Law and Race Commons^™

Whiteness At Work, Lihi Yona

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

How do courts understand Whiteness in Title VII litigation? This Article argues that one fruitful site for such examination is same-race discrimination cases between Whites. Such cases offer a peek into what enables regimes of Whiteness and White supremacy in the workplace, and the way in which Whiteness is theorized within Title VII adjudication. Intra-White discrimination cases may range from associational discrimination cases to cases involving discrimination against poor rural Whites, often referred to as “White trash.” While intragroup discrimination is acknowledged in sex-discrimination cases and race-discrimination cases within racial minority groups, same-race discrimination between Whites is currently an under-theorized …

Batson For Judges, Police Officers & Teachers: Lessons In Democracy From The Jury Box, Stacy L. Hawkins

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In our representative democracy we guarantee equal participation for all, but we fall short of this promise in so many domains of our civic life. From the schoolhouse, to the jailhouse, to the courthouse, racial minorities are underrepresented among key public decision-makers, such as judges, police officers, and teachers. This gap between our aspirations for representative democracy and the reality that our judges, police officers, and teachers are often woefully under-representative of the racially diverse communities they serve leaves many citizens of color wanting for the democratic guarantee of equal participation. This critical failure of our democracy threatens to undermine …

The Case Against Police Militarization, Eliav Lieblich, Adam Shinar

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

We usually think there is a difference between the police and the military. Recently, however, the police have become increasingly militarized – a process which is likely to intensify in coming years. Unsurprisingly, many find this process alarming and call for its reversal. However, while most of the objections to police militarization are framed as instrumental arguments, these arguments are unable to capture the core problem with militarization.

This Article remedies this shortcoming by developing a novel and principled argument against police militarization. Contrary to arguments that are preoccupied with the consequences of militarization, the real problem with police militarization …

Fairness In The Exceptions: Trusting Juries On Matters Of Race, Virginia Weeks

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Implicit bias research indicates that despite our expressly endorsed values, Americans share a pervasive bias disfavoring Black Americans and favoring White Americans. This bias permeates legislative as well as judicial decision-making, leading to the possibility of verdicts against Black defendants that are tainted with racial bias. The Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado provides an ex post remedy for blatant racism that impacts jury verdicts, while jury nullification provides an ex ante remedy by empowering jurors to reject convicting Black defendants when to do so would reinforce racially biased laws. Both remedies exist alongside a trend limiting the …

Reassessing American Democracy: The Enduring Challenge Of Racial Exclusion, Johanna Kalb, Didi Kuo

Michigan Law Review Online

American democracy is in trouble. Since the 2016 election, a sizable literature has developed that focuses on diagnosing and assessing the state of American democracy, most of which concludes that our system of government is in decline.[2] These authors point to the rise in party polarization, the increasingly bipartisan abandonment of the norms of the democratic process, the rise of populism, the degradation of the public sphere, and the proliferation of gerrymandered districts and voting restrictions to illustrate the breakdown. And while attributing varying levels of significance to these factors, a common theme is that American democracy, once stable, is …

"When They Enter, We All Enter": Opening The Door To Intersectional Discrimination Claims Based On Race And Disability, Alice Abrokwa

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article explores the intersection of race and disability in the context of employment discrimination, arguing that people of color with disabilities can and should obtain more robust relief for their harms by asserting intersectional discrimination claims. Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw first articulated the intersectionality framework by explaining that Black women can experience a form of discrimination distinct from that experienced by White women or Black men, that is, they may face discrimination as Black women due to the intersection of their race and gender. Likewise, people of color with disabilities can experience discrimination distinct from that felt by people of …

The Racist Algorithm?, Anupam Chander

Michigan Law Review

Review of The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information by Frank Pasquale.

Executive Disorder: The Muslim Ban, Emergency Advocacy, And The Fires Next Time, Abed Ayoub, Khaled Beydoun

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

On January 27, 2017, one week into his presidency, Donald Trump enacted Executive Order No. 13769, popularly known as the “Muslim Ban.” The Order named seven Muslim-majority nations and restricted, effective immediately, the reentry into the United States of visa and green card holders from these states. With the Muslim Ban, President Trump delivered on a central campaign promise, and as a result, injected Islamophobia into American immigration law and policy.

The Muslim Ban had an immediate impact on tens of thousands of Muslims, directly affecting U.S. visa and green card holders currently outside of the country, while exacerbating fear …

Concealed Motives: Rethinking Fourteenth Amendment And Voting Rights Challenges To Felon Disenfranchisement, Lauren Latterell Powell

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Felon disenfranchisement provisions are justified by many Americans under the principle that voting is a privilege to be enjoyed only by upstanding citizens. The provisions are intimately tied, however, to the country’s legacy of racism and systemic disenfranchisement and are at odds with the values of American democracy. In virtually every state, felon disenfranchisement provisions affect the poor and communities of color on a grossly disproportionate scale. Yet to date, most challenges to the provisions under the Equal Protection Clause and Voting Rights Act have been unsuccessful, frustrating proponents of re-enfranchisement and the disenfranchised alike.

In light of those failures, …

Tightening The Ooda Loop: Police Militarization, Race, And Algorithmic Surveillance, Jeffrey L. Vagle

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article examines how military automated surveillance and intelligence systems and techniques, when used by civilian police departments to enhance predictive policing programs, have reinforced racial bias in policing. I will focus on two facets of this problem. First, I investigate the role played by advanced military technologies and methods within civilian police departments. These approaches have enabled a new focus on deterrence and crime prevention by creating a system of structural surveillance where decision support relies increasingly upon algorithms and automated data analysis tools and automates de facto penalization and containment based on race. Second, I will explore these …

Foreword: Innocent Until Proven Poor, Sara Zampierin

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

One of the core tenets of our criminal justice system is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. As the title of the Symposium recognizes, we have allowed our justice system to ignore that presumption for people living in poverty in a variety of ways. Instead, it often inflicts additional and harsher punishment on individuals because of their poverty.

The Price Of Carceral Citizenship: Punishment, Surveillance, And Social Welfare Policy In An Age Of Carceral Expansion, Reuben Jonathan Miller, Amanda Alexander

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The unprecedented rise in the number of people held in U.S. jails and prisons has garnered considerable attention from policy makers, activists, and academics alike. Signaled in part by Michelle Alexander’s New York Times bestseller, The New Jim Crow, and the unlikely coalition of activists, policy makers, celebrities, and business leaders on both sides of the political aisle who have pledged to end mass incarceration in our lifetime, the prison system has returned to public policy discourse in a way that was unforeseen less than a decade ago. On any given day in 2014, just over 2.3 million people were …

Pretextual Sanctions, Contempt, And The Practical Limits Of Bearden-Based Debtors' Prison Litigation, Colin Reingold

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the time of this writing, recent events in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York City, and elsewhere have triggered quite justified social outrage at debtors’ prisons. Our country’s state and city courts keep scores of indigent people in jail for the crime of being poor, despite the Supreme Court’s clear prohibition on the practice. Skilled litigators and their journalist allies have seized on the moment to win victories in court and in the public eye, which prevent unconscionable bond and probation practices and try to reduce our burgeoning jail populations. Lost in the uproar, though, are the many ways that a …

Legal Aid's Once And Future Role For Impacting The Criminalization Of Poverty And The War On The Poor, Aneel L. Chablani

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Recent media coverage and advocacy efforts on behalf of individuals subjected to criminal sanctions as a result of their poverty status has resulted in increased attention on this nation’s troubled history of oppression and control of the poor and people of color. At the federal, state, and local levels, a growing number of policies create criminal sanctions for poverty-related circumstances. These, in turn, result in collateral consequences that unfairly affect those who lack the means to afford their criminal justice experience (i.e., processing costs, fees, and fines), or affect their ability to access employment, housing, or other basic services. These …

Making A Buck While Making A Difference, Alphonse A. Gerhardstein

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

It is not right for children to die before their parents. It is not right for peaceful, unarmed citizens to die at the hands of the police. In my civil rights practice, I have met many mothers, fathers, and family members who are struggling to recover after a law enforcement officer caused the death of their loved one. Sure, they want fair compensation. But money does little to reduce their loss or make the grief more bearable. They often want to do something that will ensure that their loved one did not die in vain. They want to prevent other …

Closing The Gap Between What Is Lawful And What Is Right In Police Use Of Force Jurisprudence By Making Police Departments More Democratic Institutions, Jonathan M. Smith

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was shot to death in Ferguson, Missouri, by police officer Darren Wilson. Members of the Ferguson community rose up in response. Protests demanding that police violence against African Americans cease and that accountability for police misconduct be addressed erupted across the country, and they have not subsided since. Incidents in Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; WallerCounty, Texas; and elsewhere have kept the movement alive. The mass media, the political elite, and the White middle class woke up to a reality that had been long known to communities of color – force is used disproportionately against …

Keynote Remarks: How The Criminalization Of Poverty Has Become Normalized In American Culture And Why You Should Care, Sarah Geraghty

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The subject of my talk today is how the criminalization of poverty has become normalized in American culture and why you should care.

The Ohio Model For Combatting Debtors' Prisons, Jocelyn Rosnick, Mike Brickner

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In 2013, the ACLU of Ohio released a report titled The Outskirts of Hope: How Ohio’s Debtors’ Prisons Are Ruining Lives and Costing Communities. The report exposed the blatantly unconstitutional practice in courts across Ohio of jailing people who were too poor to pay their court fines and fees, and along with our ongoing advocacy efforts, resulted in sweeping change across the state. This Essay looks at the destruction modern debtors’ prisons have on individuals, families, and communities and overviews the research, advocacy, and communications tools the ACLU of Ohio has used to successfully combat debtors’ prisons. The goal is …

Online Case Resolution Systems: Enhancing Access, Fairness, Accuracy, And Efficiency, Maximilian A. Bulinski, J.J. Prescott

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Online case resolution (OCR) systems have the potential to dramatically increase access to our justice system. Part I introduces the concept of an OCR system, how it might work in practice, and its likely impact on courts and citizens. Part II argues that OCR systems can lower many of the barriers to going to court by reducing the need for face-to-face resolution of disputes; cutting the amount of time needed for hearings; mitigating litigant confusion and fear; allowing asynchronous scheduling that can accommodate work and child-care schedules; and offering a more reliable and easier-to-use means for litigants to voice their …

Keynote Remarks, Vanita Gupta

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In communities across America today, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Flint, Michigan, too many people—especially young people and people of color—live trapped by the weight of poverty and injustice. They suffer the disparate impact of policies driven by, at best, benign neglect, and at worst, deliberate indifference. And they see how discrimination stacks the deck against them. So today, as we discuss the inequality that pervades our criminal justice system—a defining civil rights challenge of the 21st century—we must also acknowledge the broader inequalities we face in other segments of society. Because discrimination in so many areas—from the classroom, to the …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 …

Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils Of Muslim Women's Identity Performance In The Workplace, Sahar F. Aziz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Should employees have the legal right to “be themselves” at work? Most Americans would answer in the negative because work is a privilege, not an entitlement. But what if being oneself entails behaviors, mannerisms, and values integrally linked to the employee’s gender, race, or religion? And what if the basis for the employer’s workplace rules and professionalism standards rely on negative racial, ethnic or gender stereotypes that disparately impact some employees over others? Currently, Title VII fails to take into account such forms of second-generation discrimination, thereby limiting statutory protections to phenotypical or morphological bases. Drawing on social psychology and …

Judicial Diversity After Shelby County V. Holder, William Roth

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In 2014, voters in ten of the fifteen states previously covered by the Voting Rights Act ("VRA") preclearance formula-including six of the nine states covered in their entirety-will go to the polls to elect or retain state supreme court justices. Yet despite the endemic underrepresentation of minorities on state benches and the judiciary's traditional role in fighting discrimination, scholars have seemingly paid little attention to how Shelby County v. Holder's suspension of the coverage formula in section 4(b) has left racial minorities vulnerable to retrogressive changes to judicial-election laws. The first election year following Shelby County thus provides a compelling …