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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
(How) Can Litigation Advance Multiracial Democracy?, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
(How) Can Litigation Advance Multiracial Democracy?, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
Faculty Scholarship
Can rights litigation meaningfully advance social change in this moment? Many progressive or social justice legal scholars, lawyers, and advocates would argue “no.” Constitutional decisions issued by the U.S. Supreme Court thwart the aims of progressive social movements. Further, contemporary social movements often decenter courts as a primary domain of social change. In addition, a new wave of legal commentary urges progressives to de-emphasize courts and constitutionalism, not simply tactically but as a matter of democratic survival.
This Essay considers the continuing role of rights litigation, using the litigation over race-conscious affirmative action as an illustration. Courts are a key …
The "Inexorable Zero", Bert I. Huang
The "Inexorable Zero", Bert I. Huang
Faculty Scholarship
[F]ine tuning of the statistics could not have obscured the glaring absence of minority [long-distance] drivers .... [T]he company's inability to rebut the inference of discrimination came not from a misuse of statistics but from "the inexorable zero."
The Supreme Court first uttered the phrase "inexorable zero" a quarter-century ago in International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, a landmark Title VII case. Ever since, this enigmatic name for a rule of inference has echoed across legal argument about segregation, discrimination, and affirmative action. Justice O'Connor, for instance, cited the "inexorable zero" in a major sex discrimination decision upholding an …
Rethinking Racial Profiling: A Critique Of The Economics, Civil Liberties, And Constitutional Literature, And Of Criminal Profiling More Generally, Bernard Harcourt
Rethinking Racial Profiling: A Critique Of The Economics, Civil Liberties, And Constitutional Literature, And Of Criminal Profiling More Generally, Bernard Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
New reporting requirements and data collection efforts by over four hundred law enforcement agencies across the country – including entire states such as Maryland, Missouri, and Washington – are producing a continuous flow of new evidence on highway police searches. For the most part, the data consistently show disproportionate searches of African-American and Hispanic motorists in relation to their estimated representation on the road. Economists, civil liberties advocates, legal and constitutional scholars, political scientists, lawyers, and judges are poring over the new data and reaching, in many cases, quite opposite conclusions about racial profiling.
Playing Race Cards: Constructing A Proactive Defense Of Affirmative Action, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw
Playing Race Cards: Constructing A Proactive Defense Of Affirmative Action, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw
Faculty Scholarship
On behalf of the African American Policy Forum ("AAPF"), I am pleased to participate in this symposium as a co-sponsor and contributor. The AAPF, who together with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and the Women's Roundtable constitute the Women's Media Initiative, believes that events such as these are critical in efforts to map strategies for intervening in public debates surrounding affirmative action and a host of related issues such as welfare reform, racial profiling, the prison industrial complex, and the concentration of wealth, just to name a few. As one of many organizations that have taken up the defense …
The Unresolved Problems Of Reverse Discrimination, Kent Greenawalt
The Unresolved Problems Of Reverse Discrimination, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
The current widespread use of remedial affirmative action programs makes the legitimacy of reverse discrimination a pragmatic social concern. That alone, however, would not explain the intense interest generated by Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. The question posed in the case compels our attention because it forces a choice between two values that occupy a high place in the liberal conception of justice and claim substantial support in the equal protection clause. On the one hand, justice requires that groups that have previously suffered gross discrimination be given truly equal opportunity in American life; on the other, …
Bakke As Precedent: Does Mr. Justice Powell Have A Theory, Vincent A. Blasi
Bakke As Precedent: Does Mr. Justice Powell Have A Theory, Vincent A. Blasi
Faculty Scholarship
What does it all mean? The Supreme Court's decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke invites assessment at many levels. Was it really a "Solomonic compromise" worthy of our constitutional tradition, as some prominent scholars have suggested? Or does the decision represent, as I believe it does, a disturbing failure by the Court to discharge its responsibility to give coherent, practical meaning to our most important constitutional ideals? Does the uncharacteristically opaque and simplistic opinion of Justice Stevens mask deep divisions and ambivalences among the four justices who subscribed to it? Can there be any validity to …