Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

American Law In The New Global Conflict, Mark Jia

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article surveys how a growing rivalry between the United States and China is changing the American legal system. It argues that U.S.-China conflict is reproducing, in attenuated form, the same politics of threat that has driven wartime legal development for much of our history. The result is that American law is reprising familiar patterns and pathologies. There has been a diminishment in rights among groups with imputed ties to a geopolitical adversary. But there has also been a modest expansion in rights where advocates have linked desired reforms with geopolitical goals. Institutionally, the new global conflict has at times …

Beyond The Business Case: Moving From Transactional To Transformational Inclusion, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

While workplace diversity is a hot topic, the extent to which the diversity management movement has effectively improved intergroup relations and reduced racial inequality remains unclear. Despite large investments in diversity and inclusion training and other company wide initiatives, historically excluded groups remain vastly underrepresented in leadership and the most lucrative careers, such as finance, law, and technology. This calls the efficacy of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts into question, particularly with respect to reducing racial inequality in the workplace.

This Article explains why it is time for organizational leaders to move beyond the transactional case for diversity and …

Advancing Racial Justice Through Civil And Criminal Academic Medical-Legal Partnerships, Yael Cannon, Vida Johnson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The medical-legal partnership (MLP) model, which brings attorneys and healthcare partners together to remove legal barriers to health, is a growing approach to addressing unmet civil legal needs. But MLPs are less prevalent in criminal defense settings, where they also have the potential to advance both health and legal justice. In fact, grave racial health inequities are deeply intertwined with both civil and criminal injustice. In both spheres, health justice is racial justice. Building on the experiences of the authors in their respective civil and criminal law school clinics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., this Article argues that academic …

Random Justice, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As recent Senate confirmation practices suggest, the Supreme Court is best understood as the head of a political branch of government, whose Justices are chosen in a process that makes their ideological views dispositive. Throughout the nation’s history, the Supreme Court has exercised its governing political ideology in ways that sacrifice the interests of nonwhites in order to advance the interests of Whites. In the present moment of heightened cultural sensitivity to structural discrimination and implicit bias, it would make sense to use affirmative action to help remedy the racially disparate distribution of societal resources that has been produced by …

The Social Psychology Of Inclusion: How Diversity Framing Shapes Outcomes For Racial-Ethnic Minorities, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Research on the efficacy of organizational diversity efforts has yielded mixed results. It remains unclear when positive or negative outcomes should be expected, and why. This article fills a gap in the sociological literature by examining critical social psychological mechanisms. In Experiment 1, I found that common diversity messaging led to increased bias towards racial minorities. In Experiment 2, I examined how alternative framing may influence these outcomes. Findings revealed that the common “business case” emphasizing profit and performance gains made decision-makers less likely to select a Black job candidate than emphasizing civil rights law. I then examined social psychological …

Maximizing #Metoo: Intersectionality & The Movement, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although women of color experience high rates of harassment and assault, the #MeToo movement has largely left them on the margins in terms of (1) the online conversation, (2) the traditional social movement activity occurring offline, and (3) the consequential legal activity. This Article analyzes how race shapes experiences of harassment and how seemingly positive legal strides continue to fail women of color thirty years beyond Kimberlé Crenshaw’s initial framing of intersectionality theory. I discuss the weaknesses of the reform efforts and argue for more tailored strategies that take into account the ineffectiveness of our current Title VII framework and, …

In Search Of Equality For Women: From Suffrage To Civil Rights, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article analyzes women’s rights advocacy and its impact on the meanings of gender equality during the period from the achievement of suffrage in 1920 until the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It teaches that one cannot separate the conceptualization of equality or the jurisprudential philosophy underlying it from the dynamics and characteristics of the social movements that actively give it life. Social movements identify the institutions and practices that will be challenged, decisions that in turn determine which doctrinal issues will provide the raw material for jurisgenerative change. Without understanding a movement’s strategy and opportunities for action, one cannot know …

Beyond Sex-Plus: Acknowledging Black Women In Employment Law And Policy, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It has been more than 30 years since Kimberlé Crenshaw published her pathbreaking article critiquing the inadequacy of antidiscrimination law in addressing claims at the intersection of race and sex discrimination. This Article focuses on the challenges Black women continue to face when bringing intersectional claims, despite experiencing high rates of discrimination and harassment. The new status quo has not resolved the problems that she documented, and has introduced a set of second generation intersectionality issues. Most significantly, many courts now recognize that Black women experience discrimination differently than do white women or Black men. Yet, despite the professionally and …

The New Principle-Practice Gap: The Disconnect Between Diversity Beliefs And Actions In The Workplace, Jamillah Bowman Williams, Jonathan Cox

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Following increased calls for racial justice, many organizations have pledged to play their part in dismantling systemic racism. One common step leaders take is to invest in diversity and inclusion programs. Yet, despite organizations’ bold claims to value diversity and the investment of billions of dollars on related efforts, workplace discrimination continues to be a major factor in the lives of people of color. Additionally, existing research highlights a principle-policy gap, wherein people--particularly White Americans--espouse support for the principles of diversity, yet their support wanes for policies that address inequalities. In this survey study, we explore attitudes about organizational diversity …

Confronting The Carceral State, Allegra M. Mcleod

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Good Faith Discrimination, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's current doctrinal rules governing racial discrimination and affirmative action are unsatisfying. They often seem artificial, internally inconsistent, and even conceptually incoherent. Despite a long and continuing history of racial discrimination in the United States, many of the problems with the Supreme Court's racial jurisprudence stem from the Court's willingness to view the current distribution of societal resources as establishing a colorblind, race-neutral baseline that can be used to make equality determinations. As a result, the current rules are as likely to facilitate racial discrimination as to prevent it, or to remedy the lingering effects of past discrimination.

To Be Muslim Or "Muslim-Looking" In America: A Comparative Exploration Of Racial And Religious Prejudice In The 21st Century, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Essay begins with a confession. In taking implicit association tests ("IATs") designed to measure my unconscious attitude toward two particular demographic groups, I discovered that I, an African-American, harbored a "slight automatic preference" for Europeans over blacks and for "other people" over "Arab-Muslims." Both of these results were contrary to my professed or conscious assertions of neutrality. Why would a pro-integration scholar who seeks to promote cross-racial understanding and inclusion exhibit such implicit biases? And why is it that a majority of others who take these tests register similar implicit biases? The point of my confession is to underscore …

The Civil Rights Act Of 1964 And Coalition Politics, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Days began his Childress Lecture by recounting his personal experience with Jim Crow segregation. I too have such a story. I was born and raised in Hunstville, Alabama, a city that is notable, among other things, for having desegregated its public accommodations in 1962, two full years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The turning point in the non-violent sit-in movement in Hunstville was when a young, African- American woman was arrested with a four-month-old baby in her arms, along with a friend who was eight months pregnant. This caused some outrage and widespread press …

Affirmative Action And Discrimination, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The contemporary debate about race in the United States is perplexing. Each side seems genuinely to feel distressed at the demands being made by the other. Racial minorities point to Dred Scott's insistence on racial castes, Plessy's endorsement of official segregation, and Brown's reluctance to remedy unlawful discrimination as evidence that the white majority is inevitably inclined to advance its own interests at minority expense. Minority group members, therefore, tend to argue that the only way to arrest this majoritarian inclination is through the use of race-conscious remedial programs that will ensure an equitable distribution of resources. Most members of …

Proposition 209, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I have a proposition for you. It's called Proposition 209. All you have to do is stop discriminating in favor of women and racial minorities, and your perpetual problems of race and gender discrimination will finally disappear. If this Proposition sounds too good to be true ... well, you know how the saying goes. In law, as in life, the seductiveness of a proposition owes as much to its disregard of established norms as to its underlying content. Eliminate the affront to social convention, and a proposition promises about as much excitement as a routine liaison with one's spouse. But …