Law Commons^™

(Re)Building The Master's House: Dismantling America's Colonial Politics Of Extraction And Exclusion, Marissa Jackson Sow

Law Faculty Publications

On February 10, 2021, and in the days thereafter, liberal American commentators showered Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett with superlatives and praise due to her masterful takedown of former President Donald Trump during his impeachment trial for incitement of the January 6, 2021 Capitol Riot. Referring to a picture of Plaskett wearing a knee-length blue dress with draped sleeves, the political strategist (and daughter of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi) Christine Pelosi took to Twitter to note that “[n]ot all superheroes wear capes. This one does!”

Plaskett is one of many Black Americans who has done the hard work of cleaning up …

Inheriting Privilege, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

All families may be created equal, so to speak. But differences between families in terms of economic wealth, resource networks, and access to cultural capital are both severe and stark. A large part of what shapes this scenery of economic possibility is the legal framework of wealth transfer. Wealth travels through generations and sticks, crystallizing in predictable places and shapes, thereby embedding complex forms of inequality within and between families. The family trust, in particular, is a mode of transfer that facilitates wealth preservation as well as wealth inequality. Family trusts are tailored to convey and defend complex patrimonies in …

All Roads Lead From Vietnam To Your Home Town: How Veterans Have Become Casualties Of The War On Drugs, Susan Stuart

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Outsourcing Childcare, Meredith Johnson Harbach

Law Faculty Publications

Existing discourse on childcare decisions proceeds as if there were one "right" answer to the question of who should care for children. The law has preferences, too. But the reality is that parents, like businesses, make diverse, strategic decisions about when to keep work in-house, and when to collaborate with outside partners. This Article uses the lens of business outsourcing to gain fresh perspective on childcare decisionmaking, and the law's relationship to it. The outsourcing framework provides three key insights. First, it enables us to better understand the diversity of childcare decisions and the reasons underlying them. Second, the outsourcing …

Dickens Redux: How American Child Labor Law Became A Con Game, Seymour Moskowitz

Law Faculty Publications

Millions of American teens are employed today in a variety of workplaces. The jobs they hold typically provide little human capital for their future economic self·sufficiency, and pose substantial immediate and long-term safety, academic, and behavioral risks for this generation. This Article seeks to answer the question of how American law and society reached this situation, which has such disastrous effects for working youth, their families, and society as a whole. Three main themes are developed:

1. Child labor has always been part of the American economy, from colonial times until today. While there have been more than 150 years …

Intent And Empirics: Race To The Subprime, Carol N. Brown

Law Faculty Publications

The United States’ history of racially discriminatory banking, housing, and property policies created a community of black Americans accustomed to exploitative financial services and vulnerable to victimization by subprime lenders. My thesis is that black borrowers are experiencing a new iteration of intentional housing discrimination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; lenders identified a vulnerable 'emerging market' of black homeowners and borrowers and knowingly targeted them to receive subprime or predatory loan products when equally situated white borrowers were given superior, prime mortgage products. This Article explores how disparate lending practices coupled with banking deregulation undermined the Congressional push for …

The Houses That Eminent Domain And Housing Tax Credits Built: Imagining A Better New Orleans, Carol N. Brown

Law Faculty Publications

Proposals for investing in and rebuilding urban enclaves such as New Orleans are layered with controversy and difficulty. One of the most significant impediments to rebuilding New Orleans will be addressing the need to replenish the depleted rental housing market. Racial and economic integration of housing markets and appropriate use of private sector money to replenish the rental housing stock within a “reasonable” time period are indispensable components of a responsible revitalization and renewal plan. This Article contends that a combination of the smart exercise of eminent domain and of ”housing production subsidies” – housing tax credits – is necessary …

Welfare Reform, Child Care Costs, And Taxes: Delivering Increased Work-Related Child Care Benefits To Low-Income Families, Mary L. Heen

Law Faculty Publications

This Article focuses specifically on.tax-transfer integration of work-related child care assistance. Part I discusses the current child care assistance available to low-income workers through direct transfer programs and through the income tax system. Part II describes the need for increased child care funding and the failure of current welfare reform proposals to meet that need. Part III examines the theoretical and practical issues that must be addressed before the tax system is used as a mechanism for delivering increased child care assistance. to low-income families. Part IV critiques a proposed funding mechanism that would redirect tax benefits to lower income …