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Full-Text Articles in Law
Barriers To The Ballot Box: Implicit Bias And Voting Rights In The 21st Century, Arusha Gordon, Ezra D. Rosenberg
Barriers To The Ballot Box: Implicit Bias And Voting Rights In The 21st Century, Arusha Gordon, Ezra D. Rosenberg
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
While much has been written regarding unconscious or “implicit bias” in other areas of law, there is a scarcity of scholarship examining how implicit bias impacts voting rights and how advocates can move courts to recognize evidence of implicit bias within the context of a voting rights claim. This Article aims to address that scarcity. After reviewing research on implicit bias, this Article examines how implicit bias might impact different stages of the electoral process. It then argues that “results test” claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) present an opportunity for plaintiffs to introduce evidence regarding …
Disparaging Trademarks: Who Matters, Jasmine Abdel-Khalik
Disparaging Trademarks: Who Matters, Jasmine Abdel-Khalik
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
For more than a century, non-majority groups have protested the use of trademarks comprised of or containing terms referencing the group—albeit for various reasons. Under the 1946 Lanham Act, Congress added a prohibition against registering disparaging trademarks, which could offer protection to non-majority groups targeted by the use of trademarks offensive to members of the group. The prohibition remained relatively unclear, however, and rarely applied in that context until a group of Native Americans petitioned to cancel the Washington NFL team’s trademarks as either scandalous, offensive to the general population, or disparaging, offensive to the referenced group. In clarifying the …
There Are No Racists Here: The Rise Of Racial Extremism, When No One Is Racist, Jeannine Bell
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 …
Functionally Suspect: Reconceptualizing "Race" As A Suspect Classification, Lauren Sudeall Lucas
Functionally Suspect: Reconceptualizing "Race" As A Suspect Classification, Lauren Sudeall Lucas
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In the context of equal protection doctrine, race has become untethered from the criteria underlying its demarcation as a classification warranting heightened scrutiny. As a result, it is no longer an effective vehicle for challenging the existing social and political order; instead, its primary purpose under current doctrine is to signal the presence of an impermissible basis for differential treatment. This Symposium Article suggests that, to more effectively serve its underlying normative goals, equal protection should prohibit not discrimination based on race per se, but government actions that implicate the concerns leading to race’s designation as a suspect classification. For …