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Full-Text Articles in Law
Reassessing American Democracy: The Enduring Challenge Of Racial Exclusion, Johanna Kalb, Didi Kuo
Reassessing American Democracy: The Enduring Challenge Of Racial Exclusion, Johanna Kalb, Didi Kuo
Michigan Law Review Online
American democracy is in trouble. Since the 2016 election, a sizable literature has developed that focuses on diagnosing and assessing the state of American democracy, most of which concludes that our system of government is in decline.[2] These authors point to the rise in party polarization, the increasingly bipartisan abandonment of the norms of the democratic process, the rise of populism, the degradation of the public sphere, and the proliferation of gerrymandered districts and voting restrictions to illustrate the breakdown. And while attributing varying levels of significance to these factors, a common theme is that American democracy, once stable, is …
International Law And Contemporary Slavery: The Long View, Rebecca J. Scott
International Law And Contemporary Slavery: The Long View, Rebecca J. Scott
Michigan Journal of International Law
The three essays in this special issue come together to confirm the value of exploring varying domestic expressions of and adaptations to international legal ideals. In each polity, lawmakers have viewed the terms “slavery” and “slave labor” in part through a domestic historical lens, and have drafted (or failed to draft) legislation accordingly. The United States inherited core concepts dating back to the moment of abolition of chattel slavery, and thus initially built its prohibitions of modern slavery on nineteenth-century rights guarantees and anti-peonage statutes, later reinforced by modern concepts of human trafficking. Having just emerged from a long dictatorship, …
Yick Wo At 125: Four Simple Lessons For The Contemporary Supreme Court, Marie A. Failinger
Yick Wo At 125: Four Simple Lessons For The Contemporary Supreme Court, Marie A. Failinger
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
The 125th anniversary of Yick Wo v. Hopkins is an important opportunity to recognize the pervasive role of law in oppressive treatment of Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is also a good opportunity for the Supreme Court to reflect on four important lessons gleaned from Yick Wo. First, the Court should never lend justification to the evil of class discrimination, even if it has to decline to rule in a case. Second, where there is persistent discrimination against a minority group, the Court must be similarly persistent in fighting it. Third, the Court needs to take …
"Just Like One Of The Family": Domestic Violence Paradigms And Combating On-The-Job Violence Against Household Workers In The United States, Kristi L. Graunke
"Just Like One Of The Family": Domestic Violence Paradigms And Combating On-The-Job Violence Against Household Workers In The United States, Kristi L. Graunke
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article argues that the immense problem of on-the-job abuse experienced by domestic workers demands a multifaceted plan of attack. The proposed responses specifically draw upon the capacities, strengths, and resources of women, particularly comparatively privileged women, as both activists and employers of domestic workers. By describing the circumstances of domestic work in the United States from the nation's inception to the present, Part I demonstrates the prevalence and intractability of on-the-job physical and sexual abuse and argues that other women, as employers of domestic workers, have historically played a complex role in participating in, condoning, or failing to acknowledge …
Blood Will Tell: Scientific Racism And The Legal Prohibitions Against Miscegenation, Keith E. Sealing
Blood Will Tell: Scientific Racism And The Legal Prohibitions Against Miscegenation, Keith E. Sealing
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This article first examines the miscegenation paradigm in terms of a seven-point conceptual framework that not merely allowed but practically demanded anti-miscegenation laws, then looks at the legal arguments state courts used to justify the constitutionality of such laws through 1967. Next, it analyzes the Biblical argument, which in its own right justified miscegenation, but also had a major influence on the development of the three major strands of scientific racism: monogenism, polygenism and Darwinian theory. It then probes the concept upon which the entire edifice is constructed-race--and discusses the continuing vitality of this construct. Next, this article turns to …
The Influence Of Race In School Finance Reform, James E. Ryan
The Influence Of Race In School Finance Reform, James E. Ryan
Michigan Law Review
It would be an exaggeration to say that school finance reform is all about race, but largely in the same way that it is an exaggeration to say that welfare reform is all about race. Like welfare reform, the controversy generated by school finance litigation and reform has, on the surface, little to do with race. Battles over school funding, which have been waged in nearly forty state supreme courts and at least as many state legislatures, instead appear to be over such issues as the redistribution of resources, retaining local control over education, and the efficacy of increased expenditures. …
Perestroika African Style: One-Party Government And Human Rights In Tanzania, John Quigley
Perestroika African Style: One-Party Government And Human Rights In Tanzania, John Quigley
Michigan Journal of International Law
The one-party systems in Africa have drawn negative reactions from Western States that provide economic aid. The article assesses the one-party system in light of international human rights law and asks whether aid-giving States must consider whether one-party rule in recipient States violates international standards. In this connection, the article asks whether the rights of association and political freedom as developed in Europe can fairly be applied to Africa, given its historical experience.
Updating Statutory Interpretation, T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Updating Statutory Interpretation, T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Michigan Law Review
This month the Supreme Court will hear reargument in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union on the question of whether section 1981 prohibits discrimination by private parties. Professor Aleinikoff examines in depth the first issue raised by Professor Farber. Using metaphors of the archeological and the nautical Professor Aleinikoff describes theories of originalism and their application to statutory interpretation. Concluding that there are nonoriginalist (or nonarcheological) elements implicit in these theories, he proceeds to consider how an explicitly nonoriginalist (or nautical) theory of interpretation might work He concludes by commenting on the application of such a theory to Patterson.
Discrimination, Jobs, And Politics: The Struggle For Equal Employment Opportunity In The United States Since The New Deal, James L. Thompson
Discrimination, Jobs, And Politics: The Struggle For Equal Employment Opportunity In The United States Since The New Deal, James L. Thompson
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Discrimination, Jobs, and Politics: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity in the United States since the New Deal by Paul Burstein