Law and Race Commons^™

Resisting In Process: Human Beings Ensnared In The Fugitive Slave Law Of 1850 (A Working Collection), Daniel Farbman

Dan Farbman

No abstract provided.

Explaining Grutter V. Bollinger, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

The Quest For Freedom In The Post-Brown South: Desegregation And White Self-Interest, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

Contract Rights And Civil Rights, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Make Haste Slowly: Moderates, Conservatives, And School Desegregation In Houston, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of But For Birmingham: The Local And National Movements In The Civil Rights Struggle, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Desegregating Texas Schools: Eisenhower, Shivers, And The Crisis At Mansfield High, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Race, Law, And American History, 1700-1990, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

Politics, Identity, And Class Certification On The U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

This article draws on novel data and presents the results of the first empirical analysis of how potentially salient characteristics of Court of Appeals judges influence precedential lawmaking on class certification under Rule 23. We find that the partisan composition of the panel (measured by the party of the appointing president) has a very strong association with certification outcomes, with all-Democratic panels having more than double the certification rate of all-Republican panels in precedential cases. We also find that the presence of one African American on a panel, and the presence of two females (but not one), is associated with …

What Can Brown Do For You?: Addressing Mccleskey V. Kemp As A Flawed Standard For Measuring The Constitutionally Significant Risk Of Race Bias

Erwin Chemerinsky

This Essay asserts that in McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court created a problematic standard for the evidence of race bias necessary to uphold an equal protection claim under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. First, the Court’s opinion reinforced the cramped understanding that constitutional claims require evidence of not only disparate impact but also discriminatory purpose, producing significant negative consequences for the operation of the U.S. criminal justice system. Second, the Court rejected the Baldus study’s findings of statistically significant correlations between the races of the perpetrators and victims and the imposition of the death …

Excavating Race-Based Disadvantage Among Class-Privileged People Of Color, Khiara Bridges

Khiara M Bridges

The aim of this article is to begin to theorize the fraught space within which class-privileged racial minorities exist — the disadvantage within their privilege. The article posits that the invisibility of the racial subordination of wealthier people of color (that is, their marginalization on account of their race) is fertile soil for the germination of post-racialism — the sense that we, as a nation, have overcome our racial problems. The dramatic visibility of the minority poor’s suffering, combined with the relative invisibility of the suffering of those minorities who are not poor, breeds the belief that class is now …

Embracing Race-Conscious College Admissions Programs: How Fisher V. University Of Texas At Austin Redefines "Affirmative Action" As A Holistic Approach To Admissions That Ensures Equal, Not Preferential, Treatment, Nancy L. Zisk

Nancy L. Zisk

In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the United States Supreme Court affirmed well-established Supreme Court doctrine that race may be considered when a college or university decides whom to admit and whom to reject, as long as the consideration of race is part of a narrowly tailored holistic consideration of an applicant's many distinguishing features. The Court's latest decision heralds a new way of thinking about holistic race-conscious admissions programs. Rather than considering them as "affirmative action" plans that prefer any one applicant to the disadvantage of another, they should be viewed as the Court has described …

More Than Just The Numbers: Fisher V. Texas And The Practical Impact Of Texas’S Top Ten Percent Law, Shakira D. Pleasant

Shakira D. Pleasant

No abstract provided.

Dismantling Structural Inequality: Lock Ups, Systemic Chokeholds, And Race-Based Policing - A Symposium Summary, Cedric Merlin Powell, Laura R. Mcneal

Laura R. McNeal

The prominence of the carceral state in American society serves to undermine basic principles of democracy and justice, disproportionately displacing people of color and excluding them from all viable avenues of citizenship.

Racial Indirection, Yuvraj Joshi

Yuvraj Joshi

Student Surveillance, Racial Inequalities, And Implicit Racial Bias, Jason P. Nance

Jason P. Nance

In the wake of high-profile incidents of school violence, school officials have increased their reliance on a host of surveillance measures to maintain order and control in their schools. Paradoxically, such practices can foster hostile environments that may lead to even more disorder and dysfunction. These practices may also contribute to the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline” by pushing more students out of school and into the juvenile justice system. However, not all students experience the same level of surveillance. This Article presents data on school surveillance practices, including an original empirical analysis of restricted data recently released by the U.S. Department …

The Legacy Of Civil Rights And The Opportunity For Transactional Law Clinics, Lynnise E. Pantin

Lynnise E. Pantin

At the end of the historic march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously paraphrased abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker stating, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The implication of the phrase is that the social justice goals of the Civil Rights Movement would eventually be achieved. His prayer was that servants of justice would be rewarded in due time. In other words, that the goals of the Civil Rights Movement would be achievable at some point in the future. President Obama resurrected the phrase throughout …

Dismantling Structural Inequality: Lock Ups, Systemic Chokeholds, And Race-Based Policing - A Symposium Summary, Cedric Merlin Powell, Laura R. Mcneal

Cedric M. Powell

The prominence of the carceral state in American society serves to undermine basic principles of democracy and justice, disproportionately displacing people of color and excluding them from all viable avenues of citizenship.

The Structural Dimensions Of Race: Lock Ups, Systemic Chokeholds, And Binary Disruptions, Cedric Merlin Powell

Cedric M. Powell

Disrupting traditional conceptions of structural inequality, state decision making power, and the presumption of Black criminality, this Essay explores the doctrinal and policy implications of James Forman, Jr.’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Locking Up Our Own, and Paul Butler’s evocative and transformative book, Chokehold. While both books grapple with how to dismantle the structural components of mass incarceration, state legitimized police violence against Black bodies, and how policy functions to reify oppressive state power, the approaches espoused by Forman and Butler are analytically distinct. Forman locates his analysis in the dynamics of decision-making power when African American officials wield power …

The Rhetorical Allure Of Post-Racial Process Discourse And The Democratic Myth, Cedric Merlin Powell

Cedric M. Powell

We are witnessing the power of distorted and neutral rhetoric that rings with deceptive clarity. This post-racial process discourse is advanced on many levels: in political discourse, by a distrustful citizenry energized by hateful rhetoric that appeals to their concerns of being “left behind” on the basis of “preferences” for minorities that diminish America’s “greatness,” and a Court that seeks to constitutionalize a mythic democracy that promises participation while implicitly endorsing structural exclusion.

Voter initiatives should not determine the substantive core of the Fourteenth Amendment. While democratic participation is essential to our Republic, decisions like Schuette perpetuate a democratic myth …

Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol

Neil L Sobol

Debtors’ prisons should no longer exist. While imprisonment for debt was common in colonial times in the United States, subsequent constitutional provisions, legislation, and court rulings all called for the abolition of incarcerating individuals to collect debt. Despite these prohibitions, individuals who are unable to pay debts are now regularly incarcerated, and the vast majority of them are indigent. In 2015, at least ten lawsuits were filed against municipalities for incarcerating individuals in modern-day debtors’ prisons. Criminal justice debt is the primary source for this imprisonment.

Criminal justice debt includes fines, restitution charges, court costs, and fees. Monetary charges exist …

The Land Crisis In Zimbabwe: Getting Beyond The Myopic Focus Upon Black & White, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

This article deconstructs the role that race played in the land crisis in Zimbabwe that occurred in Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and earls 2000s. The article makes it clear that the government of Zimbabwe did not extend robust property rights to its black majority population for the most part even as it took land from large white landowners. This is revealing given that the government's primary justification for taking land from large white landowners was that the black majority unjustly owned little property in Zimbabwe as a result of colonialist and neocolonialist, discriminatory polices.

Indefinite Detention, Colonialism, And Settler Prerogative In The United States, Natsu Taylor Saito

Natsu Taylor Saito

The primacy accorded individual civil and political rights is often touted as one of the United States' greatest achievements. However, mass incarcerations of indefinite duration have occurred consistently throughout U.S. history and have primarily targeted people of color. The dominant narrative insists that the United States is a political democracy and portrays each instance of indefinite detention in exceptionalist terms. This essay argues that the historical patterns of indefinite detention are better explained by recognizing the United States as a settler colonial state whose claimed prerogative to expand its territorial reach and contain/control populations over which it exercises jurisdiction inevitably …

From Dog-Whistle To Megaphone: The Trump Regime’S Cynical Assault On Affirmative Action, Mark S. Brodin

Mark S. Brodin

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Fight For Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences And Future Implications Of The 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

Threading The Needle Of Fair Housing Law In A Gentrifying City With A Legacy Of Discrimination, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

Reflections On Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections Of Race And Class For Women In Academia Symposium - The Plenary Panel, Maritza I. Reyes, Angela Mae Kupenda, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Stephanie M. Wildman, Adrien Katherine Wing

Angela Onwuachi-Willig

No abstract provided.

Gay Rights, Racial Prejudice, And True Equality, Eric J. Segall, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Dismantling The School-To-Prison Pipeline: Tools For Change, Jason P. Nance

Jason P. Nance

The school-to-prison pipeline is one of our nation’s most formidable challenges. It refers to the trend of directly referring students to law enforcement for committing certain offenses at school or creating conditions under which students are more likely to become involved in the criminal justice system, such as excluding them from school. This article analyzes the school-to-prison pipeline’s devastating consequences on students, its causes, and its disproportionate impact on students of color. But most importantly, this article comprehensively identifies and describes specific, evidence-based tools to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline that lawmakers, school administrators, and teachers in all areas can immediately …

The Jim Crow Effect: Denial, Dignity, Human Rights, And Racialized Mass Incarceration, 29 J. Civ. Rts. & Econ. Dev 15 (2016), Cecil J. Hunt Ii

Cecil J. Hunt II

The overarching theme of this paper is that the racialization of mass incarceration in America, which has been taking place since the latter part of the last century, and continues to this very day, is characterized by what I term, the “Jim Crow effect".