Law and Race Commons^™

A&M Florida A&M University Magazine For Employees, Alumni And Friends: The Return Of The Famu College Of Law, Florida Agricultural And Mechanical University

Annual Reports and Publications

This issue celebrates the return of the FAMU College of Law. This posting includes former FAMU President Frederick S. Humphries' "President's Message" entitled Celebrating the Return of the College of Law and the Cover Story from the issue, The Rebirth of the FAMU College of Law 1949-1968 2000-Present. It contains a compilation of excerpts from Chapter Five in the The Florida Agricultural and Meghanical University College of Law (1949-2000) written by Larry O. Rivers.

The Racial Origins Of Modern Criminal Procedure, Michael J. Klarman

Michigan Law Review

The constitutional law of state criminal procedure was born between the First and Second World Wars. Prior to 1920, the Supreme Court had upset the results of the state criminal justice system in just a handful of cases, all involving race discrimination in jury selection. By 1940, however, the Court had interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to invalidate state criminal convictions in a wide variety of settings: mob-dominated trials, violation of the right to counsel, coerced confessions, financially-biased judges, and knowingly perjured testimony by prosecution witnesses. In addition, the Court had broadened its earlier decisions forbidding …

Program: Ax Handle Saturday 40th Anniversary, August 26, 2000

Textual material from the Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Papers

A program for the 40th anniversary of "Ax Handle" Saturday. August 26, 2000 at Hemming Plaza, Historic Snyder Memorial.

Fostering Equity And Diversity In The Nova Scotia Legal Profession, Douglas G. Ruck, Craig M. Garson, Robert G. Mackeigan, Carol A. Aylward, Innis Christie, Cora States, Candy Palmater, Douglas Keefe, Margaret Macdonald, Burnley A. (Rocky) Jones, Heidi Marshall, Heather Mcneill, Kelvin Gilpin, Judith Ferguson

Innis Christie Collection

The Province of Nova Scotia has, for many years, attempted, through a variety of means, to address issues of diversity and affirmative action. However, despite the lessons of history there are still those who question the need for programs and policies that promote, encourage and enforce equality. Even though significant advances have been made on many fronts Nova Scotia continues to struggle with issues of inequality. As with many problems faced by society acknowledging the existence of the problem is the first step towards developing solutions.

Healing The Blind Goddess: Race And Criminal Justice, Mark D. Rosenbaum, Daniel P. Tokaji

Michigan Law Review

Once again, issues of race, ethnicity, and class within our criminal justice system have been thrust into the public spotlight. On both sides of the country, in our nation's two largest cities, police are being called to account for acts of violence directed toward poor people of color. In New York City, a West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo was killed by four white police officers, who fired forty-one bullets at the unarmed man as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building in a poor section of the Bronx. Did race influence the officers' decisions to fire the …

Interview With Alan M. Lerner, Lake Srinivasan, Alan M. Lerner, Legal Oral History Project, University Of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Legal Oral History Project

For transcript, click the Download button above. For video index, click the link below.

Alan M. Lerner (L '65) was a practice professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School from 1993 until his death in 2010. He practiced and taught mainly in the areas of civil rights and family law.

Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, And Latcrit Theory: Commonalities And Differences Between Latina/O Experiences, Kevin R. Johnson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay situates Professor Malavet's analysis in LatCrit theory. The diminished citizenship status of Puerto Ricans on the island shares important commonalities with and differences from the experiences of persons of Mexican ancestry in the United States. Both Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans enjoy citizenship and membership rights unequal to those accorded Anglos, although one group (Mexican Americans) is composed of citizens by law with full legal rights while the other (Puerto Ricans) includes United States citizens with limited legal rights in Puerto Rico. The guarantees of the law historically have held limited meaning for Mexican Americans; the limitation on …

Indirect Constitutional Discourse: A Comment On Meese, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Colorism: A Darker Shade Of Pale, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, Professor Banks argues that colorism, skin tone discrimination against dark-skinned but not light-skinned blacks, constitutes a form of race-based discrimination. Skin tone discrimination coexists with more traditional forms of race discrimination that impact all blacks without regard to skin tone and phenotype, yet courts seem unwilling to recognize this point. Professor Banks uses employment discrimination cases to illustrate some courts' willingness to acknowledge subtler forms of race-based discrimination, like skin tone discrimination, for white ethnic and Latina/o plaintiffs, but not for black plaintiffs. The inability of courts to fashion coherent approaches to colorism claims involving black claimants …

Blood Will Tell: Scientific Racism And The Legal Prohibitions Against Miscegenation, Keith E. Sealing

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article first examines the miscegenation paradigm in terms of a seven-point conceptual framework that not merely allowed but practically demanded anti-miscegenation laws, then looks at the legal arguments state courts used to justify the constitutionality of such laws through 1967. Next, it analyzes the Biblical argument, which in its own right justified miscegenation, but also had a major influence on the development of the three major strands of scientific racism: monogenism, polygenism and Darwinian theory. It then probes the concept upon which the entire edifice is constructed-race--and discusses the continuing vitality of this construct. Next, this article turns to …

Racial Profiling: "Driving While Mexican" And Affirmative Action, Victor C. Romero

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay will focus on "racial profiling" not just in the way many people think about the term-that is, with respect to stopping motorists for traffic violations based solely on their race, so-called "Driving While Mexican" or "Driving While Black"-but also in the context of "affirmative action"-namely, using race as a factor in employment and educational decisions. More broadly, then, the author wants us to think of "racial profiling" as simply "the use of race to develop an understanding of an individual," which moves us slightly away from more pejorative notions of the phrase that have seeped into the national …

Book Review Of Make Haste Slowly: Moderates, Conservatives, And School Desegregation In Houston, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of But For Birmingham: The Local And National Movements In The Civil Rights Struggle, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Bill Of Rights And The Constitution: Facing The Challenge Of The Future, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Redressing The Imbalances: Rethinking The Judicial Role After R. V. R.D.S., Richard Devlin Frsc, Dianne Pothier

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. R.D.S. dealt with whether a trial judge's comments, about the interactions between police officers and "non-white groups", gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias in the circumstances. They strongly criticize the contrary ruling of the dissent as inappropriately drawing a false dichotomy between decisions based on evidence and decisions based on evidence and decision based on generalizations, and as improperly ignoring social context with an unwarranted confidence in the ideology of colour blindness. While more supportive of the majority's analysis, the authors also find cause for concern, with …

Opening Remarks: Reclaiming Yesterday's Future, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

Good morning colleagues, friends, and special guests of the Symposium. I have the unenviable task of welcoming you to the UCLA School of Law this morning, a task that under current circumstances carries with it for me quite a few mixed emotions.' I have struggled mightily over how I might convey to you that although my heart is heavy this morning, I am very pleased to see each of you. It is rather like opening the door to welcome close friends into your home which is in a state of utter disarray. Things are strewn all about, you look harried …

Recognizing Opportunistic Bias Crimes, Lu-In Wang

Articles

The federal approach to punishing bias-motivated crimes is more limited than the state approach. Though the federal and state methods overlap in some respects, two features of the federal approach restrict its range of application. First, federal law prohibits a narrower range of conduct than do most state bias crimes laws. In order to be punishable under federal law, bias-motivated conduct must either constitute a federal crime or interfere with a federally protected right or activity-requirements that exclude racially motivated assault, property damage and many other common violent or destructive bias offenses. In most states, however, hate crimes encompass a …

The Case For United States Reparations To African Americans, Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

The political and juridical viability of reparations for descendants of enslaved black people is emerging as a highly contested concept in U.S. debates about justice and law. For decades, reparations have been an essential part of the international discourses of war and human rights.

Panel Two: Who's Minding The Baby?, Adrienne D. Davis, Catherine J. Ross, Marion Crain, Bonnie Thornton Dill

Scholarship@WashULaw

This publication is a transcript of remarks made by multiple law professors discussing the relationship between race, gender, and class and focusing on feminism and the challenges faced by working mothers.

Puerto Rico: Cultural Nation, American Colony, Pedro A. Malavet

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article articulates a theory of Puerto Rican cultural nationhood that is largely based on ethnicity. In linking ethnicity and citizenship, it is imperative, however, to avoid the evils of ethnic strife and balkanization, while celebrating rather than imposing difference; community consciousness cannot degenerate into fascism.

Cracking The Code: "De-Coding" Colorblind Slurs During The Congressional Crack Cocaine Debates, Richard Dvorak

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article proposes "de-coding" as a method for unveiling the racist purpose behind the enactment of race-neutral legislation. Through the use of "code words," defined as “phrases and symbols which refer indirectly to racial themes, but do not directly challenge popular democratic or egalitarian ideals,” legislators can appeal to racist sentiments without appearing racist. More importantly, they can do so without leaving evidence that can be traced back as an intent to discriminate. This article proposes to use "de-coding" as a method to unmask the racist purpose behind the enactment of the 100:1 crack versus powder cocaine ratio for mandatory …

Lowering The Preclearance Hurdle Reno V. Bossier Parish School Board, 120 S. Ct. 866 (2000), Alaina C. Beverly

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Case Note examines a recent Supreme Court decision that collapses the purpose and effect prongs of Section 5, effectively lowering the barrier to preclearance for covered jurisdictions. In Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board II the Court determined that Section 5 disallows only voting plans that are enacted with a retrogressive purpose (i.e., with the purpose to "worsen" the position of minority voters). The Court held that Section 5 does not prohibit preclearance of a plan enacted with a discriminatory purpose but without a retrogressive effect. Evidence of a Section 2 violation alone will not be enough to prove …

The Wall Is Down, Now We Build More: The Exclusionary Effects Of Gated Communities Demand Stricter Burdens Under The Fha, 34 J. Marshall L. Rev. 379 (2000), Angel M. Traub

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Being Biased, Anthony M. Dillof

Michigan Law Review

The war against bias crimes is far from finished. In contrast, the battle over bias-crime laws is largely over. Bias-crime laws, as commonly formulated, increase the penalties for crimes motivated by bias. The Supreme Court has held that such laws do not violate the First Amendment. Virtually every state has enacted some sort of biascrime law. Even the federal government, which may consider itself without power to enact a general bias-crime law, has made bias a sentence-aggravating factor for the range of federal criminal offenses. Bias-crime laws thus are an established feature of the legal landscape. Against this background, Frederick …

Building Community In The Twenty-First Century: A Post-Integrationist Vision For The American Metropolis, Sheryll D. Cashin

Michigan Law Review

[T]he problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. When W.E.B. DuBois wrote this prophetic statement at the dawn of the twentieth century, the American metropolis did not yet exist. Perhaps DuBois could not have predicted the sprawled, socioeconomically fragmented landscape that is so familiar to the majority of Americans who now live and work in metropolitan regions. But his prediction of a "color line" that would sear our consciousness and present the chief social struggle for the new century proved all too correct. As we contemplate the twenty-first century, Gerald Frug's book, City Making, makes clear …

The Uses Of History In Struggles For Racial Justice: Colonizing The Past And Managing Memory, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

In this Commentary, Professor Katherine Franke offers an analysis on Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic's California's Racial History and Constitutional Rationales for Race-Conscious Decision Making in Higher Education and Rebecca Tsosie's Sacred Obligations: Intercultural Justice and the Discourse of Treaty Rights. These two Articles, she observes, deploy history for the purposes of justifying certain contemporary normative claims on behalf of peoples of color: affirmative action in higher education for Delgado and Stefancic, and sovereignty rights for native peoples in Tsosie's case. Franke explores the manner in which stories of past conquest and discrimination contribute to contemporary conceptions of racial …