Law and Race Commons^™

Religious Liberty, Discriminatory Intent, And The Conservative Constitution, Luke Boso

Utah Law Review

The Supreme Court shocked the world at the end of its 2021–22 term by issuing landmark decisions ending constitutional protection for abortion rights, expanding gun rights, and weakening what remained of the wall between church and state. One thread uniting these cases that captured the public’s attention is the rhetoric common of originalism—a backwards-looking theory of constitutional interpretation focused on founding-era meaning and intent. This Article identifies the discriminatory intent doctrine as another powerful tool the Court is using to protect the social norms and hierarchies of a bygone era, and to build a conservative Constitution.

Discriminatory intent rose to …

Antiracist Lawyering In Practice Begins With The Practice Of Teaching And Learning Antiracism In Law School, Danielle M. Conway

Utah Law Review

I was honored by the invitation to deliver the 2021 Lee E. Teitelbaum keynote address. Dean Teitelbaum was a gentleman and a titan for justice. I am confident the antiracism work ongoing at the S.J. Quinney College of Law would have deeply resonated with him, especially knowing the challenges we are currently facing within and outside of legal education, the legal academy, and the legal profession. I am fortified in this work by Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner’s commitment to antiracism and associated diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Finally, I applaud the students who serve on the Utah Law Review for …

#Includetheirstories: Rethinking, Reimagining, And Reshaping Legal Education, Leslie P. Culver, Elizabeth A. Kronk Warner

Utah Law Review

This symposium gathered scholars and practitioners who have been deeply engaged in the work to examine historical roots of the legal profession and discuss best practices for exploring ethnic, gender, and related inequities alongside our law students. It is well established that the legal profession and legal education neither reflect the community they serve nor swiftly respond to the social shifts within the broader society.3 As 2020 grossly revealed, ethnic partiality and division are aches we have yet to really confront and bear. For example, the casebook method format of legal education continues to model Christopher Langdell’s Gilded Age curriculum, …

Qualitative Diversity: Affirmative Action’S New Reframe, Eang L. Ngov

Utah Law Review

How is diversity measured? When is diversity sufficient? The Supreme Court has pressed these hard questions in affirmative action cases. With respect to college admissions, although a university campus might have a diverse student body, universities are beginning to justify the continuation of race-based affirmative action programs on the need for qualitative diversity, i.e., intraracial diversity—diversity within diversity.

In the Court’s most recent affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the university advanced two novel diversity arguments, never before employed in affirmative action cases, to justify its race-based admissions policy: there is a lack of diversity within …