Law Commons^™

Reducing Community Violence While Protecting Civil Rights, Kami Chavis

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Racial Implications Of Ncaa Academic Measures, Timothy Davis

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

In 1983, the NCAA’s adoption of heightened initial eligibility standards for incoming intercollegiate athletes was met with applause and criticism. Proponents lauded the measure as a legitimate means of restoring academic integrity within intercollegiate athletics. Opponents questioned whether seemingly racially neutral eligibility standards had a disproportionately negative impact on African American athletes. It is against this backdrop that the Article examines the racial implications of the NCAA’s past and present academic standards.

These standards consist of initial eligibility rules, progress-toward-degree requirements, the graduation success rate, and academic progress rate, the latter two of which comprise the NCAA’s Academic Performance Program. …

Blocking The Ballot Box: The Republican War On Voting Rights, Brendan Williams

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article addresses threats to the right to vote that have arisen since 2018, when voter suppression efforts were key to denying Stacey Abrams, the Black Democratic nominee, victory over Republican Brian Kemp in the Georgia gubernatorial race, while Kemp, in administering his own election while Georgia’s Secretary of State, “laid out a chilling blueprint of voting suppression for other states to follow.”

This Article begins by examining the early Republican voter intimidation tactics that resulted in a consent decree, as these can be viewed as part of a continuum to the present day. It discusses the two U.S. Supreme …

Redliking: When Redlining Goes Online, Allyson E. Gold

William & Mary Law Review

Airbnb’s structure, design, and algorithm create a website architecture that allows user discrimination to prevent minority hosts from realizing the same economic benefits from short-term rental platforms as White hosts, a phenomenon this Article refers to as “redliking.” For hosts with an unused home, a spare room, or an extra couch, Airbnb provides an opportunity to create new income streams and increase wealth. Airbnb encourages prospective guests to view host photographs, names, and personal information when considering potential accommodations, thereby inviting bias, both implicit and overt, to permeate transactions. This bias has financial consequences. Empirical research on host earning rates …

Black Hair(Tage): Career Liability Or Civil Rights Issue?, Kaili Moss

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

A Reparative Justice Approach To Assessing Ancestral Classifications Aimed At Colonization’S Harms, Susan K. Serrano

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

“Meaningful Access” Demands Meaningful Efforts: The Need For Greater Access To Virginia State Courts For Limited English Proficient Litigants, Carolyn Harlamert

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Good Faith Discrimination, Girardeau A. Spann

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The Supreme Court’s current doctrinal rules governing racial discrimination and affirmative action are unsatisfying. They often seem artificial, internally inconsistent, and even conceptually incoherent. Despite a long and continuing history of racial discrimination in the United States, many of the problems with the Supreme Court’s racial jurisprudence stem from the Court’s willingness to view the current distribution of societal resources as establishing a colorblind, race-neutral baseline that can be used to make equality determinations. As a result, the current rules are as likely to facilitate racial discrimination as to prevent it, or to remedy the lingering effects of past discrimination. …

Beginning To End Racial Profiling: Definitive Solutions To An Elusive Problem, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Remedying an elusive practice such as racial profiling remains a challenging issue for the judiciary and reformers must rely on other avenues for a solution. For example, even where evidence demonstrates that minorities are disproportionately stopped and searched, courts rarely recognize the victim's claim or provide relief. Thus, it is clear that courts will not be the catalysts of change. This Article argues that while courts may be reluctant to provide judicial remedies, police departments themselves should not ignore [minorities'] perceptions [of racial discrimination] and should take measures to reduce any possible profiling and increase partnerships with communities. An indication …

Widening Batson's Net To Ensnare More Than The Unapologetically Bigoted Or Painfully Unimaginative Attorney, Jeffrey Bellin, Junichi P. Semitsu

Faculty Publications

In Snyder v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its commitment to rooting out racially discriminatory jury selection and its belief that the three-step framework established in Batson v. Kentucky is capable of unearthing racially discriminatory peremptory strikes. Yet the Court left in place the talismanic protection available to those who might misuse the peremptory challenge—the unbounded collection of justifications that courts, including the Supreme Court, accept as “race neutral.”

To evaluate the Court’s continuing faith in Batson, we conducted a survey of all federal published and unpublished judicial decisions issued in this first decade of the new millennium (2000–2009) that …

The Supreme Court's Post-Racial Turn Towards A Zero-Sum Understanding Of Equality, Helen Norton

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unlocking The Power Of State Constitutions With Equal Protection: The First Step Toward Education As A Federally Protected Right, Derek W. Black

William & Mary Law Review

This Article analyzes the intersection of state constitutional law right at stake and the responsibility for enforcing it. Thus, the scrutiny of this right under federal equal protection would be far different than it was just a few decades ago. Given the states’ weakened ability to enforce these rights, the future of education equity depends on federal intervention. with federal equal protection, revealing how federal equal protection, by relying on state constitutional education standards, can force states to further equalize and increase the resources available to struggling schools. It begins by exploring the extent of inequality and inadequacy in our …

Judicial Erasure Of Mixed-Race Discrimination, Nancy Leong

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Discriminatory Acquittal, Tania Tetlow

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This article is the first to analyze a pervasive and unexplored constitutional problem: the rights of crime victims against unconstitutional discrimination by juries. From the Emmett Till trial to that of Rodney King, there is a long history of juries acquitting white defendants charged with violence against black victims. Modem empirical evidence continues to show a devaluation of black victims; dramatic disparities exist in death sentence and rape conviction rates according to the race of the victim. Moreover, just as juries have permitted violence against those who allegedly violated the racial order, juries use acquittals to punish female victims of …

How The Diversity Rationale Lays The Groundwork For New Discrimination: Examining The Trajectory Of Equal Protection Doctrine, Michael A. Helfand

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article advocates differentiating between two distinct categories of equal protection cases. The first-what I have termed indicator cases-are instances where courts consider whether there are sufficient factual indications to demonstrate the existence of aprimafacie equal protection violation. The second-violation casesare instances where courts consider, having already determined the existence of an equal protection violation, whether there is a good enough justification for a prima facie equal protection violation. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not differentiated between these two different types of cases. This has led to a string of decisions where the Supreme Court has erroneously looked for justifications …

Cedaw, Compliance, And Custom: Human Rights Enforcement In Sub-Saharan Africa, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing The Race-Sex Analogy, Serena Mayeri

William & Mary Law Review

In the standard account, American sex equality law rests on a partial and imperfect analogy to race, developed in the 1970s by feminists intent on establishing formal equality between men and women, and embraced, albeit selectively and uneasily, by lawmakers and judges. But this account, although containing important elements of truth, obscures the creative ways that advocates turned the tables, arguing that principles developed in sex equality jurisprudence could expand the availability of remedies for racial injustice. This Article explores one example of this phenomenon: efforts, led by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to use the emerging constitutional distinction between detrimental and …

Discrimination And Outrage: The Migration From Civil Rights To Tort Law, Martha Chamallas

William & Mary Law Review

It is not always appreciated that proven discrimination on the basis of race or sex may not amount to a tort and that even persistent racial or sexual harassment may not be enough to qualify for tort recovery. This Article explores the question of whether discriminatory and harassing conduct in the workplace is or should be considered outrageous conduct, actionable under the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress. In recent years, courts have taken radically different approaches to the issue, from holding that such claims are preempted to treating the infliction tort as a reinforcement of civil rights principles. …

When 2 Or 3 Come Together, Tracey L. Meares, Kelsi Brown Corkan

William & Mary Law Review

This Article investigates policies that are responsive to crime in disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods from a community-based context. The vehicle is an analysis of a community-wide prayer vigil held in Chicago in May of 1997. The vigil resulted from a collaboration between the Chicago Police Department and hundreds of mostly African-American churches on Chicago's West Side. Strikingly, the local police district's commander facilitated the vigil. The Article explains the sociological and political significance of this collaboration by drawing on the "Chicago School" of urban sociology, and demonstrating theoretically and empirically the potential for collaboration, through the integration of key community institutions, …

Anti-Zionism As Racism: Campus Anti-Semitism And The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, Kenneth L. Marcus

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Diversity Rationale For Affirmative Action In Employment After Grutter: The Case For Containment, Jared M. Mellot

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Contradiction Between Equal Protection's Meaning And Its Legal Substance: How Deliberate Indifference Can Cure It, Derek W. Black

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article highlights the inherent ambiguities of racial antidiscrimination's core legal language: "equal protection under the law" and "discrimination based on race." It then analyzes how and why the Court has never answered fundamental questions regarding the meaning of these terms. Thus, this Article answers these fundamental questions itself by exploring the original intent behind the Equal Protection Clause. Against this backdrop, this Article reveals how the Court's standard for assessing discrimination claims, the intent doctrine, assumes a meaning for equal protection that is inconsistent with its original meaning. Rather than reflecting equal protection's meaning, the standard lacks any basis …

Circling Back To The Obvious: The Convergence Of Traditional And Reverse Discrimination In Title Vii Proof, Charles A. Sullivan

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Explaining Grutter V. Bollinger, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Shrinking Domain Of Individious Intent, K.G. Jan Pillai

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The landmark case of Washington v. Davis made invidious intent the touchstone of violation of the Equal Protection Clause. In this Article, Professor K G. Jan Pillai discusses the current state of the doctrine of invidious intent and its evolving role in Supreme Court jurisprudence. In the area of criminal law enforcement, strict application of the doctrine often produces harsh results. Among the existing three-tiered scrutiny standards, the doctrine appears out of place. In recent racial gerrymandering cases, the Supreme Court substantively modified the meaning of the doctrine. Despite the apparent instability of the doctrine, Professor Pillai concludes the solution …

Affirmative Actions, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Publications

Liberals and progressives have been slow to realize that their preferred vocabulary has been hijacked and that when they respond to once hallowed phrases they are responding to a ghost now animated by a new machme. The point is not a small one, for in any debate, especially one fought in the arena of public opinion, the battle is won not by knock-down arguments but by the party that succeeds in placing its own spin on the terms presiding over the discussion.

Looking At Communities And Markets, Lan Cao

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Re-Defining Reproductive Freedom, Timothy Zick

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lynching And The Law In Georgia Circa 1931: A Chapter In The Legal Career Of Judge Elbert Tuttle, Anne S. Emanuel

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Elbert Parr Tuttle joined the federal bench in 1954, shortly after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education. In 1960, he became the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the court with jurisdiction over most of the deep south. As Chief Judge, he forged a jurisprudence that proved effective in overcoming the intransigence and outright rebellion of those who had long denied fundamental constitutional rights to African Americans.

This Essay traces an episode that occurred in 1931, when Tuttle spearheaded an effort to obtain a fair trial for John Downer, a …

The Ghosts Of Homer Plessy, Rodney A. Smolla

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.