Law and Race Commons^™

Not For Free: Exploring The Collateral Costs Of Diversity In Legal Education, Spearit

Articles

This essay examines some of the institutional costs of achieving a more diverse law student body. In recent decades, there has been growing support for diversity initiatives in education, and the legal academy is no exception. Yet for most law schools, diversity remains an elusive goal, some of which is the result of problems with anticipating the needs of diverse students and being able to deliver. These are some of the unseen or hidden costs associated with achieving greater diversity. Both law schools and the legal profession remain relatively stratified by race, which is an ongoing legacy of legal education’s …

Beyond The 'Resiliency' And 'Grit' Narrative In Legal Education: Race, Class And Gender Considerations, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Law schools have been struggling to adapt to the “new normal” of decreased enrollments and a significantly altered legal employment market. Despite the decrease in traditional attorney jobs, as well as the possibility that artificial intelligence systems such as “ROSS” will displace additional jobs in the future, there still remains a significant gap in legal services available to the poor, middle class, and immigrants. The integration of social justice methodologies in the classroom thus has become critically important to the future of legal education and of the very practice of law.

Many commentators on the future of legal education have …

Evolving Standards Of Domination: Abandoning A Flawed Legal Standard And Approaching A New Era In Penal Reform, Spearit

Articles

This Article critiques the evolving standards of decency doctrine as a form of Social Darwinism. It argues that evolving standards of decency provided a system of review that was tailor-made for Civil Rights opponents to scale back racial progress. Although as a doctrinal matter, evolving standards sought to tie punishment practices to social mores, prison sentencing became subject to political agendas that determined the course of punishment more than the benevolence of a maturing society. Indeed, rather than the fierce competition that is supposed to guide social development, the criminal justice system was consciously deployed as a means of social …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Thirteenth Amendment Scholars In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellee And Affirmance, William M. Carter Jr., Dawinder S. Sidhu, Alexander Tsesis, Rebecca E. Zietlow

Amici Briefs

In the case of United States v. Hatch, the defendant in a hate crimes prosecution brought the first major challenge to the constitutionality of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. This amicus brief argues that the Act is constitutional under the Thirteenth Amendment.

From Domain Names To Video Games: The Rise Of The Internet In Presidential Politics, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Senator Barack Obama's historic victory in the 2008 election marks some important milestones - notably that this country is ready for its first African-American president. His win also underscores the importance of understanding today's Internet as a campaign tool. No longer is the Internet a one-way communications medium between candidate and electorate. It is now a powerful multi-directional networking tool. It can bridge physical and virtual spaces in a way never before possible, bringing previously latent social and political groups together. Senator Obama's campaign strategists understood and capitalized on the capabilities of what has recently become known as Web 2.0 …

Infected Judgment: Legal Responses To Physician Bias, Mary Crossley

Articles

Substantial evidence indicates that clinically irrelevant patient characteristics, including race and gender, may at times influence a physician's choice of treatment. Less clear, however, is whether a patient who is the victim of a biased medical decision has any effective legal recourse. Heedful of the difficulties of designing research to establish conclusively the role of physician bias, this article surveys published evidence suggesting the operation of physician bias in clinical decision making. The article then examines potential legal responses to biased medical judgments. A patient who is the subject of a biased decision may sue her doctor for violating his …