Law and Race Commons^™

The Future Of The United States Commission On Civil Rights, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

In The Future of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Professors Lisa Crooms and Dawinder Sidhu discuss the potential for expanding the mandate of the Commission. Professor Crooms opens by noting that suggestions to expand the Commission’s mandate to include human rights have been around for decades, and argues that such ideas are still worth adopting. She comments that the Commission would have to engage in extensive fact-finding in order to justify such an expansion. Professor Crooms raises further concerns over manipulation of the appointment process for commissioners, but that such manipulation has not necessarily jeopardized the Commission’s role. Indeed, …

"The Prejudice Of Caste": The Misreading Of Justice Harlan And The Ascendency Of Anticlassificaiton, Scott Grinsell

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article reconsiders the familiar reading of Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson as standing for the principle of constitutional colorblindness by examining the significance of Harlan's use of the metaphor "caste" in the opinion. By overlooking Harlan's invocation of "caste," it argues that conservative proponents of anticlassification have reclaimed the opinion for "colorblindness," and buried a powerful statement of the antisubordination principle that is at the heart of our equality law. The Article begins by examining the emergence of a reading of the opinion as articulating a view of equality law based in anticlassification. The Article then returns …

Employee Free Choice Or Employee Forged Choice? Race In The Mirror Of Exclusionary Hierarchy, Harry G. Hutchinson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is arguably the most transformative piece of labor legislation to come before Congress since the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA). One of the newest attempts to transform labor relations is the EFCA. The first to disappear under the EFCA would be a system of union democracy whereby unions could only obtain the rights of exclusive representation for firms if they could prevail in a secret-ballot election. Second, the EFCA would eliminate tile necessity of a freely negotiated collective bargaining agreement between management and labor and instead substitute compulsory arbitration. …

Rawls And Reparations, Martin D. Carcieri

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the past two years, four related events have sharpened debates on race in the U.S.: President Obama's election, the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, that Court's ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano, and the arrest of Obama's friend, Harvard professor Henry Gates. The President has spoken of a "teaching moment" arising from these events. Moreover, his writings, speeches and lawmaking efforts illustrate the contractual nature of Obama's thinking. The President (and all concerned citizens) should thus find useful an analysis of racial policy and justice in light of the work of John Rauls. Rawls may …

Obama Effect: A Pipeline Issue, A Felicia Epps

Journal Publications

The law allows schools to strive for a "critical mass" of minority students. As law schools are already required to demonstrate a commitment to diversity, they must take steps to ensure that the pool of qualified candidates for positions in the academy expands instead of contracts. President Obama can have an impact on this process by taking steps to improve our educational system, encouraging students to make the most of their educations, and increasing the availability of higher education for all students. African Americans will then have access and ability to succeed in their academic pursuits. As a result, more …

The Meeting: A Transformational Train Ride Through Race In America And Apartheid In South Africa, Joseph Karl Grant

Journal Publications

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Squabble: Putting The Tenderloin Community Justice Center In Context, Michael Cobden, Ron Albers

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The Tenderloin Community Justice Center ("CJC") began operation in May 2009 amid a tense political and economic climate. Although it employs an innovative approach to alleviating crime, the CJC is not a novel concept, but rather modeled after successful community courts already in existence. As a product of community efforts, the CJC aims to address the shortcomings of the traditional court system, which has been ineffective in reducing crime and recidivism rates, by offering alternatives to incarceration. By coordinating service providers intimately with the court, the CJC provides a centralized system that allows it to comprehensively examine an offender's problems …

Defining The Problem, Hadar Aviram

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Litigation Over Prison Medical Services, Aaron Rappaport

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of Special Populations In California Prisons, Eumi K. Lee

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Reconceptualizing Restorative Justice, Kate E. Bloch

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Decent Work, Human Rights, And The Millennium Development Goals, Gillian Macnaughton, Diane F. Frey

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The Millennium Development Goals ("MDGs") have provided the global framework for international development and poverty elimination policy for almost a decade. This framework includes time-bound targets and indicators to monitor progress toward the Goals. Initially, full employment and decent work for all was not part of the MDG framework. In 2007, however, the UN General Assembly approved four new MDG targets, including the achievement of "full and productive employment and decent work for all." This article discusses this new MDG target and its indicators from social justice and human rights perspectives. It argues that uniting the overlapping agendas of the …

We've Been Waiting A Long Time - The Struggle To Pass The Filipino Veterans Equity Act And A Bittersweet Ending To A Sixty-Three-Year Battle, Paul Daniel Rivera

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into effect the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Buried amidst the hundreds of pages and the billions of dollars given out by the bill was Title X, Section 1002, a diminutive two pages of text authorizing the federal government to give "Payments to Eligible Persons Who Served in the United States Armed Forces in the Far East During World War II." However, Section 1002 was neither designed nor included to create jobs or stimulate the economy. In reality, Section 1002 was included to authorize a long-deserved $198 million payout to …

Reconciling Equal Protection And Federal Indian Law, Bethany Berger

Faculty Articles and Papers

In this essay for a festschrift in celebration of Philip Frickey and his work, I show how equal protection and federal Indian law can be reconciled without succumbing to what Professor Frickey has called the seduction of artificial coherence. Federal Indian policies increasingly face arguments that, in providing special treatment for individuals and groups defined in part by descent from indigenous tribes, they violate the requirement of equal protection before the law. I argue that such arguments ignore the congruence of federal Indian policy and equal protection as a matter of constitutional norms, constitutional history, and constitutional text. Federal Indian …

Interrogation Is Not Ethnography: The Irrational Admission Of Gang Cops As Experts In The Field Of Sociology, Christopher Mcginnis, Sarah Eisenhart

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Courts regularly qualify police officers as "gang experts" in prosecutions under California's Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act. This note argues that absent independent, scientifically-verifiable expertise, the use of police officers as gang experts violates even California courts' low standard for admitting expert evidence. The note begins by analyzing the language and the legislative intent of the Act, including its substantive offense components, sentence enhancement and alternative penalty sections. The note next discusses the evidentiary power of police officers when testifying as gang experts, focusing on the substantial risk of prejudice resulting from such testimony and the officers' ability to …

Recovering Texas History: Tejanos, Jim Crow, Lynchings & The University Of Texas School Of Law, Jose R. "Beto" Juarez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Straightening Up: Black Women Law Professors, Interracial Relationships And Academic Fit(Ting) In, Adele M. Morrison

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Contingent Equal Protection: Reaching For Equality After Ricci And Pics, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article uses the term contingent equal protection to describe the constitutional analysis that applies to a range of governmental efforts to ameliorate race and sex hierarchies. "Contingent" refers to the fact that the equal protection analysis is contingent upon the existence of structural, de facto inequality. Contingent equal protection cases include those that involve explicit race and sex classifications, facially neutral efforts to reduce inequality, and accommodation of sex differences to promote equality. Uniting all three kinds of cases under a single conceptual umbrella reveals the implications that developments in one area can have for the other two.

A Fractured Establishment's Responses To Social Movement Agitation: The U.S. Supreme Court And The Negotiation Of An Outsider Point Of Entry In Walker V. City Of Birmingham, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

In classical social movement theory, scholars have identified the advocates of change as elements of agitation and the establishment as the entity that responds in an attempt to control the agitators. This classical approach has assumed that the establishment is a generally monolithic entity that responds in a unified manner to the efforts of the advocates of change.

While this approach may accurately characterize some rhetorical situations, it does not necessarily have to characterize all such situations. For example, one could describe the judiciary as a part of the establishment because judges are well-connected and powerful individuals who, in many …

Alienated: A Reworking Of The Racialization Thesis After September 11, Ming H. Chen

Publications

This article revises widespread application of the racialization thesis to Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians following September 11. It suggests in its place an “alienation thesis” to describe the formation of an alien identity for those perceived and treated as noncitizens. This thesis draws on Asian American and critical race scholarship to re-interpret sociological understandings of the post-September 11 response to Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians. The article concludes that shifting conceptions of this phenomenon is critical to reforming “alienating” practices that function not only to cause harm to their intended targets, but also to distort the legal requirements of …

The Ethics Of Letting Civilians Die In Afghanistan: The False Dichotomy Between Hobbesian And Kantian Rescue Paradigms, 59 Depaul L. Rev. 899 (2010), Samuel Vincent Jones

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Laws Of Race/Laws Of Representation: The Construction Of Race And Law In Contemporary American Film, 11 Tex. Rev. Ent. & Sports L. 219 (2010), Cynthia D. Bond

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Popular film has a lot to teach us about social narratives of law. Both law and film are story-telling, narrative systems. Accordingly, films about law are "overdetermined" in terms of narrative: they are stories about stories. Race is also a narrative system in which visual representation is key. The significance of the visual apprehension of race is deeply relevant to the legal construction of race as well. For example, in early citizenship cases and racial "passing" cases which persisted through the latter part of the 2 0th century. Since society constructs racial categories in large part by visual identification and …

Humonetarianism: The New Correctional Discourse Of Scarcity, Hadar Aviram

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Criminological accounts of penological discourse in the United States often focus on the transition to more punitive policies beginning in the late 1970s, which led the U.S. to top international charts of incarceration rates per capita. However, recent developments in punitive policies and practices suggest a reversal of the punitive pendulum. This article maps these developments, arguing that they represent the emergence of a new correctional discourse, called humonetarianism, which focuses on scarcity of resources and on cost-benefit analysis as its main raison d'être.

This article begins by tracing the history of humonetarianism, offering two complementary genealogies for this discourse. …

A Deadly Response: Unconscious Racism And California's Provocative Act Doctrine, Katherine N. Hallinan

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

In rural Northern California, two young black men are shot multiple times from behind. Their friend, who is also black, is charged with their murders, while the gunman, who is white, walks free. During an alleged gang brawl between teenagers, a young Latino man is stabbed and killed. His friends, and not the actual perpetrator, are charged and convicted of the crime. The defendants are Latino, the gunman is white. California's little-known provocative act doctrine, which holds felons liable for killings that are provoked by a felon's provocative act, is the vehicle prosecutors used to charge each of these young …

Dangerousness, Risk, And Release, Hadar Aviram, Valerie Kraml, Nicole Schmidt

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Changing The Topography Of Sentencing, Kate E. Bloch

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

The Centerpiece To Real Reform - Political, Legal, And Social Barriers To Reentry In California, Eumi K. Lee

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Sentencing Reform In California, Aaron Rappaport

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Can These Bones Live - A Look At The Impacts Of The War On Drugs On Poor African-American Children And Families, Nekima Levy-Pounds

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The war on drugs has resulted in sharp increases in prison sentences for many drug-related crimes. Due to the structure of the federal sentencing guidelines and the disparity in sentences relating to power cocaine and crack, the primary burden of these increased sentences has disproportionately affected poor African Americans. The war on drugs legislation has also had a marked impact on another population - the families and children of the incarcerated. This article discusses the rationales behind the war on drugs legislation, addressing both the initial enactments and subsequent statutes and cases that have changed the landscape of drug-related sentencing. …

Harming Vulnerable Children: The Injustice Of California's Kinship Foster Care Policy, Meredith L. Alexander

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

California denies state foster care benefits to nonfederally eligible foster children when they are placed with relative caregivers (a placement known as "kinship foster care"). This note explores the unique benefits and needs of kinship foster care, and analyzes the current legal framework regarding kinship foster care, including the justifications for California's policy. The author argues that this California policy fails to embrace the unique benefits and needs of kinship foster care. Furthermore, the policy is contradictory to the state mandated placement priority with relatives. By not properly supporting kinship foster care, California is harming the state's most vulnerable children …