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Full-Text Articles in Law

Permitting Under The Clean Air Act: How Current Standards Impose Obstacles To Achieving Environmental Justice, Annise Katherine Maguire Jan 2009

Permitting Under The Clean Air Act: How Current Standards Impose Obstacles To Achieving Environmental Justice, Annise Katherine Maguire

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Most studies about the environmental justice movement focus on the disproportionate share of environmental burdens minority and low-income populations bear, the negative effects of an unequal distribution of undesirable land uses, and how industry contributes to the adverse impacts suffered by the communities. Unfortunately, trying to prove that an injury was caused by actions of a nearby facility is difficult, and this approach has yielded few legal victories for environmental justice communities. While it is important to remain focused on how environmental justice communities are disproportionately impacted by undesirable land uses, the analysis must shift if the law is to …


Recognition Of Group Rights As Requisite To Substantive Equality Goals, Kathrina Szymborski Jan 2009

Recognition Of Group Rights As Requisite To Substantive Equality Goals, Kathrina Szymborski

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Courts, legislatures, and scholars are increasingly turning away from traditional Aristotelian thinking in favor of a substantive, pro-active approach to equality. Under the substantive approach, the identification and eradication of systematic discrimination replace an adherence to neutral principles. This Comment argues that while a substantive approach is the most effective way to bring about true equality, it will not succeed unless it centers on protecting group rights. State decision-makers and international human rights advocates must focus on group experiences in order to create societies where no one is favored based on immutable characteristics.


Vindicating The Matriarch: A Fair Housing Act Challenge To Federal No-Fault Evictions From Public Housing, Melissa A. Cohen Jan 2009

Vindicating The Matriarch: A Fair Housing Act Challenge To Federal No-Fault Evictions From Public Housing, Melissa A. Cohen

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Pearlie Rucker, sixty-three years old, had been living in public housing in Oakland, California for thirteen years. Ms. Rucker lived with her mentally disabled adult daughter, Gelinda, as well as two grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Ms. Rucker regularly searched Gelinda's room for signs of drugs, and had warned Gelinda that any drug activity on the premises could result in eviction. Nevertheless, Gelinda was caught with drugs three blocks from the apartment. Despite the fact that Ms. Rucker had no knowledge of Gelinda's drug activity, and in fact had been carefully monitoring what happened in her apartment, the Oakland Housing Authority …


Eatin' Good? Not In This Neighborhood: A Legal Analysis Of Disparities In Food Availability And Quality At Chain Supermarkets In Poverty-Stricken Areas, Nareissa Smith Jan 2009

Eatin' Good? Not In This Neighborhood: A Legal Analysis Of Disparities In Food Availability And Quality At Chain Supermarkets In Poverty-Stricken Areas, Nareissa Smith

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Many Americans-especially the poor-face severe hurdles in their attempts to secure the most basic of human needs-food. One reason for this struggle is the tendency of chain supermarkets to provide a limited selection of goods and a lower quality of goods to patrons in less affluent neighborhoods. Healthier items such as soy milks, fresh fish, and lean meats are not present in these stores, and the produce that is present is typically well past the peak of freshness. Yet, if the same patron were to go to another supermarket owned by the same chain--but located in a wealthier neighborhood-she would …


Teaching Whren To White Kids, M. K.B. Darmer Jan 2009

Teaching Whren To White Kids, M. K.B. Darmer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article addresses issues at the intersection of United States v. Whren and Grutter v. Bollinger at a time when the reality of racial profiling was recently illustrated by the high-profile arrest of a prominent Harvard professor. Given the highly racialized nature of criminal procedure, there is a surprising dearth of writing about the unique problems of teaching issues such as racial profiling in racially homogeneous classrooms. Because African American and other minority students often experience the criminal justice system in radically different ways than do Whites, the lack of minority voices poses a significant barrier to effectively teaching criminal …


Do Not (Re)Enter: The Rise Of Criminal Background Tenant Screening As A Violation Of The Fair Housing Act, Rebecca Oyama Jan 2009

Do Not (Re)Enter: The Rise Of Criminal Background Tenant Screening As A Violation Of The Fair Housing Act, Rebecca Oyama

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Increased landlord discrimination against housing applicants with criminal histories has made locating housing in the private market more challenging than ever for individuals with criminal records. Specifically, the increased use of widely available background information in the application process by private housing providers and high error rates in criminal record databases pose particularly difficult obstacles to securing housing. Furthermore, criminal record screening policies disproportionately affect people of color due to high incarceration rates and housing discrimination. This Note examines whether the policies and practices of private housing providers that reject applicants because of their prior criminal records have an unlawful, …


Microhistory Set In Motion: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Creole Itinerary, Rebecca J. Scott Jan 2009

Microhistory Set In Motion: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Creole Itinerary, Rebecca J. Scott

Book Chapters

Sidney Mintz’s Worker in the Cane is a model life history, uncovering the subtlest of dynamics within plantation society by tracing the experiences of a single individual and his family. By contrast, Mintz’s Sweetness and Power gains its force from taking the entire Atlantic world as its scope, examining the marketing, meanings, and consumption of sugar as they changed over time. This essay borrows from each of these two strategies, looking at the history of a single peripatetic family across three long-lived generations, from enslavement in West Africa in the eighteenth century through emancipation during the Haitian Revolution in the …