interpersonal issues rooted in the social construction of race.

Race And Place: Geographic And Transcendent Community In The Post-Shaw Era, Lisa A. Kelly

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Race and Place is a narrative article, both fictional and true, dedicated to exploring the dual realities of a geographic and transcendent community in the context of the Supreme Court's recent decisions in Shaw v. Reno and Miller v. Johnson. The Court has allowed and affirmed constitutional challenges to districts drawn to empower African-Americans "with nothing in common but the color of their skin." The Article draws upon history, literature, political science, and law to critique the Court's assumptions concerning the challenged districts and to demonstrate the existence of African-American communities of interest which are both geographically bounded by …