Law Commons^™

The Tulsa Race Massacre Of 1921: A Lesson In The Law Of Trespass, Kara W. Swanson

Connecticut Law Review

The Connecticut Law Review Symposium poses the question: “History and the Tulsa Race Massacre: What’s the Law Got to Do With It?” In one sense, the answer to the question is easy. Since 1921, Black Tulsans have been looking to law and lawyers to address the harms inflicted during the Tulsa Race Massacre, albeit with little success. I was asked to consider, however, the startling lack of recognition of the Massacre—that is, the seemingly impossible feat of forgetting the racially motivated wholesale destruction of a community. In this Essay, I focus on one space of non-recognition, law schools, and on …

Reading The Illegible: Can Law Understand Graffiti?, Katya Assaf-Zakharov, Tim Schnetgoke

Connecticut Law Review

This essay focuses on graffiti—the practice of illegal writing and painting on trains, walls, bridges, and other publicly visible surfaces.

Social responses to graffiti are highly ambivalent. On the one hand, media often picture graffiti painters as “vandals” and “hooligans.” Local authorities define graffiti as an “epidemic” and declare “wars on graffiti.” On the other hand, graffiti is recognized as a valuable form of art, exhibited in mainstream museums sold for high prices. Reflecting the ambivalent social attitude, the legal treatment of graffiti is highly uneven, punishing some graffiti writers for vandalism while granting copyright protection to others.

Scholars have …