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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race

The Banality Of Evil And The First Amendment, W. Bradley Wendel May 2004

The Banality Of Evil And The First Amendment, W. Bradley Wendel

Michigan Law Review

In the late spring and early summer of 1994, hundreds of thousands of people in Rwanda - an estimated ten percent of the population - were brutally murdered by their fellow citizens, generally for the "crime" of belonging to the socially and economically dominant, but numerically minority Tutsi ethnic group. The slaughter followed a systematic propaganda campaign coordinated by the Rwandan government, dominated by members of the Hutu ethnic group, who had long harbored grievances against Tutsis. The campaign demonized Tutsis as "devils," stirred up fear among the largely rural and poor Hutu population by propagating false information about a …


First Amendment Equal Protection: On Discretion, Inequality, And Participation, Daniel P. Tokaji Jun 2003

First Amendment Equal Protection: On Discretion, Inequality, And Participation, Daniel P. Tokaji

Michigan Law Review

The tension between equality and discretion lies at the heart of some of the most vexing questions of constitutional law. The considerable discretion that many official decisionmakers wield raises the spectre that violations of equality norms will sometimes escape detection. This is true in a variety of settings, whether discretion lies over speakers' access to public fora, implementation of the death penalty, or the recounting of votes. Is the First Amendment violated, for example, when a city ordinance gives local officials broad discretion to determine the conditions under which political demonstrations may take place? Is equal protection denied where the …


Some Effects Of Identity-Based Social Movements On Constitutional Law In The Twentieth Century, William N. Eskridge Jr. Aug 2002

Some Effects Of Identity-Based Social Movements On Constitutional Law In The Twentieth Century, William N. Eskridge Jr.

Michigan Law Review

What motivated big changes in constitutional law doctrine during the twentieth century? Rarely did important constitutional doctrine or theory change because of formal amendments to the document's text, and rarer still because scholars or judges "discovered" new information about the Constitution's original meaning. Precedent and common law reasoning were the mechanisms by which changes occurred rather than their driving force. My thesis is that most twentieth century changes in the constitutional protection of individual rights were driven by or in response to the great identity-based social movements ("IBSMs") of the twentieth century. Race, sex, and sexual orientation were markers of …


The Importance Of Being Biased, Anthony M. Dillof Jan 2000

The Importance Of Being Biased, Anthony M. Dillof

Michigan Law Review

The war against bias crimes is far from finished. In contrast, the battle over bias-crime laws is largely over. Bias-crime laws, as commonly formulated, increase the penalties for crimes motivated by bias. The Supreme Court has held that such laws do not violate the First Amendment. Virtually every state has enacted some sort of biascrime law. Even the federal government, which may consider itself without power to enact a general bias-crime law, has made bias a sentence-aggravating factor for the range of federal criminal offenses. Bias-crime laws thus are an established feature of the legal landscape. Against this background, Frederick …


Public Response To Racist Speech: Considering The Victim's Story, Mari J. Matsuda Aug 1989

Public Response To Racist Speech: Considering The Victim's Story, Mari J. Matsuda

Michigan Law Review

The threat of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi skinheads goes beyond their repeated acts of illegal violence. Their presence and the active dissemination of racist propaganda means that citizens are denied personal security and liberty as they go about their daily lives. Professor Richard Delgado recognized the harm of racist speech in his breakthrough article, Words That Wound, in which he suggested a tort remedy for injury from racist words. This Article takes inspiration from Professor Delgado's position, and makes the further suggestion that formal criminal and administrative sanction - public as opposed to private …