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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race

Decline Of Title Vii Disparate Impact: The Role Of The 1991 Civil Rights Act And The Ideologies Of Federal Judges, Michael J. Songer Jan 2005

Decline Of Title Vii Disparate Impact: The Role Of The 1991 Civil Rights Act And The Ideologies Of Federal Judges, Michael J. Songer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This study employs various statistical techniques to test the efficacy of the 1991 Civil Rights Act in moderating the highly restrictive disparate impact regime imposed by Wards Cove, and to evaluate the hypothesis that political ideology should be a more powerful predictor of case outcomes following the 1991 Act. Part I of the paper describes the evolution of disparate impact doctrine from 1971 to the present. Part II analyzes data from randomly selected disparate impact cases brought by African American plaintiffs and finds that the current disparate impact doctrine emanating from the 1991 Civil Rights Act dramatically decreases the likelihood …


Articles Sell Best Singly: The Disruption Of Slave Families At Court Sales, Thomas D. Russell Jan 1996

Articles Sell Best Singly: The Disruption Of Slave Families At Court Sales, Thomas D. Russell

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This legal history article presents the empirical finding that the risk of family separation at slave auctions was higher at court-ordered and court-supervised sales as compared with private sales of capitalist auctioneers. The article also examines legal and ideological justification for the destruction of slave families. Law served to disguise human agency in the breakup of slave families.

This article builds upon the author’s earlier finding that a majority of slave auctions in South Carolina were conducted by the courts. The data for this article and the previous study were drawn from antebellum primary sources including trial-court records, the salesbooks …


South Carolina's Largest Slave Auctioneering Firm, Thomas D. Russell Jan 1993

South Carolina's Largest Slave Auctioneering Firm, Thomas D. Russell

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This article presents the original finding that South Carolina's legal system conducted a majority of the state's slave auctions during the antebellum years.Courts conducted slave auctions in several circumstances. Sheriffs sold the property of debtors; and courts also conducted or supervised sales in order to divide estates. Drawing upon extensive empirical analysis of primary sources in various South Carolina archives, this article compares the total number of slaves sold at court-ordered or court-supervised sales with the best empirical estimates for private slave sales - whether at auction or not. The conclusion is that the courts acted as the state's greatest …