Law and Race Commons^™

Reconsidering Prejudice In Alternative Dispute Resolution For Black Work Matters, Michael Z. Green

Michael Z. Green

In the 1985 foundational article Fairness and Formality: Minimizing the Risk of Prejudice in Alternative Dispute Resolution, Richard Delgado and his co-authors identified major concerns with the growing use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to resolve disputes involving people of color. The seminal findings from that article highlighted the power differentials exacerbated by informal dispute resolution, and the article contributed immediately to a surge of robust critiques of the increasing use of alternative dispute resolution for those most vulnerable in our society.

More than thirty years after the Delgado article, a community of respected and prominent ADR and discrimination scholars, …

"Just Another Little Black Boy From The South Side Of Chicago": Overcoming Obstacles And Breaking Down Barriers To Improve Diversity In The Law Professoriate, Michael Z. Green

Michael Z. Green

As I reflected on my personal experience to help address the persistence of discrimination in legal academia, I chose to focus on five areas of discussion for the open mic portion of the program held at the Association of American Law Schools Cross-Cutting Program, “The More Things Change ...: Exploring Solutions to Persistent Discrimination in Legal Academia,” held on January 4, 2015, in Washington, D.C. First, I decided to address my personal development as an only child and male in a family of mostly black women struggling through the socioeconomic challenges of being poor and black. To add to that …

An Essay Challenging The Racially Biased Selection Of Arbitrators For Employment Discrimination Suits, Michael Z. Green

Michael Z. Green

Since 1991, employers have increasingly decided to require that employees agree to arbitrate statutory employment discrimination claims as a condition of employment. This Essay seeks to expose some of the potential discriminatory components that may arise in the arbitrator selection process while highlighting the lack of legal remedy for those who believe that employers, in conjunction with neutral service provders, have stacked the pool in favor of having arbitrators who tend to be older, white and male. The Essay suggests the use of 42 U.S.C. Section 1981 as a potential remedy and challenge to the dearth of arbitrators of color …

An Essay Challenging The Racially Biased Selection Of Arbitrators For Employment Discrimination Suits, Michael Z. Green

Michael Z. Green

Since 1991, employers have increasingly decided to require that employees agree to arbitrate statutory employment discrimination claims as a condition of employment. This Essay seeks to expose some of the potential discriminatory components that may arise in the arbitrator selection process while highlighting the lack of legal remedy for those who believe that employers, in conjunction with neutral service provders, have stacked the pool in favor of having arbitrators who tend to be older, white and male. The Essay suggests the use of 42 U.S.C. Section 1981 as a potential remedy and challenge to the dearth of arbitrators of color …

Reading Ricci And Pyett To Provide Racial Justice Through Union Arbitration, Michael Z. Green

Michael Z. Green

With the current political climate regarding racial issues, any positive gains in resolving race discrimination claims in the workplace cannot come from new legislation through the Obama administration. Instead, those gains will have to come from within the workplace. Unions and their employee members must work together and with employers to resolve those disputes. Specifically, in this Article, two high-profile employment discrimination cases decided by the Supreme Court during President Obama's first year in office--Ricci v. DeStefano and Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett--help identify a framework whereby employees with racial discrimination claims against their employers may work with …