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Full-Text Articles in Law
Functionally Suspect: Reconceptualizing 'Race' As A Suspect Classification, Lauren Sudeall
Functionally Suspect: Reconceptualizing 'Race' As A Suspect Classification, Lauren Sudeall
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In the context of equal protection doctrine, race has become untethered from the criteria underlying its demarcation as a classification warranting heightened scrutiny. As a result, it is no longer an effective vehicle for challenging the existing social and political order; instead, its primary purpose under current doctrine is to signal the presence of an impermissible basis for differential treatment. This Symposium Article suggests that, to more effectively serve its underlying normative goals, equal protection should prohibit not discrimination based on race per se, but government actions that implicate the concerns leading to race’s designation as a suspect classification. For …
Capitalism And The Tax System: A Search For Social Justice, Beverly I. Moran
Capitalism And The Tax System: A Search For Social Justice, Beverly I. Moran
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
America is a country founded on ideas. The Enlightenment was one set of ideas that attended our birth and one Enlightenment belief as strong today as during the revolution is our faith in capitalism and the protection of private property. Yet, the United States tax system manages to violate fundamental capitalist principles as outlined in the extensive writings of Adam Smith - the father of capitalism. Comparing Smith's vision to the current United States tax system reveals many important inconsistencies, particularly the current penchant for simultaneously taxing wages while exempting (or delaying) taxes on wealth and wealth appreciation. The article …
Race And Wealth Disparity: The Role Of Law And The Legal System, Beverly I. Moran, Stephanie M. Wildman
Race And Wealth Disparity: The Role Of Law And The Legal System, Beverly I. Moran, Stephanie M. Wildman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Many believe that the legal system has achieved racial neutrality because statutes and regulations do not mention race. They do not view law and the legal system as one way that American society polices race and wealth disparities. Because American law seems removed from race and wealth concerns, legal workers see no place for such considerations in their education or practice.
Although the legal system has aspired to neutrality and equality, racialized wealth inequality has resulted and continues. This article considers the aspiration and shows how equality and neutrality can veil existing wealth inequality. Using examples from judicial decisionmaking and …
Crossing The Color Line: Racial Migration And The One-Drop Rule, 1600-1860, Daniel J. Sharfstein
Crossing The Color Line: Racial Migration And The One-Drop Rule, 1600-1860, Daniel J. Sharfstein
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Scholars describe the one-drop rule--the idea that any African ancestry makes a person black--as the American regime of race. While accounts of when the rule emerged vary widely, ranging from the 1660s to the 1920s, most legal scholars have assumed that once established, the rule created a bright line that people were bound to follow. This Article reconstructs the one-drop rule's meaning and purpose from 1600 to 1860, setting it within the context of racial migration, the continual process by which people of African descent assimilated into white communities. While ideologies of blood-borne racial difference predate Jamestown, the rhetoric of …
Constructing Reality: Social Science And Race Cases, Beverly I. Moran
Constructing Reality: Social Science And Race Cases, Beverly I. Moran
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education and Grutter v. Bollinger all demonstrate that law alone is not enough to make social change. Instead, lawyers interested in social change must understand the nature of the societies that they attempt to persuade and the language that leads judges to change their ways of thinking. In the early 21st century, the language of persuasion is often the language of social science.
Homogenized Law: Can The United States Learn From African Mistakes?, Beverly I. Moran
Homogenized Law: Can The United States Learn From African Mistakes?, Beverly I. Moran
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
For the last fifty years we have seen an outflow of United States laws to developing countries. This legal outflow has caused problems of enforcement in societies that do not share the values, needs or concerns of the law producing state. Using law reform in Eritrea as a case study, the article asks what will happen in the United States when we become the recipient, rather than the exporter, of maladapted laws that serve the purpose of others instead of serving the unique needs of the United States and its economy.
Setting An Agenda For A Study Of Tax And Black Culture, Beverly I. Moran
Setting An Agenda For A Study Of Tax And Black Culture, Beverly I. Moran
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
At present the Internal Revenue Code unthinkingly reflects many aspects of white culture including historical opportunities that whites have received for wealth building and marriage. In order for the federal tax laws to tax fairly all cultures within the purview of taxation must also find their values reflected. The article sets out how the tax laws might begin to incorporate black culture.
The Struggle Against Hate Crime: Movement At A Crossroads, Terry A. Maroney
The Struggle Against Hate Crime: Movement At A Crossroads, Terry A. Maroney
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The 1980s and 1990s witnessed an extraordinary amount of police, legislative, judicial, scholarly, and community activity around hate crime. Such activity was attributable to a new "anti-hate-crime movement," conditions for which were created by the convergence in previous decades of two very different social movements - civil rights and victims' rights. This anti-hate-crime movement has been radiply assimilated into the institutions of criminal justice, with the result that anti-hate-crime measures now reflect the culture and priorities of those institutions. The civil rights and victims' rights movements created collective beliefs, structural resources, and political opportunities that facilitated the emergence of a …
Exploring The Mysteries: Can We Ever Know Anything About Race And Tax?, Beverly I. Moran
Exploring The Mysteries: Can We Ever Know Anything About Race And Tax?, Beverly I. Moran
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The politics behind tax legislation are explored in order to demonstrate that, rather than being surprising or unexpected, it is easily predictable that federal tax laws would favor whites over blacks.
The Elephant And The Four Blind Men: The Burger Court And Its Federal Tax Decisions, Beverly I. Moran, Daniel M. Schneider
The Elephant And The Four Blind Men: The Burger Court And Its Federal Tax Decisions, Beverly I. Moran, Daniel M. Schneider
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
All the federal tax decisions of the Burger Court are reviewed in order to demonstrate that widely held beliefs about statutory interpretation in tax cases are misleading. For example, although the literature asserts that courts do not distinguish between legislative and interpretive regulations, the Burger Court did give greater deference to legislative regulations. Further, despite some Justices antipathy to legislative history, the Burger Court relied heavily on legislative histories in making its decisions. In addition, the widely held view that the Court eschews tax controversies was found false when compared to other business areas.
Quantum Leap: A Black Woman Uses Legal Education To Obtain Her Honorary White Pass, Beverly I. Moran
Quantum Leap: A Black Woman Uses Legal Education To Obtain Her Honorary White Pass, Beverly I. Moran
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The nature of privilege is that it is hidden from those who possess it even more than it is hidden from those who lack privilege. Privilege's invisibility to its owner makes privilege difficult to both identify and fight.
Welcome To The Funhouse: The Incredible Maze Of Modern Divorce Taxation, Beverly I. Moran
Welcome To The Funhouse: The Incredible Maze Of Modern Divorce Taxation, Beverly I. Moran
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Using legislative histories the article shows how the incidence of taxation began to fall more heavily on women in the context of divorce as women's social and political status rose during World War II and that this trend continued through several sets of divorce tax reform.