Law and Race Commons^™

Pink Tax And Other Tropes, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Law reform advocates should be strategic in deploying tax tropes. Through an examination of five common tax phrases—the “nanny tax,” “death tax,” “soda tax,” “Black tax,” and “pink tax”—this Article demonstrates that tax rhetoric is more likely to influence law when used to describe specific economic injustices resulting from actual government duties, as opposed to figurative inequalities. In comparison, slogans describing figurative taxes are less likely to influence law and human behavior, even if they have descriptive force in both popular and academic literature as a short-hand for group-based disparities. This Article catalogues and evaluates what makes for effective tax …

Teaching With Feminist Judgments, Bridget J. Crawford, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This chapter, part of Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom (Carolina Academic Press 2021), provides an overview of the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project, a collaboration of feminist scholars and lawyers who rewrite significant judicial opinions using feminist methods and reasoning. One of the primary goals of the series of Feminist Judgments books is to demonstrate that the law has a vast, but often unrealized, potential for social justice. The feminist judgment methodology requires the authors of rewritten opinions to act as judges in following the rules of precedent and custom—and to be bound by …

Trauma-Centered Social Justice, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article identifies a new and growing phenomenon in the American legal system. Many leading agendas for gender, racial, and climate justice are centered on emotional trauma as the primary injury of contemporary social injustices. By focusing on three social justice movements--#BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and Climate Justice--the Article offers the first comprehensive diagnosis and assessment of how emotional trauma has become an engine for legal and policy social justice reforms. From a nineteenth century psychoanalytic theory about repressed childhood sexual memories that manifest in female hysteria, through extensive medicalization and classification in the twentieth century, emotional trauma has evolved and expanded …

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Bridget J. Crawford, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

Inclusion Riders And Diversity Mandates, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this piece, I situate these sorts of diversity requests within the broader context of other customer/client preferences that implicate Title VII. To be sure, the “inclusion riders” are not literal customer/client requests, but rather requests from celebrities who are themselves being hired by the employer for a specific project. Broadly speaking, however, they raise the same legal issue regarding third-party preferences that implicate protected characteristics under Title VII.

As a starting point, the general rule within employment discrimination law is that customer preferences cannot justify discriminatory treatment by employers. That baseline has led courts to rule that employers cannot, …

A Critical Research Agenda For Wills, Trusts And Estates, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The law of wills, trusts, and estates could benefit from consideration of its development and impact on people of color; women of all colors; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals; low-income and poor individuals; the disabled; and nontraditional families. One can measure the law's commitment to justice and equality by understanding the impact on these historically disempowered groups of the laws of intestacy, spousal rights, child protection, will formalities, will contests, and will construction; the creation, operation and construction of trusts; fiduciary administration; creditors' rights; asset protection; nonprobate transfers; planning for incapacity and death; and wealth transfer taxation. This Article …