Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Whiteness As Contract, Marissa Jackson Sow

Faculty Publications

2020 forced scholars, policymakers, and activists alike to grapple with the impact of “twin pandemics”—the COVID-19 pandemic, which has devastated Black and Indigenous communities, and the scourge of structural and physical state violence against those same communities—on American society. As atrocious acts of anti-Black violence and harassment by law enforcement officers and white civilians are captured on recording devices, the gap between Black people’s human and civil rights and their living conditions has become readily apparent. Less visible human rights abuses camouflaged as private commercial matters, and thus out of the reach of the state, are also increasingly exposed as …

The Surprising Role Of Racial Hierarchy In The Civil Rights Jurisprudence Of The First Justice John Marshall Harlan, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

The first Justice John Marshall Harlan’s status as one of the greatest Supreme Court Justices in American history rests largely upon his civil rights jurisprudence. The literature exploring the nuances of Harlan’s civil rights jurisprudence is vast. Far less attention has been paid to the reasons for Harlan’s strong civil rights views. Developing a rich sense of Harlan’s thinking has been difficult because Harlan did not leave behind a large trove of non-judicial writings. There is, however, a remarkable source of Harlan’s thought that has been largely overlooked by scholars: Harlan’s constitutional law lectures at George Washington Law School of …

A Bibliography Of Title Ix Of The Education Amendments Of 1972, Christine Iaconeta Dulac

Faculty Publications

It has been thirty-five years since the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972. Title IX provides that no person shall be excluded from participation in any educational program or activity that receives federal funding. This legislation is credited with bolstering the participation rates of girls and women in athletics. Although athletics are not explicitly addressed in the statutory language, Title IX requires schools to offer male and female students equal opportunities to play sports, to give male and female athletes their fair share of athletic scholarship money, and to treat male and female athletes equally in …

Rehnquist's Missing Letter: A Former Law Clerk's 1955 Thoughts On Justice Jackson And Brown, John Q. Barrett, Brad Snyder

Faculty Publications

"I think that Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed." That's what Supreme Court law clerk William H. Rehnquist wrote privately in December 1952 to his boss, Justice Robert H. Jackson. When the memorandum was made public in 1971 and Rehnquist's Supreme Court confirmation hung in the balance, he claimed that the memorandum reflected Jackson's views, not Rehnquist's. Rehnquist was confirmed, but his explanation triggered charges that he had lied and smeared the memory of one of the Court's most revered justices. This Essay analyzes a newly discovered document—a letter Rehnquist wrote to Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1955, …

The Struggle For School Desegregation In Cincinnati Before 1954, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights And Civil Liberties In A Crisis: A Few Pages Of History, Thomas E. Baker

Faculty Publications

Tribute to Judge Procter Hug of the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based on a talk adapted from Thomas E. Baker's At War With the Constitution: A History Lesson from the Chief Justice, 14 BYU J. Pub.L. 69 (1999).

It is but a truism that the powers of the government are greatest when the Nation is at war. All of our wartime Commanders-in-Chief have conducted themselves based on this belief. For its part, the Supreme Court has acquiesced in draconian measures undertaken by the Executive that would not be permitted during peacetime. The lasting problem …

Pause At The Rubicon, John Marshall And Emancipation: Reparations In The Early National Period?, Frances Howell Rudko

Faculty Publications

Marshall thought that the solution to emancipation and the end to slavery were to be nationally funded. He considered slavery a national problem, not a state problem, as most of his fellow Virginians insisted. In this he differed from most southerners who argued that slave matters were state matters and that the nation could involve itself in the institution of slavery only by strictly adhering to the role assigned to it by the Constitution under the three fifths clause and the fugitive slave clause.