Law Commons^™

Trauma-Informed Policing: The Impact Of Adult And Childhood Trauma On Law Enforcement Officers, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Todd J. Clark, Caleb Gregory Conrad, Honorable Amy Dunn Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

For every six months that a police officer serves in the line of duty, he or she is likely to experience an average of three traumatic events. Such events may include fatal accidents, murders, suicides, and active threats to the life of the officer or someone else. Given the wealth of available data on how trauma reorganizes the nervous system to respond to everyday stimuli as threatening, this is an area that cries for critical exploration, especially in light of the frequency with which unarmed Black civilians are killed at the hands of officers who often make split-second decisions to …

Is Title Vii A “Civility Code” Only For Union Activities?, L. Camille Hebert

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

Changes to labor law by the National Labor Relations Board are nothing new; changes in Presidential administrations often result in changes to the law, based on differences in philosophy by new majorities of the Board toward the proper interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act. But in2020, the Board made a fundamental change to long-standing interpretations of the Act’s protections for union and other concerted activities, not based on the Act itself, but based on what it said were the mandates of the anti-discrimination laws for employers to prevent harassment and discrimination. The Board contended that the former context-driven standards …

Doing The Right Thing, The Right Way, The First Time: Decision-Making In Public And Private Arenas Regarding The Use Of Service Animals, Maureen E. Lally-Green, Annemarie Harr Eagle Esq., Bridget M. Green

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Racist Roots Of The War On Drugs And The Myth Of Equal Protection For People Of Color, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Steven A. Ramirez

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

By 2021, the costs and pain arising from the propagation of the American racial hierarchy reached such heights that calls for anti-racism and criminal justice reform dramatically expanded. The brutal murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police vividly proved that the social construction of race in America directly conflicted with supposed American values of equal protection under law and notions of basic justice. The racially-driven War on Drugs (WOD) fuels much of the dissonance between American legal mythology—such as the non-discrimination principle and the impartial administration of the rule of law—and the reality of race in the United States. …

Employment Law—Antidiscrimination—Falling Into The Legal Void: How Arkansas Can Protect Unpaid Interns From Discrimination And Harassment, Christina Redmann

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trauma: Community Of Color Exposure To The Criminal Justice System As An Adverse Childhood Experience, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Todd Clark, Caleb Gregory Conrad, Amy Dunn Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

The reality that traumatic childhood experiences are directly linked to negative health outcomes has been known and widely recognized in public health and clinical literature for more than two decades. Adverse Childhood Experiences (“ACEs”) represent the “single greatest unaddressed public health threat facing our nation today” according to Dr. Robert Block, former President of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

ACEs are traumatic events that occur in early childhood, which can range from abuse and neglect to experiences derived from household and community dysfunction, such as losing a caregiver, being incarcerated, or living with a household member suffering from mental illness. …

Roadmap For Anti-Racism: First Unwind The War On Drugs Now, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Steven A. Ramirez

Faculty Scholarship

The War on Drugs (WOD) transmogrified into a war on communities of color early in its history, and its impact has devastated communities of color first and foremost. People of color disproportionately suffer incarceration in the WOD even though people of color use illegal narcotics at substantially lower rates than white Americans. As a result, the WOD led to mass incarceration of people of color at many times the rate of white Americans. Indeed, as a stark illustration of the power of race in America, even after Illinois and Colorado legalized cannabis, over-policing in communities of color resulted in a …

Cause For Concern Or Cause For Celebration?: Did Bostock V. Clayton County Establish A New Mixed Motive Theory For Title Vii Cases And Make It Easier For Plaintiffs To Prove Discrimination Claims?, Terrence Cain

Faculty Scholarship

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee “because of” race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. This seems simple enough, but if an employer makes an adverse employment decision partly for an impermissible reason and partly for a permissible reason, i.e., if the employer acts with a mixed motive, has the employer acted “because of” the impermissible reason? According to Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc. and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the answer is no. The Courts in Gross and Nassar held that …

Trauma, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

Meek Mill’s life and career have been punctuated by trauma. From childhood through his current adulthood, Mill has experienced excruciating trauma even as a well-known hip hop artist. In 2018’s track of that name Trauma, Mill describes in illuminating prose just how these traumatic experiences harmed and impacted him personally describing the very same harms that impact so many similarly situated young black people in the United States. Meek Mill, as a child, witnessed violent death and experienced poverty while as a young man he was arrested and incarcerated (wrongly). Despite his star turn as a true hip hop icon, …

Racial Captialism And Race Massacres: Tulsa's Black Wall Street And Elaine's Sharecroppers, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Kalvin Graham

Faculty Scholarship

United States history is marked and checkered with grievous race massacres dating back to the end of slavery. These race “riots,” as they are benignly referred to in some quarters, occurred infamously in Tulsa, Elaine, Rosewood, Chicago, Detroit, and so many other lesser remembered cities. The starkest period of race massacres in the United States, including each of those just mentioned, occurred in the early 1900s, between 1919 and 1923 when Black Americans, newly empowered by service in a world war and having gained available land grants in territories where indigenous peoples were forced to abandon, began finding economic and …

Caste Discrimination And Federal Employment Law In The United States, Brian Elzweig

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Amicus Curiae Brief: Private For Profit Incarceration Violates The 13th Amendment Of The United States Constitution, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Zoë Harris, Casey Bates, Natasha Cornell

Faculty Scholarship

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawed chattel slavery in the United States following a violent Civil War and a chilling era of slavery conducted primarily in the nation’s southern states. In passing this Amendment, Congress included a clause that excepted a certain population from this general prohibition, namely, prisoners. In what has become known as the “punishment clause,” Section I of the Thirteenth Amendment states explicitly “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their …

Fulton V. City Of Philadelphia, And The Rights Of Faith-Based Adoption And Foster Care Agencies, William G. Mcgrath

The Arkansas Journal of Social Change and Public Service

No abstract provided.

Moving The Needle: Two Promising Tools To Attack Arkansas’S Racial Disparity In Criminal Sentencing, Anastasia M. Boles

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

New Contexts And Special Factors: The Court’S New Bivens Framework, Alexander J. Lindvall

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights Law—Questioning Mcdonnell Douglas? #Metoo.: Resolving The Mcdonnell Douglas Mixed-Motive Question By Adopting The Sixth Circuit’S Preference For Hearing Victims, Laura O’Hara

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eradicating The School-To-Prison Pipeline Through A Comprehensive Approach To School Equity, Morgan Craven, Paula Johnson, Terrence Wilson

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

When examining the school-to-prison pipeline, most focus on issues of exclusionary discipline, the presence of police in schools, or the use of intrusive surveillance and monitoring systems. To close the pipeline, agencies, educators, and advocates must also examine other, broader factors that contribute to educational inequities. We argue in this article that eradicating the school-to-prison pipeline involves tackling the legal structures, policies, practices, and beliefs that create harmful discipline systems and other linked inequitable systems. With Arkansas schools as our illustration, we explain how inequities in discipline, funding, and school accountability create a situation primed to send students into the …

Making The Case For School-And-Neighborhood Desegregation Approach To Deconstructing The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Deborah Fowler, Madison Sloan, Ellen Stone

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Ticket To Jail: Do Minor Traffic Violations Result In Jail Time For Poor Arkansans?, Jessie Wallace Burchfield

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Four Pathways Of Undermining Board Of Trustees Of The University Of Alabama V. Garrett, Derek Warden

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

In Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, the Supreme Court held that Title I of the ADA did not validly abrogate state sovereign immunity; and as such, a plaintiff could not obtain damages against the states or sue the states directly for injunctive relief. Many courts and scholars have read Garrett as sounding the death knell for ADA Title I government employee plaintiffs. This article shows that such fears are misplaced. Indeed, this article offers four pathways around Garrett that show Title I and its requirements are very much alive and well. First, the article shows …

Civil Rights—Answering The “Million Dollar” Question: The Meaning Of “Sex” For The Purposes Of Title Ix, Title Vii, And The Equal Protection Clause, And Its Impact On Transgender Students’ Membership In Fraternal Organizations, Jacob Wickliffe

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reforming Policing, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

Law enforcement killing of unarmed black men and police brutality visited upon minority citizens continues to confound the United States. Despite protests, clarion calls for reform, admitted training shortcomings and deficiencies among U.S. law enforcement officers, conferences, summits, and movements to reform policing, the solution to ending undisciplined police violence and the hostile killings of unarmed minority individuals at the hands of U.S. police seems to elude us. Why should this be? The United States is home to some of the most creative, innovative, pathmarking, and course-changing thinkers the world has ever known. This challenge — police killing of unarmed …

Gender-Selective Service: The History And Future Of Women And The Draft, Elizabeth Farrington

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The First Amendment And The Police In The Digital Age, Kermit V. Lipez

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

"Lord Forgive Me, But He Tried To Kill Me": Proposing Solutions To The United States’ Most Vexing Racial Challenges, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

While great progress has been made in the United States in the past fifty years in connection with race relations, three critical issues continue to vex our nation. The United States, despite its progress, continues to struggle mightily with (a) the police killing of unarmed black men; (b) racially disproportionate mass incarceration; and (c) violent homicides of black men and boys. Nightly newscasts detail seemingly weekly killings of unarmed African American men by law enforcement officers. Mass incarceration, while plateauing in the last several years, continues to see millions of United States citizens incarcerated at rates unmatched by any other …

A Look At Civil Gideon: Is There A Constitutional Right To Counsel In Certain Civil Cases?, Jess H. Dickinson

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Richard Delgado And Ice Cube: Brothers In Arms, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

Critical Race Theory as a movement is best understood through the lens of founding voice Richard Delgado. Delgado’s prolific and fearless writings have inspired thousands and launched theories that have literally changed the course of race law in the United States. In fact, two explosive movements were born in the United States in the 1970s. While the founding of both movements was humble and lightly noticed, both grew to become global phenomena that have profoundly changed the world. Founded by prescient agitators, these two movements were borne of disaffect, disappointment, and near desperation — a desperate need to give voice …

Seeking Educational Equality In The North: The Integration Of The Hilburn School System, Peter C. Alexander

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Centering The Teenage "Siren": Adolescent Workers, Sexual Harassment, And The Legal Construction Of Race And Gender, Anastasia M. Boles

Faculty Scholarship

Recent scholarship and media attention has focused on the prevalence of sexually harassing behavior directed at working teenagers, and the emergence of sexual harassment lawsuits by these minors against their employers. Although many of the legal issues concerning workplace sexual harassment and adult workers (and the various state and federal jurisprudence prohibiting it) have been widely discussed, there is surprisingly little discourse, research, and precedent addressing the problem of workplace sexual harassment and teen workers.

Currently, most sexual harassment cases brought by adolescent workers are litigated using the doctrinal framework for adult workers. Only the Seventh Circuit has developed an …

The Demographic Dilemma In Death Qualification Of Capital Jurors, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.