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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race

Barriers To The Ballot Box: Implicit Bias And Voting Rights In The 21st Century, Arusha Gordon, Ezra D. Rosenberg Oct 2015

Barriers To The Ballot Box: Implicit Bias And Voting Rights In The 21st Century, Arusha Gordon, Ezra D. Rosenberg

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

While much has been written regarding unconscious or “implicit bias” in other areas of law, there is a scarcity of scholarship examining how implicit bias impacts voting rights and how advocates can move courts to recognize evidence of implicit bias within the context of a voting rights claim. This Article aims to address that scarcity. After reviewing research on implicit bias, this Article examines how implicit bias might impact different stages of the electoral process. It then argues that “results test” claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) present an opportunity for plaintiffs to introduce evidence regarding …


Strip Searching In The Age Of Colorblind Racism: The Disparate Impact Of Florence V. Board Of Chosen Freeholders Of The County Of Burlington, André Keeton Oct 2015

Strip Searching In The Age Of Colorblind Racism: The Disparate Impact Of Florence V. Board Of Chosen Freeholders Of The County Of Burlington, André Keeton

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of the County of Burlington. The Court held that full strip searches, including cavity searches, are permissible regardless of the existence of basic reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is in possession of contraband. Further, the Court held that law enforcement may conduct full strip searches after arresting an individual for a minor offense and irrespective of the circumstances surrounding the arrest. These holdings upended typical search jurisprudence. Florence sanctions the overreach of state power and extends to law enforcement and corrections officers the unfettered …


Cross-Racial Identifications: Solutions To The "They All Look Alike" Effect, Laura Connelly Oct 2015

Cross-Racial Identifications: Solutions To The "They All Look Alike" Effect, Laura Connelly

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

On a late summer evening in August of 1997, Nathan Brown was in his apartment rocking his young daughter to sleep when the police knocked on his door. The police sought Brown, one of a few Black men in his apartment complex, after a young White woman said she had been assaulted by a shirtless Black man wearing black shorts with strong body odor walking through the complex’s courtyard. Minutes later the police took Brown outside and put him in the patrol car for a one-on-one “showup.” They brought him out by himself to see the victim wearing black shorts …


Disparaging Trademarks: Who Matters, Jasmine Abdel-Khalik Sep 2015

Disparaging Trademarks: Who Matters, Jasmine Abdel-Khalik

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

For more than a century, non-majority groups have protested the use of trademarks comprised of or containing terms referencing the group—albeit for various reasons. Under the 1946 Lanham Act, Congress added a prohibition against registering disparaging trademarks, which could offer protection to non-majority groups targeted by the use of trademarks offensive to members of the group. The prohibition remained relatively unclear, however, and rarely applied in that context until a group of Native Americans petitioned to cancel the Washington NFL team’s trademarks as either scandalous, offensive to the general population, or disparaging, offensive to the referenced group. In clarifying the …


There Are No Racists Here: The Rise Of Racial Extremism, When No One Is Racist, Jeannine Bell Sep 2015

There Are No Racists Here: The Rise Of Racial Extremism, When No One Is Racist, Jeannine Bell

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At first glance hate murders appear wholly anachronistic in post-racial America. This Article suggests otherwise. The Article begins by analyzing the periodic expansions of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the protection for racist expression in First Amendment doctrine. The Article then contextualizes the case law by providing evidence of how the First Amendment works on the ground in two separate areas —the enforcement of hate crime law and on university campuses that enact speech codes. In these areas, those using racist expression receive full protection for their beliefs. Part III describes social spaces—social media and employment where slurs and epithets …


Functionally Suspect: Reconceptualizing "Race" As A Suspect Classification, Lauren Sudeall Lucas Sep 2015

Functionally Suspect: Reconceptualizing "Race" As A Suspect Classification, Lauren Sudeall Lucas

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the context of equal protection doctrine, race has become untethered from the criteria underlying its demarcation as a classification warranting heightened scrutiny. As a result, it is no longer an effective vehicle for challenging the existing social and political order; instead, its primary purpose under current doctrine is to signal the presence of an impermissible basis for differential treatment. This Symposium Article suggests that, to more effectively serve its underlying normative goals, equal protection should prohibit not discrimination based on race per se, but government actions that implicate the concerns leading to race’s designation as a suspect classification. For …


The Keyes To Reclaiming The Racial History Of The Roberts Court, Tom I. Romero, Ii Sep 2015

The Keyes To Reclaiming The Racial History Of The Roberts Court, Tom I. Romero, Ii

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article advocates for a fundamental re-understanding about the way that the history of race is understood by the current Supreme Court. Represented by the racial rights opinions of Justice John Roberts that celebrate racial progress, the Supreme Court has equivocated and rendered obsolete the historical experiences of people of color in the United States. This jurisprudence has in turn reified the notion of color-blindness, consigning racial discrimination to a distant and discredited past that has little bearing to how race and inequality is experienced today. The racial history of the Roberts Court is centrally informed by the context and …


A Demographic Threat? Proposed Reclassification Of Arab Americans On The 2020 Census, Khaled A. Beydoun Aug 2015

A Demographic Threat? Proposed Reclassification Of Arab Americans On The 2020 Census, Khaled A. Beydoun

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

“Arab Americans are white?” This question—commonly posed as a demonstration of shock or surprise—highlights the dissonance between how “Arab” and “white” are discursively imagined and understood in the United States today. These four words also encapsulate the dilemma that currently riddles Arab Americans. The population finds itself interlocked between formal classification as white, and de facto recognition as nonwhite. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the government agency that oversees the definition, categorization, and construction of racial categories, currently counts people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as white. The United States Census Bureau (Census Bureau), the …