Law and Race Commons^™

Healthcare Inequities In The United States And Beyond Are Taking Black Women’S Lives, Alichia Mcintosh

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Black women have been dying at devastating rates due to health complications at the hands of the United States’ healthcare and legal systems. This Note explores these distressing rates and how they compare to White women while analyzing the fatalities and diagnoses among several health complications and diseases. These fatalities persist due to the United States’ history of racism—such as the institution of slavery and over 100 years of Black bodies experiencing Jim Crow laws—and the socioeconomic disadvantages Black women disproportionally face. This Note emphasizes that these disparities continue because the United States has failed to implement treaties—which it is …

Women In Shareholder Activism, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Even a cursory review of the history of American environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) shareholder activism reveals the presence of women leaders. This Article sketches some of this history and interrogates the role of women in the shareholder activism movement. That movement typically has involved claims by minority shareholders to corporate power; activists are nearly always on the margins of power, though minority shareholders may, collectively, represent a majority interest. This Article ascribes women’s leadership in shareholder activism to their longstanding position as outsiders to corporate organization. Women’s participation in shaping corporate policy—even from the margins—has provided women with …

Giving The Equal Rights Amendment Teeth: A Proposal For Gender Equality Legislation Modeled After The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, Samantha Gagnon

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Contrary to the belief of eighty percent of Americans, the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. The effect of this lack of protection can be seen in every corner of our society, including economic inequalities and a lack of representation in leadership. For almost one hundred years, women’s organizations and activists have attempted to rectify this by advocating for the inclusion of an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the Constitution. In the past few years, there has been a revived push for the ERA due to the amendment’s first congressional hearing in thirty-six years, …

A Different Type Of Property: White Women And The Human Property They Kept, Michele Goodwin

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. by Harriet A. Jacobs, and They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers.

Hair Goes Nothing: Proposing The Uniform Enactment Of The Crown Act Across The United States, Alexandra Halbert

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Sexual Exploitation Of Black Women From The Years 1619-2020, Dominique R. Wilson

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Maybe Law Schools Do Not Oppress Minority Faculty Women: A Critique Of Meera E. Deo’S “Unequal Profession: Race And Gender In Legal Academia” (Stanford University Press 2019), Dan Subotnik

Touro Law Review

This essay tests Professor Meera Deo’s unsettling assertion that “implicit bias” in law schools is holding minority female and, to a lesser extent minority male, faculty back. It then presents her second, and more provocative claim, that minority faculty can generally offer better training in “solving complex problems.”

Regarding the former claim, Deo explains that minority women are not hired according to fair standards, not welcomed when they are hired, and not fairly evaluated for promotion. In addition, she argues that minority women professors are abused by their students. Because Deo barely tries to substantiate the second claim, it is …

Medical Violence, Obstetric Racism, And The Limits Of Informed Consent For Black Women, Colleen Campbell

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay critically examines how medicine actively engages in the reproductive subordination of Black women. In obstetrics, particularly, Black women must contend with both gender and race subordination. Early American gynecology treated Black women as expendable clinical material for its institutional needs. This medical violence was animated by biological racism and the legal and economic exigencies of the antebellum era. Medical racism continues to animate Black women’s navigation of and their dehumanization within obstetrics. Today, the racial disparities in cesarean sections illustrate that Black women are simultaneously overmedicalized and medically neglected—an extension of historical medical practices rooted in the logic …

Gender Disparities In Plea Bargaining, Carlos Berdejo

Indiana Law Journal

Across wide-ranging contexts, academic literature and the popular press have identified pervasive gender disparities favoring men over women in society. One area in which gender disparities have conversely favored women is the criminal justice system. Most of the empirical research examining gender disparities in criminal case outcomes has focused on judges’ sentencing decisions. Few studies have assessed disparities in the steps leading up to a defendant’s conviction, where various actors make choices that constrain judges’ ultimate sentencing discretion. This Article addresses this gap by examining gender disparities in the plea-bargaining process. The results presented in this Article reveal significant gender …

Intersectionality As An Institution: Changing The Definition Of Feminism, Holly Sanchez Perry Esq.

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

No abstract provided.

The Modern Day Scarlet Letter, Ifeoma Ajunwa

Fordham Law Review

American society has come to presuppose the efficacy of the collateral legal consequences of criminal conviction. But little attention has been paid to their effects on the reintegration efforts of the formerly incarcerated and, in particular, formerly incarcerated women. An 1848 case, Sutton v. McIlhany, affirmed collateral legal consequences as constituting an important part of criminal punishment. More recent cases, such as Turner v. Glickman, in which a class of people convicted of drug crimes were subsequently denied food stamps and other government benefits, have upheld the constitutionality of imposing these legal penalties on an individual even after …

Flourishing Rights, Wendy A. Bach

Michigan Law Review

There is something audacious at the heart of Clare Huntington’s Failure to Flourish. She insists that the state exists to ensure that families flourish. Not just that they survive, or not starve, or be able, somehow, to make ends meet—but that they flourish. She demands this not just for some families but, importantly, for all families. This simple, bold, and profoundly countercultural demand allows Huntington to make a tremendously convincing case that the state can begin to do precisely that. Failure to Flourish is a brave, rigorously produced, carefully researched, and politically astute book. Huntington seeks to persuade a wide …

The Collapse Of The House That Ruth Built: The Impact Of The Feeder System On Female Judges And The Federal Judiciary, 1970-2014, Alexandra G. Hess

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Extracting More Than Resources: Human Security And Arctic Indigenous Women, Victoria Sweet

Seattle University Law Review

The circumpolar Arctic region is at the forefront of rapid change, and with change come potential threats to human security. Numerous factors determine what makes a state, a community, or an individual feel secure. For example, extractive industry development can bring economic benefits to an area, but these development projects also bring security concerns, including potential human rights violations. While security concerns connected with development projects have been studied in southern hemisphere countries and countries classified as “developing,” concerns connected with extractive industry development projects in “developed” countries like the United States have received little attention. This Article will change …

Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils Of Muslim Women's Identity Performance In The Workplace, Sahar F. Aziz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Should employees have the legal right to “be themselves” at work? Most Americans would answer in the negative because work is a privilege, not an entitlement. But what if being oneself entails behaviors, mannerisms, and values integrally linked to the employee’s gender, race, or religion? And what if the basis for the employer’s workplace rules and professionalism standards rely on negative racial, ethnic or gender stereotypes that disparately impact some employees over others? Currently, Title VII fails to take into account such forms of second-generation discrimination, thereby limiting statutory protections to phenotypical or morphological bases. Drawing on social psychology and …

Race, Gender, Region And Death Sentencing In Colorado, 1980-1999, Stephanie Hindson, Hillary Potter, Michael L. Radelet

University of Colorado Law Review

This paper examines the administration of the death penalty in Colorado. We first identify all cases (n=21) in which defendants were sentenced to death in Colorado, 1972-2005, and all cases (n=10) in which the death penalty was sought, 1980-1999. We then compare the race and gender of all homicide victims with the race and gender of victims in the 110 death penalty cases. Overall, we find that the death penalty is most likely to be sought for homicides with white female victims, and that the probability of death being sought is 4.2 times higher for those who kill whites than …

"Just Like One Of The Family": Domestic Violence Paradigms And Combating On-The-Job Violence Against Household Workers In The United States, Kristi L. Graunke

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that the immense problem of on-the-job abuse experienced by domestic workers demands a multifaceted plan of attack. The proposed responses specifically draw upon the capacities, strengths, and resources of women, particularly comparatively privileged women, as both activists and employers of domestic workers. By describing the circumstances of domestic work in the United States from the nation's inception to the present, Part I demonstrates the prevalence and intractability of on-the-job physical and sexual abuse and argues that other women, as employers of domestic workers, have historically played a complex role in participating in, condoning, or failing to acknowledge …

What Money Cannot Buy: A Legislative Response To C.Rac.K., Adam B. Wolf

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (C.R.A.C.K.) is an organization that pays current or former drug addicts $200 to be sterilized. While generating great public controversy, C.R.A.C.K. is expanding rapidly throughout the country. Its clients are disproportionately poor women of color, who are coerced by the offer of money into permanently relinquishing their reproductive rights. This Note argues that C.R.A.C.K. is a program of eugenical sterilization that cannot be tolerated. Moreover, C.R.A.C.K. further violates settled national public policy by offensively commodifying the ill-commodifiable, by demeaning women, and by starting down a slippery slope with devastating consequences. This Note proposes legislation that …

The Charleston Policy: Substance Or Abuse?, Kimani Paul-Emile

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In 1989, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) adopted a policy that, according to subjective criteria, singled out for drug testing, certain women who sought prenatal care and childbirth services would be tested for prohibited substances. Women who tested positive were arrested, incarcerated and prosecuted for crimes ranging from misdemeanor substance possession to felony substance distribution to a minor. In this Article, the Author argues that by intentionally targeting indigent Black women for prosecution, the MUSC Policy continued the United States legacy of their systematic oppression and resulted in the criminalizing of Black Motherhood.

The Anticaste Principle, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

In this essay, I seek to defend a particular understanding of equality, one that is an understanding of liberty as well. I call this conception "the anticaste principle." Put too briefly, the anticaste principle forbids social and legal practices from translating highly visible and morally irrelevant differences into systemic social disadvantage, unless there is a very good reason for society to do so. On this view, a special problem of inequality arises when members of a group suffer from a range of disadvantages because of a group-based characteristic that is both visible for all to see and irrelevant from a …

The Michael Jackson Pill: Equality, Race, And Culture, Jerome Mccristal Culp Jr.

Michigan Law Review

This chronicle is in tribute to the work of Derrick Bell, past, present, and future. I have borrowed his character Geneva Crenshaw as part of that tribute, and I hope she helps me raise some of the issues that he has taught us are important.

All characters in this chronicle are fictional, including Professor Culp and Professor Bell. Any relationship they may have to the real Professor Bell and Professor Culp is dictated by the requirements of creativity and the extent to which reality and fiction necessarily merge. I know that the real Derrick Bell is wiser than the one …

Prostitution: Where Racism & Sexism Intersect, Vednita Nelson

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Black women find themselves in a unique and extremely difficult position in our society. They are forced to deal with the oppression that arises from being Black in a white-supremacist culture and the oppression that arises from being female in a male-supremacist culture. In order to examine the experience of being Black and female, this paper attempts to describe that very difficult, tight space where Black women attempt to survive-that space where racism and sexism intersect.

An Imperfect Remedy For Imperfect Violence: The Construction Of Civil Rights In The Violence Against Women Act, David Frazee

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) could be the most significant addition to federal civil rights laws in the last century. While potentially revolutionary, the VAWA's civil rights remedy forges two problematic legal concepts-traditional civil rights jurisprudence and "perfect" violence-into a super-remedy that risks combining the worst aspects of each. Those who utilize and interpret the Act can avoid this outcome by situating individual violent acts in the broader social and historical context of gender-motivated violence.

Illiberal Education: The Politics Of Race And Sex On Campus, Bruce Goldner

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus by Dinesh D'Souza

The Challenges Of Multiplicity, Jennifer Nedelsky

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought by Elizabeth V. Spelman

Unwelcome Imports: Racism, Sexism, And Foreign Investment, William H. Lash Iii

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article will address the problems minorities and women face from Japanese foreign direct investment. This article focuses on Japanese direct investment because the rapid rise in Japan's direct investment in the United States, combined with a record of discrimination by Japanese firms in Japan and abroad, makes Japanese investment the best example of the problems addressed in this article. However, the discriminatory attitudes described here may well be held by other foreign investors, and therefore, the legislation proposed later in this article addresses a broader problem.

The Obliging Shell: An Informal Essay On Formal Equal Opportunity, Patricia Williams

Michigan Law Review

I am struck by the Court's use of the word "equality" in the last line of its holding. It seems an extraordinarily narrow use of "equality," when it excludes from consideration so much clear inequality. It, again, resembles the process by which the Parol Evidence Rule limits the meaning of documents or words by placing beyond the bounds of reference anything that is inconsistent, or, depending on the circumstances, even that which is supplementary. It is this lawyerly language game of exclusion and omission that is the subject of the rest of this essay.

Finding A "Manifest Imbalance": The Case For A Unified Statistical Test For Voluntary Affirmative Action Under Title Vii, David D. Meyer

Michigan Law Review

This Note analyzes the "manifest imbalance" standard developed in Weber and Johnson and the various approaches the lower courts have taken in trying to apply the test. Part I examines the Weber and Johnson opinions in some detail, and argues that the Court intended to permit affirmative action aimed at remedying the evident effects of past discrimination, regardless of whether the employer or society at large is to blame. Section I.A describes the diverging constitutional and statutory standards for evaluating voluntary affirmative action programs, and the policies behind the divergence. Sections I.B and I.C take a closer look at the …

A True Deliverance: The Joan Little Case, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of A True Deliverance: The Joan Little Case by Fred Harwell

Preferential Remedies For Employment Discrimination, Harry T. Edwards, Barry L. Zaretsky

Michigan Law Review

A basic thesis of this article is that much of the current concern about alleged "reverse discrimination" in employment ignores the reality of the situation. In Part I it will be contended that although color blindness is a laudable long-run objective, it alone will not end discrimination; thus, it will be argued that some form of "color conscious" affirmative action must be employed in order to achieve equal employment opportunity for minorities and women. The most effective form of affirmative action is temporary preferential treatment, and it will be asserted in Part II that such relief can be justified under …