Law Commons^™

Return Of The Campus Speech Wars, Thomas Healy

Michigan Law Review

Review of Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman's Free Speech on Campus.

Books Have The Power To Shape Public Policy, Barbara Mcquade

Michigan Law Review

In our digital information age, news and ideas come at us constantly and from every direction—newspapers, cable television, podcasts, online media, and more. It can be difficult to keep up with the fleeting and ephemeral news of the day.

Books, on the other hand, provide a source of enduring ideas. Books contain the researched hypotheses, the well-developed theories, and the fully formed arguments that outlast the news and analysis of the moment, preserved for the ages on the written page, to be discussed, admired, criticized, or supplanted by generations to come.

And books about the law, like the ones reviewed …

There Are No Racists Here: The Rise Of Racial Extremism, When No One Is Racist, Jeannine Bell

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At first glance hate murders appear wholly anachronistic in post-racial America. This Article suggests otherwise. The Article begins by analyzing the periodic expansions of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the protection for racist expression in First Amendment doctrine. The Article then contextualizes the case law by providing evidence of how the First Amendment works on the ground in two separate areas —the enforcement of hate crime law and on university campuses that enact speech codes. In these areas, those using racist expression receive full protection for their beliefs. Part III describes social spaces—social media and employment where slurs and epithets …

Title Ix And Social Media: Going Beyond The Law, Emily Suran

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The U.S. Department of Education is currently investigating over eighty colleges and universities for civil rights violations under Title IX. From a punitive standpoint, these investigations likely will have minimal impact. Indeed, since the Alexander v. Yale plaintiffs first conceived of Title IX in a sexual harassment context, the nondiscriminatory principles of Title IX have proven disappointingly difficult to enforce. However, in today’s world of grassroots social activism, Title IX has taken on a new, extralegal import. Title IX has become a rallying cry for college activists and survivors. Despite (or perhaps because of) its limitations as a law, it …

Place, Not Race: Affirmative Action And The Geography Of Educational Opportunity, Sheryll Cashin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Ultimately, I argue that one important response to the demise of race-based affirmative action should be to incorporate the experience of segregation into diversity strategies. A college applicant who has thrived despite exposure to poverty in his school or neighborhood deserves special consideration. Those blessed to come of age in poverty-free havens do not. I conclude that use of place, rather than race, in diversity programming will better approximate the structural disadvantages many children of color actually endure, while enhancing the possibility that we might one day move past the racial resentment that affirmative action engenders. While I propose substituting …

Thinking Hard About 'Race-Neutral' Admissions, Richard H. Sander, Aaron Danielson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Our exploration is organized as follows. In Part I, we sympathetically consider the very difficult dilemmas facing higher education leaders. Understanding the often irreconcilable pressures that constrain university administrators is essential if we are to envision the plausible policies they might undertake. In Part II, we draw on a range of data to illustrate some of the “properties” of admissions systems and, in particular, the ways in which race, SES, and academic preparation interact dynamically both within individual schools and across the educational spectrum. Partly because the questions we examine here have been so little studied, ideal data does not …

Determining The (In)Determinable: Race In Brazil And The United States, D. Wendy Greene

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In recent years, the Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro, So Paulo, and Mato Grasso du Sol have implemented race-conscious affirmative action programs in higher education. These states established admissions quotas in public universities for Afro-Brazilians or afrodescendentes. As a result, determining who is "Black'' has become a complex yet important undertaking in Brazil. Scholars and the general public alike have claimed that the determination of Blackness in Brazil is different than in the United States; determining Blackness in the United States is allegedly a simpler task than in Brazil. In Brazil it is widely acknowledged that most Brazilians are …

A General Theory Of Cultural Diversity, Steven A. Ramirez

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article seeks to extend the analysis of these developments in the corporate world to anti-discrimination law under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This Article will show that discrimination based upon cultural insights or experiences is distinct from race discrimination and will articulate a general theory of why and under what circumstances this holds true. The difference between culture-based discrimination and using culture as a proxy for race (Which would then be race discrimination) requires a careful and non-mythological understanding of what race is, and what race is not. Moreover, showing that culture discrimination is not prohibited …

Expert Report Of Thomas J. Sugrue, Thomas J. Sugrue

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the end of the twentieth century, the United States is a remarkably diverse society. It grows more diverse by the day, transformed by an enormous influx of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. In an increasingly global economy, Americans are coming into contact with others of different cultures to an extent seen only in times of world war. Yet amidst this diversity remains great division. When the young black academic W.E.B. DuBois looked out onto America in 1903, he memorably proclaimed that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." Over …

Expert Report Of Eric Foner, Eric Foner

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Race has been a crucial line of division in American society since the settlement of the American colonies in the beginning of the 17th century. It remains so today. While the American understanding of the concept of "race" has changed over time, the history of African-Americans provides a useful template for understanding the history of race relations. The black experience has affected how other racial minorities have been treated in our history, and illuminates the ways in which America's white majority has viewed racial difference.

Expert Report Of Patricia Gurin, Patricia Gurin

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

A racially and ethnically diverse university student body has far-ranging and significant benefits for all students, non-minorities and minorities alike. Students learn better in a diverse educational environment, and they are better prepared to become active participants in our pluralistic, democratic society once they leave such a setting. In fact, patterns of racial segregation and separation historically rooted in our national life can be broken by diversity experiences in higher education. This Report describes the strong evidence supporting these conclusions derived from three parallel empirical analyses of university students, as well as from existing social science theory and research.

Expert Report Of Claude M. Steele, Claude M. Steele

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Report based on 25-year period of research in the areas of social psychology, the social psychology of race and race relations, and the effects of race on standardized test performance.

Expert Report Of Robert B. Webster, Robert B. Webster

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The author’s opinions are based primarily upon knowledge and insight gained in the forty years in which he has been a practicing attorney, counselor, arbitrator, mediator, bar officer, and state court judge. Webster’s opinions are also based in part upon materials described in Section IV.B, within.

Expert Report Of Kinley Larntz, Ph.D., Kinley Larntz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

While working in this matter, the author undertook the task of analyzing the statistical relationship between law school acceptance and ethnicity. In particular, focusing on the strength of the relationship between law school acceptance and being a member of certain ethnic groups, controlling for qualifications for admission such as undergraduate grade point average, Law School Admission Test score, and selection index, and for other factors such as residency in the State of Michigan, gender, and a measure of economic disadvantage, waiver of the fee for application.

Introduction, Michigan Journal Of Race & Law

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The last Supreme Court decision addressing the use of race in admissions to institutions of higher education, Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, affirmed that the role of diversity in colleges and universities is both essential and compelling. Since Bakke, opponents and proponents have wrestled with ideology and theory, but have never had the benefit of a comprehensive theoretical framework that has been tested by reliable empirical data. The University of Michigan has drawn on several of the nation's leading, and most respected, researchers and scholars, to develop such a framework and verify its legitimacy with …

Expert Report Of Albert M. Camarillo, Albert M. Camarillo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the request of attorneys with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, the author has prepared this report which outlines the historical patterns and legacies of racial isolation and separation of Hispanics in American society. The research is based on archival collections, syntheses of secondary literature, and other primary sources such as U.S. government reports including Bureau of the Census population reports. Based on the author’s knowledge and research, this report outlines the historical developments that resulted in patterns of racial exclusion and isolation of Hispanics in the states and cities where they have settled since 1900. In particular, this report will …

Expert Report Of William G. Bowen, William G. Bowen

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Higher education plays a unique role in our society. The obligation of a university is to the society at large over the long run, and, even more generally, to the pursuit of learning. Although this may seem amorphous, there is no escaping a university's obligation to try to serve the long-term interests of society defined in the broadest and least parochial terms, and to do so through two principal activities: advancing knowledge and educating students who will in turn serve others, within this nation and beyond it, both through their specific vocations and as citizens. Universities therefore are responsible for …

Expert Report Of Kent D. Syverud, Kent D. Syverud

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Expert report from an educator with experience teaching many students in many settings; particular experience teaching the same subject matter to classes that are racially homogenous and racially heterogeneous, and to classes where non-white students make up a tiny fraction of the enrolled students and where their numbers are more significant.

College Admission And Affirmative Action- Consequences And Alternatives, Ihan Kim

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

A review of The Shape of the River: Long Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions by Derek Bok & William Bowen

Perspectives On Affirmative Action / Rethinking Racial Divides: Asian Pacific Americans And The Law, Michigan Journal Of Race & Law

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Statements on affirmative action followed by the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association Symposium.

Toil Of The Firestarters, Peter A. Alces

Michigan Law Review

A Review of In the Company of Scholars: The Struggle for the Soul of Higher Education by Julius Getman

The Moral Responsibilities Of Universities, Terrance Sandalow

Book Chapters

IN THE YEARS SINCE the Second World War, "higher education" has emerged as one of the major influences in American life. Well over 50 percent of the age cohort now in its teens or early twenties will attend a college or university, more than a five-fold increase from the prewar period. Moreover, colleges and universities now engage in so broad a range of activities that the appellation "higher education" no longer seems entirely appropriate to describe the institutions. Community colleges, but also four-year colleges and universities, play a major role in training individuals for skilled and semiskilled occupations. Universities are …

The Closing Of The American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy And Impoverished The Souls Of Today's Students, Maureen P. Taylor

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students/em by Allan Bloom