Law Commons^™

Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …

Lessons In Movement Lawyering From The Ferguson Uprising, Maggie Ellinger-Locke

Human Rights Brief

Michael Brown was killed by Officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. That day, I was on vacation in Michigan with my family, hanging on the beach and playing in the water. My father passed away from liver cancer exactly four months before, and I made the decision to close down his law practice in the St. Louis, Missouri area, and move to Washington, DC, where my longterm partner had taken a job. The trip to Michigan was supposed to be a stopover on my way to DC; my car was packed to the brim.

Men's Rights, Gun Ownership, Racism, And The Assault On Women's Reproductive Health Rights: Hidden Connections, Walter S. Dekeseredy

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In this current era characterized by much fear of, and anxiety about, the political influence and actions of the U.S. alternative right (alt-right), only a small number of men’s rights organizations receive attention from the media, the Democratic Party, or a large cadre of progressives. This article demonstrates that ignoring all-male anti-feminist organizations is a flawed strategy for challenging the recent rise of the alt-right because these misogynistic groups are heavily involved in the gun rights movement, major contributors to racist practices and discourses, and active participants in efforts to criminalize and curtail women’s access to abortion. Another, but equally …

(G)Local Intersectionality, Martha F. Davis

Washington and Lee Law Review

Intersectionality theory has been slow to take root as a legal norm at the national level, even as scholars embrace it as a potent analytical tool. Yet, in recent years, intersectionality has entered law and policy practices through an unexpected portal: namely, local governments’ adoption of international norms. A growing number of local governments around the world explicitly incorporate intersectionality into their law and practice as part of implementing international antidiscrimination norms from human rights instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of …

Foreword: Centering Intersectionality In Human Rights Discourse, Johanna Bond

Washington and Lee Law Review

In the last decade, intersectionality theory has gained traction as a lens through which to analyze international human rights issues. Intersectionality theory is the notion that multiple systems of oppression intersect in peoples’ lives and are mutually constitutive, meaning that when, for example, race and gender intersect, the experience of discrimination goes beyond the formulaic addition of race discrimination and gender discrimination to produce a unique, intersectional experience of discrimination. The understanding that intersecting systems of oppression affect different groups differently is central to intersectionality theory. As such, the theory invites us to think about inter-group differences (i.e., differences between …

Comment: Understanding Xenophobia As Intersectional Discrimination, Shreya Atrey

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Comment examines the nature of xenophobia and why it seems to fall through the cracks of international human rights law, especially as a form of racial discrimination under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It considers an understanding of xenophobia as a sui generis case of intersectional discrimination because it has to do with racial grounds but also perhaps other grounds (such as nationality, religion, language, culture, and class), which makes it difficult to disentangle the basis of xenophobic discrimination as based on strictly racial grounds alone.

A Prolegomenon To The Study Of Racial Ideology In The Era Of International Human Rights, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

There is no critical race approach to international law. There are Third World approaches, feminist approaches, economic approaches, and constitutional approaches, but notably absent in the catalogue is a distinct view of international law that takes its point of departure from the vantage of Critical Race Theory (CRT), or anything like it. Through a study of racial ideology in the history of international legal thought, this Article offers the beginnings of an explanation for how this lack of attention to race and racism came to be, and why it matters today.

Towards A Transnational Critical Race Theory In Education: Proposing Critical Race Third World Approaches To Education Policy, Steven L. Nelson

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Scholars have applied Critical Race Theory in both domestic and international contexts; however, a theory on the transnational role of race and racism in education policy has not emerged. In this Article, I borrow from the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) to formulate Critical Race Third World Approaches to Education Policy (TWAEPCrit). In constructing this theory, I argue that Black Americans are in practice and lived experience treated as third world citizens, even as they reside in the United States. I prove the third world status of Black peoples in the …

Human Rights Racism, Anna Spain Bradley

Publications

International human rights law seeks to eliminate racial discrimination in the world through treaties that bind and norms that transform. Yet law’s impact on eradicating racism has not matched its intent. Racism, in all of its forms, remains a massive cause of discrimination, indignity, and lack of equality for millions of people in the world today. This Article investigates why. Applying a critical race theory analysis of the legal history and doctrinal development of race and racism in international law, Professor Spain Bradley identifies law’s historical preference for framing legal protections around the concept of racial discrimination. She further exposes …

Book Review, Anna Spain Bradley

Publications

No abstract provided.

Jeremy I. Levitt's Africa: Mapping New Boundaries In International Law (Book Review), Makau Mutua

Makau Mutua

This is a review of Jeremy Levitt’s edited collection of chapters in Africa: Mapping the Boundaries of International Law, which is an impressive work to the dearth of scholarship on Africa’s contribution to the normative substance and theory of international law. The book explicitly seeks to counter the racist mythology that Africans were tabula rasa in international law. In his own introduction to the book, Levitt makes it clear that “Africa is a legal marketplace, not a lawless basket case.” The eight contributors to the book are renowned scholars who make the case that Africa is not stuck in pre-history …

Tales Of Color And Colonialism: Racial Realism And Settler Colonial Theory, Natsu Taylor Saito

Florida A & M University Law Review

More than a half-century after the civil rights era, people of color in the United States remain disproportionately impoverished and incarcerated, excluded and vulnerable. Legal remedies rooted in the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection remain elusive. This article argues that the "racial realism" advocated by the late Professor Derrick Bell compels us to look critically at the purposes served by racial hierarchy. By stepping outside the master narrative's depiction of the United States as a "nation of immigrants" with opportunity for all, we can recognize it as a settler state, much like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It could not …

Beyond "De-Nile" - The United Nations' Genocide Problem In Darfur, William Reisinger

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Addressing Early Marriage: Culturally Competent Practices And Romanian Roma (“Gypsy”) Communities, Judith Hale Reed

Judith A Hale Reed

Early marriage affects many communities around the world. Examples of commonly practiced early marriage can be found today in the U.S., India, Syria, and many other places. Although most countries have instituted minimum age laws for marriage, so that legal marriage can only occur after an age set by law, early marriage is still practiced for tradition, control, security, and other reasons. This article explores the harms of early marriage and the international instruments meant to defend against these harms in Part II. Part III reviews theoretical perspectives from legal anthropology and presents a case study of early marriage in …

Law And Racism In An Asian Setting: An Analysis Of The British Rule Of Hong Kong, Richard Klein

Richard Daniel Klein

No abstract provided.

Jeremy I. Levitt's Africa: Mapping New Boundaries In International Law, Makau Wa Mutua

Book Reviews

This is a review of Jeremy Levitt’s edited collection of chapters in Africa: Mapping the Boundaries of International Law, which is an impressive work to the dearth of scholarship on Africa’s contribution to the normative substance and theory of international law. The book explicitly seeks to counter the racist mythology that Africans were tabula rasa in international law. In his own introduction to the book, Levitt makes it clear that “Africa is a legal marketplace, not a lawless basket case.” The eight contributors to the book are renowned scholars who make the case that Africa is not stuck in pre-history …

Indigenous Peoples And Environmental Justice: The Impact Of Climate Change, Rebecca Tsosie

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Rebecca Tsosie, Professor of Law, Arizona State University

1 page.

American Racial Jusice On Trial - Again: African American Reparations, Human Rights, And The War On Terror, Eric K. Yamamoto, Susan K. Serrano, Michelle Natividad Rodriguez

Michigan Law Review

Much has been written recently on African American reparations and reparations movements worldwide, both in the popular press and scholarly publications. Indeed, the expanding volume of writing underscores the impact on the public psyche of movements for reparations for historic injustice. Some of that writing has highlighted the legal obstacles faced by proponents of reparations lawsuits, particularly a judicial system that focuses on individual (and not group-based) claims and tends to squeeze even major social controversies into the narrow litigative paradigm of a two-person auto collision (requiring proof of standing, duty, breach, causation, and direct injury). Other writings detail the …

Racism Or Realpolitik? U.S. Foreign Policy And The Hiv/Aids Catastrophe In Sub-Saharan Africa, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Law And Racism In An Asian Setting: An Analysis Of The British Rule Of Hong Kong, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Free Speech: It's Great For Hate, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Racism In Great Britain: Drawing The Line On Free Speech, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

On any given Sunday in Hyde Park, London's huge urban sanctuary of tailored ponds and manicured gardens, one is likely to hear outrageous and provocative public utterances about race and religion. A few of those venting their spleen here are practicing rhetoricians, a few are clearly acting-but others are absolutely sincere in their hatemongering and passionate in their vilification. All of them are focal points for assembled spectators of varying classes, many of whom are professional hecklers. The police, milling about to put down possible disturbances of the peace, are seldom called upon to quell roused rabble. Thus is this …