Law Commons^™

The Cul De Sac Of Race Preference Discourse, Christopher A. Bracey

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Affirmative action policy remains a contentious issue in public debate despite public endorsement by America’s leading institutions and validation by the United States Supreme Court. But the decades old disagreement is mired in an unproductive rhetorical stalemate marked by entrenched ideology rather than healthy dialogue. Instead of evolving, racial dialogue about the relevance of race in university admissions and hiring decisions is trapped in a cycle of resentment.

In this article, I argue that the stagnation of race preference discourse arises because the basic rhetorical themes advanced by opponents have evolved little over 150 years since the racial reform efforts …

Adjudication, Antisubordination, And The Jazz Connection, Christopher A. Bracey

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

We live in the midst of a pervasive and sustained democratic crisis. Our society expresses a deep commitment to core notions of freedom, justice, and equality for all citizens. Yet, it is equally clear that our democracy tolerates a great deal of social and economic inequality. Membership in a socially disfavored group can (and often does) profoundly distort one's life chances and opportunities. Our constitutional democracy acknowledges this tension, providing for both majority rule and the protection of minority rights and interests. Although we seek to safeguard minority rights and interest through express legal prohibitions on the subordination of socially …

Thinking Race, Making Nation (Reviewing Glenn C. Loury, The Anatomy Of Racial Inequality), Christopher A. Bracey

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

We live in a race-conscious culture. As Americans, we are a nation of people who self-consciously chose to adopt a vision of society that embraced lofty ideals of individual freedom and democracy for all along with powerful mechanisms for devastating racial oppression. Our history is replete with instances of differential treatment on account of race - slavery being only the most egregious example - that achieved the desired effect of generating remarkable disparities in socioeconomic well-being among individuals and between different racial groups. Such disparities are not simply historical artifacts. They are facts of the contemporary American racial landscape as …

Racial Disparities And The Political Function Of Property, Spencer A. Overton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Race theorists have noted that racial discrimination has shaped the existing distribution of economic resources, and have used this observation to justify reparations, to defend affirmative action, and to call for other legal changes that would improve the socioeconomic status of people of color. This Article takes the theorists' observation further. Property has a political function. Racially discriminatory allocation rules not only impose economic and social harms upon people of color, but also impair the ability of these people to engage in political expression and participation through structures such as the privately financed campaign finance system.

But Some Are More Equal: Race, Exclusion, And Campaign Finance, Spencer A. Overton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Proposed campaign finance reforms and critiques of current campaign finance jurisprudence are incomplete because campaign finance reformers overlook social and historical realities related to race. This Article uses race as an analytical factor to develop a more comprehensive understanding of campaign finance. Past state-sanctioned discrimination has contributed to current racial disparities in property. Under the current campaign finance system, these disparities in property shape the racial distribution of political influence no less than poll taxes, literacy tests, or at-large electoral districts. Further, seemingly neutral campaign finance doctrine threatens to lead to future racial disparities in the political distribution of societal …

A Place At The Table: Bush V. Gore Through The Lens Of Race, Spencer A. Overton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Although African Americans cast a majority of ballots rejected by counting machines following the 2000 presidential election in Florida, legal academic commentators have not grappled with the significance of race in their discussions of Bush v. Gore. This Essay uses race to expose structural shortcomings of merit-based assumptions about democracy embedded in the U.S. Supreme Court's majority per curiam. The Court prohibited a manual count of imperfectly marked ballots, effectively conditioning membership in political community on individual capacity to produce a machine-readable ballot. Despite the Court's individualized focus, however, merit-based assumptions about democracy interfere primarily not with individual rights, but …