Law and Race Commons^™

International Law And Contemporary Slavery: The Long View, Rebecca J. Scott

Michigan Journal of International Law

The three essays in this special issue come together to confirm the value of exploring varying domestic expressions of and adaptations to international legal ideals. In each polity, lawmakers have viewed the terms “slavery” and “slave labor” in part through a domestic historical lens, and have drafted (or failed to draft) legislation accordingly. The United States inherited core concepts dating back to the moment of abolition of chattel slavery, and thus initially built its prohibitions of modern slavery on nineteenth-century rights guarantees and anti-peonage statutes, later reinforced by modern concepts of human trafficking. Having just emerged from a long dictatorship, …

Material Support Laws And Critical Race Theory, Nichole M. Pace

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

The paper examines terrorism designation and material support laws for structural racism using Critical Race Theory. Legislation concerning terrorist organizations continues to limit efforts of humanitarian organizations and refugee applicants. The impact of such legislation extends beyond the designated terrorist organizations to the communities and countries they inhabit. This article describes the legal statutes and issues related to terrorist designation and material support laws before defining Critical Race Theory. The article seeks to understand the structural racism involved in the defined statutes and procedures. Using Critical Race Theory, the article defines how material support laws and terrorist designation procedures are …

Nearsighted And Colorblind: The Perspective Problems Of Police Deadly Force Cases, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Cleveland State Law Review

In dealing with the recently publicized instances of police officers’ use of deadly force, some reform efforts have been focused on the entities that are central to the successful prosecutions of police—the prosecutor and the grand jury. Some have suggested special, independent prosecutors for these cases so that the process of deciding whether to seek charges against police officers remains untainted by the necessary cooperative relationship between the police department and the prosecutor’s office. Others have urged more transparency in the grand jury process so that the public can scrutinize a prosecutor’s efforts in presenting evidence for an indictment. Still …

Restoring Independence To The Grand Jury: A Victim Advocate For The Police Use Of Force Cases, Jonathan Witmer-Rich

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article proposes a grand jury victim advocate to represent the interests of the complainant before the grand jury in investigations into police use of excessive force. Currently, the prosecutor has near-exclusive access to the grand jury, and as a result, grand juries have become almost entirely dependent on prosecutors. Historically, however, grand juries exhibited much greater independence. In particular, grand juries have a long history in America of providing oversight over government officials, bringing criminal charges for official misconduct even when local prosecutors proved reluctant. Permitting the alleged victim of police excessive force to be represented before the grand …

The Duty To Charge In Police Use Of Excessive Force Cases, Rebecca Roiphe

Cleveland State Law Review

Responding to the problems of mass incarceration, racial disparities in justice, and wrongful convictions, scholars have focused on prosecutorial overcharging. They have, however, neglected to address undercharging—the failure to charge in entire classes of cases. Undercharging can similarly undermine the efficacy and legitimacy of the criminal justice system. While few have focused on this question in the domestic criminal law context, international law scholars have long recognized the social and structural cost for nascent democratic states when they fail to charge those responsible for the prior regime’s human rights abuses. This sort of impunity threatens the rule of law and …

Examining Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission V. School District Of Philadelphia: Considering How The Supreme Court’S Waning Support Of School Desegregation Affected Desegregation Efforts Based On State Law, Steven L. Nelson, Alison C. Tyler

Seattle University Law Review

This study examines the enforcement of desegregation orders mandated under state law as a result of the Supreme Court’s handling of school desegregation cases at the federal level. The Article tracks the development of school desegregation cases starting shortly before Brown v. Board of Education and continues through the recent voluntary school desegregation case, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The Article establishes four distinct generations of school desegregation cases at the federal level and determines that the political tides created, in large part, by the U.S. Supreme Court’s handling of federal school desegregation cases …

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 …

Judge Posner's Road Map For Convention Against Torture Claims When Central American Governments Cannot Protect Citizens Against Gang Violence, Steven H. Schulman

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Segregation, Violence, And Restorative Justice: Restoring Our Communities, 50 J. Marshall L. Rev. 487 (2017), Michael Seng

UIC Law Review

This article will explain why restorative justice is an effective remedy in resolving the social and economic problems that plague our communities. A narrow approach will not succeed. Restorative justice solutions require participation by the entire community; nothing less will work.