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Understanding An American Paradox: An Overview Of The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Spearit

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In The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Sahar Aziz unveils a mechanism that perpetuates the persecution of religion. While the book’s title suggests a problem that engulfs Muslims, it is not a new problem, but instead a recurring theme in American history. Aziz constructs a model that demonstrates how racialization of a religious group imposes racial characteristics on that group, imbuing it with racial stereotypes that effectively treat the group as a racial rather than religious group deserving of religious liberty.

In identifying a racialization process that effectively veils religious discrimination, Aziz’s book points to several important …

The Second Founding And The First Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Constitutional doctrine generally proceeds from the premise that the original intent and public understanding of pre-Civil War constitutional provisions carries forward unchanged from the colonial Founding era. This premise is flawed because it ignores the Nation’s Second Founding: i.e., the constitutional moment culminating in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and the civil rights statutes enacted pursuant thereto. The Second Founding, in addition to providing specific new individual rights and federal powers, also represented a fundamental shift in our constitutional order. The Second Founding’s constitutional regime provided that the underlying systemic rules and norms of the First Founding’s Constitution …

What Counts As 'Discrimination' In Ledbetter And The Implications For Sex Equality Law, Deborah L. Brake

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This article, presented at a Symposium, The Roberts Court and Equal Protection: Gender, Race and Class held at the University of South Carolina School of Law in the Spring of 2008, explores the implications of the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. for sex equality law more broadly, including equal protection. There is more interrelation between statutory and constitutional equality law as a source of discrimination protections than is generally acknowledged. Although the Ledbetter decision purports to be a narrow procedural ruling regarding the statute of limitations for Title VII pay discrimination claims, at its …

Judicial Review Of Thirteenth Amendment Legislation: 'Congruence And Proportionality' Or 'Necessary And Proper'?, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

The Thirteenth Amendment has relatively recently been rediscovered by scholars and litigants as a source of civil rights protections. Most of the scholarship focuses on judicial enforcement of the Amendment in lawsuits brought by individuals. However, scholars have paid relatively little attention as of late to the proper scope of congressional action enforcing the Amendment. The reason, presumably, is that it is fairly well settled that Congress enjoys very broad authority to determine what constitutes either literal slavery or, to use the language of Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., a "badge or incident of slavery" falling within the Amendment's …