Law Commons^™

The Pocketbook Next Time: From Civil Rights To Market Power In The Latinx Community, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is undergoing a demographic transformation. Nearly one in five Americans already is Latinx, and the United States Census Bureau projects that by 2060, nearly one in three will be. Latinx will substantially outnumber every other historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minority group, and non-Hispanic whites no longer will be a majority. Those changes have unsettled traditional approaches to full inclusion.

Civil rights activists have suffered numerous setbacks, and the burgeoning Latinx population is searching for other paths to belonging. Some leaders have turned to growing Latinx market power to demand recognition and equal opportunity. These efforts rely …

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, …

Title 42, Asylum, And Politicising Public Health, Michael Ulrich, Sondra S. Crosby

Faculty Scholarship

President Biden has continued the controversial immigration policy of the Trump era known as Title 42, which has caused harm and suffering to scores of asylum seekers under the guise of public health.1 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ordered the policy in March 2020 with the stated purpose of limiting the spread of the coronavirus into the U.S.; though, CDC and public health officials have admitted this policy has no scientific basis and there is no evidence it has protected the public.2,3 Instead, the impetus behind the policy appears to be a desire to keep out or …

The Washington Post Interviews Vinay Harpalani: The Courts Have Served As An Anti-Democratic Force For Much Of U.S. History, Vinay Harpalani, David A. Love

Faculty Scholarship

Certainly there are examples in which the high court has upheld the rights of the marginalized and disadvantaged. However, as Vinay Harpalani, associate professor of law at the University of New Mexico, has noted, “even when the U.S. Supreme Court makes rulings that seem to favor people of color, those rulings usually serve the interests of wealthy, elite White Americans.”

Harpalani cited how the Brown decision stemmed in part from Cold War strategy and the need for the United States to appeal to people in African, Asian and Latin American countries. “Racial segregation at home did not bode well …

Black On Black Representation, Alexis Hoag

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

"Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho! These Mass Arrests Have Got To Go!": The Expressive Fourth Amendment Argument, Karen Pita Loor

Faculty Scholarship

The racial justice protests ignited by the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 constitute the largest protest movement in the United States. Estimates suggest that between fifteen and twenty-six million people protested across the country during the summer of 2020 alone. Not only were the number of protestors staggering, but so were the number of arrests. Within one week of when the video of George Floyd’s murder went viral, police arrested ten thousand people demanding justice on American streets, with police often arresting activists en masse. This Essay explores mass arrests and how they square with Fourth Amendment …

Meek Mill’S Trauma: Brutal Policing As An Adverse Childhood Experience, Todd J. Clark, Caleb Gregory Conrad, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Amy Dunn Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Meek Mill’s life and career have been punctuated by trauma, from his childhood lived on the streets of Philadelphia, through his rise to fame and eventual arrival as one of hip hop’s household names. his 2018 track "Trauma," Meek Mill describes, in revealing prose, just how the traumatic experiences he endured personally impacted and harmed him. He also embodies a role as narrator in describing the same traumas and harms that impact the daily lives of countless similarly situated young Black people in the United States. As a child, Mill’s lived experience was one of pervasive poverty and fear, as …

A Prelude To A Critical Race Perspective On Civil Procedure, Portia Pedro

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, I examine the lack of scholarly attention given to the role of civil procedure in racial subordination. I posit that a dearth of critical thought interrogating the connections between procedure and the subjugation of marginalized peoples might be due to the limited experiences of procedural scholars; a misconception that procedural rules are a technical, objective, neutral area; and avoidance of discussion of race or other aspects of identity unless there is a case, material, or scholarly topic that meets an unreasonably high standard. I emphasize the importance of a critical race analysis of civil procedure.

Anomalous Anatomies: How The Tsa Should Screen For Transgender People, Karissa J. Kang, John M. Kang

Faculty Scholarship

A transgender person faces obstacles trying to negotiate a gender-binary world. Going through a TSA checkpoint is no different. A substantial number of transgender persons have reported that they were detained and examined because they were transgender.1 Why this situation persists and what policy reforms should be implemented to alleviate it are the subjects of this Essay. This Essay is devoted mainly to the theme of transgender rights, rather than race, a central theme of the symposium in which this Essay appears. Given the relatively small pool of transgender individuals for whom data is available, this Essay is unable to …

Bargaining Without Bias, Cynthia Alkon

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, to work towards decreasing bias in plea bargaining, I propose a structural fix and an individual fix to these core problems. The structural fix is that prosecutors' offices should adopt policies for blind assessment of cases when the first plea offer is made. All indicia of race or ethnicity (including names and neighborhoods) should be removed when prosecutors review a case and make the initial plea offer. This would help prosecutors focus on the facts and their evidence when making a plea offer and prevent bias in decision making. However, it is not realistic to expect that …

Persistent Inequalities, The Pandemic, And The Opportunity To Compete, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

Even before the recent coronavirus pandemic, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status played a powerful role in allocating opportunity—in the public schools and elsewhere. The pandemic laid bare the dimensions of this inequality with a new and alarming clarity. In this essay, I first focus on the landscape of educational inequity that existed before the coronavirus forced public schools to shut down. In particular, I explore patterns of racial and ethnic segregation in America’s schools and evaluate how those patterns relate to additional challenges based on socioeconomic isolation. In addition, I consider the role of language and immigration status in shaping …

Diverse Magazine Interviews Sonia Gipson-Rankin: Law Schools Respond To The Movement For Social Justice, Sonia Gipson Rankin, Pearl Stewart

Faculty Scholarship

At the University of New Mexico Law School, Professor Sonia Gipson Rankin describes three activities organized in spring 2020 to address the national protest movement – a virtual teach-in; a social justice book club; and a startup student organization, Law Students for Equity & Inclusion. The teach-in included a panel of professors and students who discussed police killings of African Americans, the U.S. history of racial violence, protest and related topics.

Rankin notes that relevant courses such as “Race and the Law,” “Indian Law” and “Refugee Law” were regularly being offered at the UNM School of Law for decades and …

Technological Tethereds: Potential Impact Of Untrustworthy Artificial Intelligence In Criminal Justice Risk Assessment Instruments, Sonia M. Gipson Rankin

Faculty Scholarship

Issues of racial inequality and violence are front and center in today’s society, as are issues surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). This Article, written by a law professor who is also a computer scientist, takes a deep dive into understanding how and why hacked and rogue AI creates unlawful and unfair outcomes, particularly for persons of color.

Black Americans are disproportionally featured in criminal justice, and their stories are obfuscated. The seemingly endless back-to-back murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and heartbreakingly countless others have finally shaken the United States from its slumbering journey towards intentional criminal justice …

Can “Asians” Truly Be Americans?, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

Recent, tragic events have brought more attention to hate and bias crimes against Asian Americans. It is important to address these crimes and prevent them in the future, but the discourse on Asian Americans should not end there. Many non-Asian Americans are unaware or only superficially aware of the vast diversity that exists among us, along with the challenges posed by that diversity. Some have basic knowledge of the immigration and exclusion of Asian Americans, the internment of Japanese Americans which was upheld in Korematsu v. United States, and the “model minority stereotype”, but these are Asian Americans 101. This …

Environmental Law As Segregation, Nadia B. Ahmad, Melissa Bryan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

“Trumping” Affirmative Action, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines the Trump administration’s actions to eliminate affirmative action, along with the broader ramifications of these actions. While former-President Trump’s judicial appointments have garnered much attention, the Essay focuses on the actions of his Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. It lays out the Department of Justice’s investigations of Harvard and Yale, highlighting how they have augmented recent lawsuits challenging race-conscious admissions policies by Students for Fair Admissions. It considers the timing of the DOJ’s actions, particularly with respect to Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. It examines the strategies used by …

Consumer Bankruptcy And Race: Current Concerns And A Proposed Solution, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Racial Transition, Yuvraj Joshi

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fintech And Race-Based Inequality In The Home Mortgage And Auto Financing Markets, Winnie F. Taylor

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Racial Triangulation, Interest-Convergence, And The Double-Consciousness Of Asian Americans, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay integrates Professor Claire Jean Kim’s racial triangulation framework, Professor Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence theory, and W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of double-consciousness, all to examine the racial positioning of Asian Americans and the dilemmas we face as a result. To do so, this Essay considers the history of Asian immigration to the United States, the model minority and perpetual foreigner stereotypes, Asian Americans’ positioning in the affirmative action debate, COVID-19-related hate and bias incidents, and Andrew Yang’s 2020 Democratic presidential candidacy. The Essay examines how racial stereotypes of Asian Americans have emerged through historical cycles of valorization and ostracism, as …

Disposable Lives: Covid-19, Vaccines, And The Uprising, Matiangai Sirleaf

Faculty Scholarship

Two French doctors appeared on television and publicly discussed potentially utilizing African subjects in experimental trials for a tuberculosis vaccine as an antidote to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), denounced these kinds of racist remarks as a “hangover from ‘colonial mentality’” and maintained that “Africa can’t and won’t be a testing ground for any vaccine.” The fallout on social media was similarly swift, with Samuel Eto’o, a Cameroonian football legend, referring to the doctors as “[d]es assasins” and several others questioning the motives behind testing a vaccine on the African …

Mediation: Embedded Assumptions Of Whiteness?, Sharon Press, Ellen E. Deason

Faculty Scholarship

This article attempts to uncover some of the systemic ways in which white supremacy is expressed in the practice of mediation in the United States with the goal of inspiring additional conversations and deeper attention to these issues by scholars and practitioners in the field of dispute resolution. Our methodology is to apply the themes in Layla F. Saad’s book, Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor (2020). We use the lenses of tone policing, color-blindness, racial stereotyping, anti-blackness, white silence, and white supremacy to reflect on the following aspects of mediation: communication …

And What Of The “Black” In Black Letter Law?: A Blaqueer Reflection, T. Anansi Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

This is a reflective, analytical essay remarking on the role that Blackness has and continues to play in the construction, understanding and application of "black letter law." This essay is written from a Black and BlaQueer perspective and displays how a shift in standpoint--moving from the invisible, standard white "reasonable person"--underscores and illuminates the current legal and sociopolitical crisis we find ourselves in. It is continuation of the discussion began in my earlier articles "Furtive Blackness: On Blackness & Being," "The Strict Scrutiny of Black and BlaQueer Life" and the working paper "Sexual Profiling & BlaQueer Furtivity: BlaQueers On The …

Black Livelihoods Matter: Capitalist Myths Of Economic Efficiency In Racist Lending Policies (A Prologue And A Plea), Kim Vu-Dinh

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

School "Safety" Measures Jump Constitutional Guardrails, Maryam Ahranjani

Faculty Scholarship

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and efforts to achieve racial justice through systemic reform, this Article argues that widespread “security” measures in public schools, including embedded law enforcement officers, jump constitutional guardrails. These measures must be rethought in light of their negative impact on all children and in favor of more effective—and constitutionally compliant—alternatives to promote school safety. The Black Lives Matter, #DefundthePolice, #abolishthepolice, and #DefundSchoolPolice movements shine a timely and bright spotlight on how the prisonization of public schools leads to the mistreatment of children, particularly children with disabilities, boys, Black and brown children, and low-income children. …

Bad Apples Or A Rotten Tree: Ameliorating The Double Pandemic Of Covid-19 And Racial Economic Inequality, Nathalie Martin

Faculty Scholarship

Black Lives Matter signs pepper our rural, middle class neighborhood. The lawn signs raise a fundamental question: if Black Lives Matter, what will it take to reverse the longstanding trend that has left many dead and so many others, perhaps all others, suffering? What will it take to create some semblance of equality and equity across racial lines in America?

Part I of this essay discusses race and Covid 19. It reviews and updates statistics on Covid deaths and race, and discusses some of the reasons for the racial disparities in Covid deaths. Part II briefly reviews the stratification of …

Race And Equity In The Age Of Unicorns, Lynnise E. Pantin

Faculty Scholarship

This Article critically examines startup culture and its legal predicates. The Article analyzes innovation culture as a whole and uses the downfall of Theranos to illustrate the deficiencies in Silicon Valley culture, centering on race and class. The Article demonstrates that the rise and fall of the unicorn startup Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, is emblematic of the problem with the glorification and pursuit of the unicorn designation for startup ventures. The examination of the downfall of Theranos exposes how investors, founders, and others in Silicon Valley engage with each other in the context of pursuing unicorn status. The …

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 …

The Color Line: A Review And Reflection For Antiracist Scholars, Jasmine Gonzales Rose

Faculty Scholarship

In The Color Line: A Short Introduction, David Lyons provides a valuable service to students and academics in law, social sciences, and humanities by providing a concise history of the development and maintenance of race and racial order through law, policy, and discrimination in the United States. Lyons effectively outlines how race and racism were developed through these mechanisms in an effort to facilitate and maintain white supremacy.