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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Law
Historic Partition Law Reform: A Game Changer For Heirs’ Property Owners, Thomas W. Mitchell
Historic Partition Law Reform: A Game Changer For Heirs’ Property Owners, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
Over the course of several decades, many disadvantaged families who owned property under the tenancy-in-common form of ownership—property these families often referred to as heirs’ property—have had their property forcibly sold as a result of court-ordered partition sales. For several decades, repeated efforts to reform State partition laws produced little to no reform despite clear evidence that these laws unjustly harmed many families. This paper addresses the remarkable success of a model State statute named the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA), which has been enacted into law in several States since 2011, including in five southern States. The …
The Hastie Fellowship Program At Forty: Still Creating Minority Law Professors, Thomas W. Mitchell
The Hastie Fellowship Program At Forty: Still Creating Minority Law Professors, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
This article provides a history of and information about the structure of the William H. Hastie Fellowship Program at the University of Wisconsin Law School. This article is part of a series of articles published by the Wisconsin Law Review commemorating Professor James E. Jones Jr., emeritus professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and the founder of the Hastie Fellowship Program. Forty years after this pioneering program was established, the Hastie Fellowship Program continues to represent the preeminent pipeline program that has enabled more than 30 minority lawyers to become tenure-track law professors at law schools …
The Land Crisis In Zimbabwe: Getting Beyond The Myopic Focus Upon Black & White, Thomas W. Mitchell
The Land Crisis In Zimbabwe: Getting Beyond The Myopic Focus Upon Black & White, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
This article deconstructs the role that race played in the land crisis in Zimbabwe that occurred in Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and earls 2000s. The article makes it clear that the government of Zimbabwe did not extend robust property rights to its black majority population for the most part even as it took land from large white landowners. This is revealing given that the government's primary justification for taking land from large white landowners was that the black majority unjustly owned little property in Zimbabwe as a result of colonialist and neocolonialist, discriminatory polices.
Reforming Property Law To Address Devastating Land Loss, Thomas W. Mitchell
Reforming Property Law To Address Devastating Land Loss, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
Tenancy-in-common ownership represents the most widespread form of common ownership of real property in the United States. Such ownership under the default rules also represents the most unstable ownership of real property in this country. Thousands of tenancy-in-common property owners, including members of many poor and minority families, have lost their commonly-owned property due to court-ordered, forced partition sales as well as much of their real estate wealth associated with such ownership as a result of such sales. Though some scholars and the media have highlighted how thousands of African-Americans have lost an untold amount of property and substantial real …
Restoring Hope For Heirs Property Owners: The Uniform Partition Of Heirs Property Act, Thomas W. Mitchell
Restoring Hope For Heirs Property Owners: The Uniform Partition Of Heirs Property Act, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
For well over 125 years, many Americans have lost their tenancy-in-common property involuntarily in various legal proceedings. For example, courts throughout this country have often resolved partition actions, a legal proceeding in which a tenant in common seeks to exit a tenancy in common, by ordering a forced, partition sale of the property even when these courts could have ordered a remedy that would have preserved the property rights of the tenants in common. Though partition sales have negatively impacted a broad cross section of people in this country, the sales have particularly impacted poor and disadvantaged African-Americans, Hispanics, white …
Justice For Rodney King, Scott C. Burrell, Alan R. Dial, Thomas W. Mitchell
Justice For Rodney King, Scott C. Burrell, Alan R. Dial, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
May 1992 letter from three Howard University School of Law students to President George H.W. Bush advocating that the United States Department of Justice invoke the Petite Policy to initiate a criminal action against the Los Angeles Police Department police officers responsible for brutally beating Rodney King despite the fact that these offers had been acquitted in a California state court. The letter, which was read in front of the White House by Thomas Mitchell to hundreds of people who had gathered to urge the federal government to take action, sets forth a clear legal basis to permit the Justice …
Destabilizing The Normalization Of Rural Black Land Loss: A Critical Role For Legal Empiricism, Thomas W. Mitchell
Destabilizing The Normalization Of Rural Black Land Loss: A Critical Role For Legal Empiricism, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
Mitchell's study exemplifies the New Legal Realist goal of combining qualitative and quantitative empirical research to shed light on important legal and policy issues. He also demonstrates the utility of a ground-level contextual analysis that examines legal problems from the bottom up. The study tracks processes by which black rural landowners have gradually been dispossessed of more than 90% of the land held by their predecessors in 1910. Mitchell points out that despite the continuing practices that contribute to this problem, there has been very little research on the issue, and what little attention legal scholars have paid to it …
Growing Inequality And Racial Economic Gaps, Thomas W. Mitchell
Growing Inequality And Racial Economic Gaps, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
Over the past several decades, economic inequality has grown dramatically in the United States while inter-generational economic mobility has declined, which has challenged the very notion of the "American Dream." In fact, the United States is more economically unequal than most other industrialized countries. Further, there are dramatic and growing racial economic gaps in this country. Despite the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the various spinoffs it has catalyzed, there has not been any sustained, widespread social movement to address economic inequality in the United States over the course of the past several decades. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a …
From Reconstruction To Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, And Community Through Partition Sales Of Tenancies In Common, Thomas W. Mitchell
From Reconstruction To Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, And Community Through Partition Sales Of Tenancies In Common, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
This article considers one of the primary ways in which African Americans have lost millions of acres of land that they were able to acquire in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning part of the twentieth century and the sociopolitical implications of this land loss. Specifically, this article highlights the fact that forced partition sales of tenancy in common property, referred to more commonly as heirs' property, have been a major source of black land loss within the African American community. The article argues that involuntary black land loss has had a significant negative impact upon …
Forced Sale Risk: Class, Race, And The "Double Discount", Thomas W. Mitchell, Stephen Malpezzi, Richard K. Green
Forced Sale Risk: Class, Race, And The "Double Discount", Thomas W. Mitchell, Stephen Malpezzi, Richard K. Green
Thomas W. Mitchell
What impact does a forced sale have upon a property owner's wealth? And do certain characteristics of a property owner such as whether they are rich or poor or whether they are black or white, tend to affect the price yielded at a forced sale? This Article addresses arguments made by some courts and legal scholars who have claimed that certain types of forced sales result in wealth maximizing, economic efficiencies. The Article addresses such economic arguments by returning to first principles and reviewing the distinction between sales conducted under fair market value conditions and sales conducted under forced sale …