Law Commons^™

"Immigrants Are Not Criminals": Respectability, Immigration Reform, And Hyperincarceration, Rebecca Sharpless

Rebecca Sharpless

The Self-Report Psychopathy Scale And Passive Avoidance Learning: A Validation Study Of Race And Gender Effects , M. Epstein, Norman Poythress, K. Brandon

Norman Poythress

SRPS; psychopathy; gender; race; validity; passive avoidance errors; trait anxiety; intelligence

Marital Status And Privilege, Laura Rosenbury

Laura A. Rosenbury

This essay challenges the privilege attaching to marriage as a distinct form of relationship. Responding to Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s new book, According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family, the essay identifies the legal and extralegal privileges flowing not just to monoracial marriage but to marriage. States recognize and support one form of relationship between adults to the exclusion of all others, creating privilege that flows outside of the home into the workplace and beyond. Instead of arguing that such privilege should be distributed more equally between monoracial and multiracial couples, this essay seeks to …

Rethinking Minority Coalition Building: Valuing Self-Sacrifice, Stewardship And Anti-Subordination, Victor Romero

Victor C. Romero

This essay provides an alternative to the conventional self-interest model of coalition building to explore one that relies instead on the three concepts of self-sacrifice, stewardship, and anti-subordination, addressing anticipated counterarguments and providing concrete examples of how this model might work.

Perspective Is Everything, Andrea Lyon

Andrea D. Lyon

No abstract provided.

Race, Gender, And Work/Family Policy, Nancy Dowd

Nancy Dowd

Family leave is not an end in itself, but rather is part of a much bigger picture: work/family policy. The goal of work/family policy is to achieve a good society by supporting families. Ideally, families enable children to develop to their fullest capacity and to contribute to their communities and society. Public rhetoric in the United States has always strongly supported families. Our policies, however, have not. In the area of work/family policy, the United States continues to lag behind every other advanced industrialized country, as well as many developing countries, in the degree to which we provide affirmative support …

Through The Looking Glass, Andrea Lyon

Andrea D. Lyon

No abstract provided.

America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions Of Power And Community, Robert Tsai

Robert L Tsai

The U.S. Constitution opens by proclaiming the sovereignty of all citizens: "We the People." Robert Tsai's gripping history of alternative constitutions invites readers into the circle of those who have rejected this ringing assertion--the defiant groups that refused to accept the Constitution's definition of who "the people" are and how their authority should be exercised. America's Forgotten Constitutions is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Tsai chronicles eight episodes in which discontented citizens took the extraordinary step of drafting a new constitution. He examines …

Lawyering In The Lion's Mouth: The Story Of S.D. Redmond And Pruitt V. State, Mary Ellen Maatman

Mary Ellen Maatman

Lawyering in the Lion’s Mouth: The Story of S.D. Redmond and Pruitt v. State unearths a forgotten case with facts worthy of a William Faulkner novel. Set in rural Mississippi, the case involved alleged interracial adultery and infanticide. Luella Williamson, a white woman who killed her baby, told authorities that an African American man named Ervin Pruitt was the child’s father, and claimed he told her to kill the child for fear he would be lynched. She pled guilty to murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Her alleged lover, who denied both the relationship and any involvement in the …

Has The Roberts Court Plurality's Colorblind Rhetoric Finally Broken Brown's Promise?, Phoebe Haddon

Phoebe A. Haddon

This Essay examines the continuing significance of the Keyes decision to the judicial vision of equality and racial isolation in public education. By comparing efforts to promote educational equality from the Keyes era through today, this Essay asserts that the judiciary has wrongly embraced a colorblind interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause. In so doing, courts have impeded the progress of children in Denver and around the country, ignored highly instructive social science studies on the benefits of desegregation, and broken the constitutional promise of equal citizenship. For future policy makers and lawyers to address these persistent problems, legal educators …

The Law Of The Land: Will Gay Marriage Change Marriage, And If So, How?, Martha Ertman

Martha M. Ertman

This panel, moderated by Naomi Cahn, included presentations by Martha Ertman, Liza Mundy, and Jonathan Rauch.

Race, Crime, And Institutional Design, Erik Luna

Erik Luna

Minorities are gravely overrepresented in every stage of the criminal process--from pedestrian and automobile stops, to searches and seizures, to arrests and convictions, to incarceration and capital punishment. While racial data can provide a snapshot of the current state of affairs, such information rarely satisfies questions of causation, and usually only sets the scene for normative theory.

Gun Control, Mental Illness, And Black Trans And Lesbian Survival, Gabriel Arkles

Gabriel Arkles

Those concerned with racial, gender, sexual, economic, or disability justice should be concerned about the direction and focus of national conversations in the wake of Newtown. Controversies over gun control and mental health treatment have a profound impact on those marginalized based on race, gender, sexuality, class, and disability. Gun control laws endanger trans people of color and queer women of color, as well as those labeled mentally ill, by failing to reduce interpersonal violence while increasing the violence of the criminal legal system. Instead of increasing incarceration of people in marginalized communities who choose to carry guns, we should …

Transnational Dimensions Of Race In America, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

Race, a key concept in international human rights law from the beginning, should still be high on today's global priority list. However, to remain a useful concept in our increasingly complex world, race must be defined and explored as a transnational and multidimensional social construct. I reflect here on the complex nature of "Blackness." I suggest that international human rights law should engage intra-racial diversity among Blacks along cultural, gender, political, economic, and ethnic lines. Because "Blackness" itself is a product of popular social consciousness, I draw here on popular accounts of U.S Black migration and stories about the Presidential …

Statement Of Jeanne M. Woods And Hope Lewis Prepared For The Hearings Of The United Nations Special Rapporteur On Extreme Poverty, Dr. Arjun Sengupta On The Aftermath Of Hurricane Katrina, Hope Lewis, Jeanne Woods

Hope Lewis

This Statement was submitted to the UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, Dr. Arjun Sengupta in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster on the Gulf Coast of the United States in 2005. The Statement, submitted during the Independent Expert’s fact-finding visit, expresses concern about the extensive and alarming human rights implications of United States federal, state and local government policy and activities before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. The Statement argues that the inadequate response of government officials at all levels reflects the impact of “globalization in miniature” on the poor and other vulnerable and subordinated …

Vigilante Racism: The De-Americanization Of Immigrant America, Bill Hing

Bill Ong Hing

The mistreatment of those of Arab, Muslim, and Sikh descent in the United States post September 11 amounts to vigilante racism--the enforcement of a presumed code of what constitutes a "true" American. In the process, the culprits engage in a process of "de-Americanizing" individuals of color, informing them that they do not belong to the American community. There are two Americas; one that is embracing of diversity, the other that continues to be premised on a Euro-centric vision.

Universal Mother : Transnational Migration And The Human Rights Of Black Women In The Americas, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

Community-based or personal forms of identity, as well as some externally imposed gender, race, and cultural stereotypes operate simultaneously to influence global markets. This Article explores the human rights implications of the stories surrounding a female migrant household worker as they exemplify how perceptions about identity can shape legal responses and how legal frameworks can shape perceptions of identity. The identities associated with the migrant household worker seemed to constitute a uniquely complex illustration of the intersection of race, gender, ethnicity, class, immigration status, nationality, and disability. However, the stories establish that all identities can be equally complex. This Article …

Ignoring The Sexualization Of Race: Heteronormativity, Critical Race Theory And Anti-Racist Politics, Darren Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

No abstract provided.

The Tales Of White Folk: Doctrine, Narrative, And The Reconstruction Of Racial Reality, Robert L. Hayman, Nancy A. Levit

Robert L. Hayman

No abstract provided.

Welfare Servitude, Julie Nice

Julie A. Nice

In Welfare Servitude, Professor Nice considers whether mandating work as a condition for receiving welfare violates the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition of involuntary servitude and also explores the recurring intersection between race and class. She first describes the redoubling of efforts to increase enforcement of welfare work requirements once racial minorities were no longer excluded from receiving welfare benefits. Next she analyzes judicial decisions construing what constitutes involuntary servitude, including historic cases addressing indentured servitude, the padrone system, peonage, and the surety system, as well as modern cases challenging various welfare work requirements. Professor Nice distills three doctrinal types of involuntary …