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Full-Text Articles in Law
Toward A Critical Race Theory Of Evidence, Jasmine Gonzales Rose
Toward A Critical Race Theory Of Evidence, Jasmine Gonzales Rose
Faculty Scholarship
Scholars, judges, and lawyers have long believed that evidence rules apply equally to all persons regardless of race. This Article challenges this assumption and reveals how evidence law structurally disadvantages people of color. A critical race analysis of stand-your-ground defenses, cross-racial eyewitness misidentifications, and minority flight from racially-targeted police profiling and violence uncovers the existence of a dual-race evidentiary system. This system is reminiscent of nineteenth century race-based witness competency rules that barred people of color from testifying against white people. I deconstruct this problem and introduce the original concept of “racialized reality evidence.” This construct demonstrates how evidence of …
Policing The Boundaries Of Whiteness: The Tragedy Of Being “Out Of Place” From Emmett Till To Trayvon Martin, Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Policing The Boundaries Of Whiteness: The Tragedy Of Being “Out Of Place” From Emmett Till To Trayvon Martin, Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Faculty Scholarship
This Article takes what many view as an extraordinary case about racial hatred from 1955, the Emmett Till murder and trial, and analyzes it against the Trayvon Martin killing and trial outcome in 2012 and 2013. Specifically, this Article exposes one important, but not yet explored similarity between the two cases: their shared role in policing the boundaries of whiteness as a means of preserving the material and the psychological benefits of whiteness. This policing occurred in a variety of forms, including: (1) maintaining white racial separation; (2) facilitating cross-class, white racial solidarity; (3) articulating blackness, and specifically black maleness, …