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Response To "Snyder V. Louisiana: Continuing The Historical Trend Towards Increased Scrutiny Of Peremptory Challenges", Bidish J. Sarma Oct 2010

Response To "Snyder V. Louisiana: Continuing The Historical Trend Towards Increased Scrutiny Of Peremptory Challenges", Bidish J. Sarma

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

John P. Bringewatt's recent note makes several important observations about the Supreme Court's opinion in Snyder v. Louisiana. Although he provides reasonable support for the claim that Snyder represents a sea change in Batson jurisprudence, the US Supreme Court's fresh opinion in Thaler v. Haynes (rendered on February 22, 2010) reads the Snyder majority opinion narrowly and suggests the possibility that Snyder is not as potent as it should be. The Haynes per curiam's guarded reading of Snyder signals the need for courts to continue to conduct the bird's-eye cumulative analysis that the Court performed in Miller-El v. Dretke[hereinafter Miller-El …


Racial Cartels, Daria Roithmayr Sep 2010

Racial Cartels, Daria Roithmayr

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article argues that we can better understand the dynamic of historical racial exclusion if we describe it as the anti-competitive work of "racial cartels." We can define racial cartels to include a range of all-White groups - homeowners' associations, school districts, trade unions, real estate boards and political parties - who gained signficant social, economic and political profit from excluding on the basis of race. Far from operating on the basis of irrational animus, racial cartels actually derived significant profit from racial exclusion. By creating racially segmented housing markets, for example, exclusive White homeowners' associations enjoyed higher property values …


Preserving A Racial Hierarchy: A Legal Analysis Of The Disparate Racial Impact Of Legacy Preferences In University Admissions, Kathryn Ladewski Feb 2010

Preserving A Racial Hierarchy: A Legal Analysis Of The Disparate Racial Impact Of Legacy Preferences In University Admissions, Kathryn Ladewski

Michigan Law Review

Many public and private universities around the country employ legacy admissions preferences in order to give children of alumni special consideration in the admissions process. Such preferences disproportionately benefit white applicants at the cost of their nonwhite counterparts, because past generations of college students were less diverse than today's applicant pool. However, universities argue that their legacy preferences are justified because they assist in alumni fundraising efforts. This Note presents a statistical analysis to argue that legacy preferences are prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because they have a discriminatory effect on minority college applicants and have not …


Wartime Prejudice Against Persons Of Italian Descent: Does The Civil Liberties Act Of 1988 Violate Equal Protection?, Joseph C. Mauro Jan 2010

Wartime Prejudice Against Persons Of Italian Descent: Does The Civil Liberties Act Of 1988 Violate Equal Protection?, Joseph C. Mauro

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Most people know that the United States interned persons of Japanese descent during World War II. Few people know, however, that the government interned persons of German and Italian descent as well. In fact, the internment was part of a larger national security program, in which the government classified non-citizens of all three ethnicities as "enemy aliens" and subjected then to numerous restrictions, including arrest, internment, expulsion from certain areas, curfews, identification cards, loss of employment, and restrictions on travel and property. Four decades after the war, Congress decided to compensate persons of Japanese descent who had been "deprived of …


Making Room For Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity In International Human Rights Law: An Introduction To The Yogyakarta Principles, David Brown Jan 2010

Making Room For Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity In International Human Rights Law: An Introduction To The Yogyakarta Principles, David Brown

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note evaluates the Yogyakarta Principles' legal and inspirational capacity to drive the development of human rights law. Part I describes the most common patterns of violence and discrimination suffered around the world on account of sexual orientation and gender identity, and the process by which the Principles' drafters sought to apply principles of international law to stem these outrages by developing a restatement of international human rights law that would leave no doubt as to their illegality. Part II assesses the Principles' claim to accuracy as a restatement of existing, binding international law. It shows that the most basic …


Past As Prologue: Old And New Feminisms, Martha Chamallas Jan 2010

Past As Prologue: Old And New Feminisms, Martha Chamallas

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Each "stage" of feminist legal theory-and each brand or strand of feminism- stays alive and is never completely replaced by newer approaches. When I first attempted to synthesize the field of Feminist Legal Theory for a treatise I was writing at the end of the twentieth century, I thought it would be useful to think chronologically and to analyze the major developments of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. I crudely divided feminist legal theory into three stages roughly corresponding to the preceding decades: the equality stage of the 1970s, the difference stage of the 1980s, and the diversity stage of …


Situations, Frames, And Stereotypes: Cognitive Barriers On The Road To Nondiscrimination, Marybeth Herald Jan 2010

Situations, Frames, And Stereotypes: Cognitive Barriers On The Road To Nondiscrimination, Marybeth Herald

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

A study of the psychological literature can enhance legal theory by focusing attention on how the human brain perceives, distinguishes, categorizes, and ultimately makes decisions. The more that we learn about the brain's intricate operations, the more effective we can be at combating the types of gender biased decisions that influence our lives. In developing strategies to achieve equality, feminist, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex activists would be wise to learn from the psychological literature. This Article highlights a few examples illustrating how this knowledge might re-direct strategic choices for combating gender inequality.


Contingent Equal Protection: Reaching For Equality After Ricci And Pics, Jennifer S. Hendricks Jan 2010

Contingent Equal Protection: Reaching For Equality After Ricci And Pics, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article uses the term contingent equal protection to describe the constitutional analysis that applies to a range of governmental efforts to ameliorate race and sex hierarchies. "Contingent" refers to the fact that the equal protection analysis is contingent upon the existence of structural, de facto inequality. Contingent equal protection cases include those that involve explicit race and sex classifications, facially neutral efforts to reduce inequality, and accommodation of sex differences to promote equality. Uniting all three kinds of cases under a single conceptual umbrella reveals the implications that developments in one area can have for the other two.


Bridging The Title Vii Gap: Protecting All Workers From “Work Authorization” Discrimination, Rachel K. Alexander Jan 2010

Bridging The Title Vii Gap: Protecting All Workers From “Work Authorization” Discrimination, Rachel K. Alexander

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.


Engineering The Endgame, Ellen D. Katz Jan 2010

Engineering The Endgame, Ellen D. Katz

Michigan Law Review

This Article explores what happens to longstanding remedies for past racial discrimination as conditions change. It shows that Congress and the Supreme Court have responded quite differently to changed conditions when they evaluate such remedies. Congress has generally opted to stay the course, while the Court has been more inclined to view change as cause to terminate a remedy. The Article argues that these very different responses share a defining flaw, namely, they treat existing remedies as fixed until they are terminated. As a result, remedies are either scrapped prematurely or left stagnant despite dramatically changed conditions. The Article seeks …