Law and Race Commons^™

The Birth Of The Greenback, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Dangerous Law Of Biological Race, Khiara Bridges

Faculty Scholarship

The idea of biological race -- a conception of race that postulates that racial groups are distinct, genetically homogenous units -- has experienced a dramatic resurgence in popularity in recent years. It is commonly understood, however, that the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the idea that races are genetically uniform groupings of individuals. Almost a century ago, the Court famously appeared to recognize the socially constructed nature of race. Moreover, the jurisprudence since then appears to reaffirm this disbelief: within law, race is understood to be a social construction, having no biological truth to it at all. Yet upon closer …

Guantanamo Military Commissions: Reflections From A Legal Observer (Part I, Ii & Iii), Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Get Rid Of Tenure For Law Schools, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

Professors with tenure have job security but no incentive to go above and beyond as a teacher.

Mascaras Y Trenzas: Reflexiones. Un Proyecto De Identidad Y Analysis A Traves De Veinte Anos (Masks And Braids: Reflections, A Project On Identity And Analysis Over Twenty Years), Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

This article uses Critical Race Theory and LatCrit methodologies, vocabulary, categories, and pedagogical approaches. In this Section, titled 'On Mascaras,' I am grappling with race (and gender secondarily) in public space -- un/masking my professional persona. In using the word 'wrestle' in the subheading I am referring to this struggle over a re-allocation of the social power that inheres in racial hierarchies, namely, the back-and-forth exchanges involved in changing the racial ambiance by exposing and transforming the presumptions, especially regarding notions of inferiority, that cabin our thinking and restrain our relationships. My original paper was something of an outburst, challenging …

A Room With Many Views: A Response To Essays On According To Our Hearts: Rhinelander V. Rhinelander And The Multiracial Family, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

At the outset, l should note that I am very grateful to all contributors in this issue-Professors Kerry Abrams, Jacquelyn Bridgeman, Jennifer Chacon, Robin Lenhardt, and Laura Rosenbury for their insightful, powerful, and stirring reactions to my book According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family, and to Professor Melissa Murray for her elegant Foreword to this issue. Reading the responses of these scholars whom I admire and respect has been exhilarating and affirming. Indeed, seeing the many ways in which just a small group of these reviewers have examined, interpreted, and even "felt" …

Lessons On Terrorism And "Mistaken Identity" From Oak Creek, With A Coda On The Boston Marathon Bombings, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Israel’S Rosit The Riveter: Between Secular Law And Jewish Law, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

In the world of Judaism, the “end of men” is not in sight. Surely, tectonic plates are sliding and shifting, and a great deal of change is unfolding, but men are fighting hard to keep patriarchy alive. Deep inside, the Orthodox patriarchal man may be motivated by the sheer impulse to maintain his power, but outwardly he projects a profound commitment to his religious law, the law of God. He believes that his fight is a noble one ordained by divine will and that God is on his side. The problem is global; it appears in every Jewish community around …

On Derrick Bell As Pioneer And Teacher: Teaching Us How To Have The Nerve, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Would Be The Story Of Alice And Leonard Rhinelander Today?, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

On November 8, 2011, I presented this lecture as part of the annual Brigitte M. Bodenheimer Family Law Lecture Series at the University of California, Davis School of Law. I extend sincere thanks to the Bodenheimer family for endowing this special lecture. I feel honored to be a small part of this wonderful lecture series in family law. I feel particularly grateful because the University of California, Davis School of Law was my "birthplace" as a professor. Dean Rex Perschbacher, then Associate Dean Kevin Johnson, and the law school faculty welcomed me into academia by giving me my first job …

Threats Demand Our Action, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

Those of us who identify as progressive see this as a time when speaking up and engaging on public policy is our duty. I am writing to express my deep concern and dismay about the state of the federal government under Donald Trump. Like others, I have marched, donated, and joined Wednesday’s International Women’s Day protests against the administration of Donald Trump.

Growing Inequality And Racial Economic Gaps, Thomas W. Mitchell

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past several decades, economic inequality has grown dramatically in the United States while inter-generational economic mobility has declined, which has challenged the very notion of the "American Dream." In fact, the United States is more economically unequal than most other industrialized countries. Further, there are dramatic and growing racial economic gaps in this country. Despite the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the various spinoffs it has catalyzed, there has not been any sustained, widespread social movement to address economic inequality in the United States over the course of the past several decades. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a …

A Critical Look At The ‘Critical Mass' Argument, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court's pending ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is expected to largely decide how or even whether affirmative action can be used in college admissions. The university's argument for why minority enrollments need to reach a certain threshold, however, is problematic because it is inconsistent with previous court rulings involving race.

The Meaning And Viability Of The Thirteenth Amendment, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Intersectionality: Mapping The Movements Of A Theory, Devon Carbado, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Vicki M. Mays, Barbara Tomlinson

Faculty Scholarship

Very few theories have generated the kind of interdisciplinary and global engagement that marks the intellectual history of intersectionality. Yet, there has been very little effort to reflect upon precisely how intersectionality has moved across time, disciplines, issues, and geographic and national boundaries. Our failure to attend to intersectionality’s movement has limited our ability to see the theory in places in which it is already doing work and to imagine other places to which the theory might be taken. Addressing these questions, this special issue reflects upon the genesis of intersectionality, engages some of the debates about its scope and …

The Court's Denial Of Racial Societal Debt, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

In this year of civil rights anniversaries, the narrative of racial progress has been tempered by the Supreme Court’s game-changing decisions this past summer. The notion that “we’ve come a long way and we have much more work to do” sounds ever more like wishful thinking in the face of a Supreme Court that is no longer an active contributor to the cause. Having abandoned its unprecedented insistence that white supremacy be upended root and branch, the current Court’s boldness is measured by its audacious efforts to reverse engineer the transformative mechanisms these anniversaries celebrate.

Trial Jurors And Variables Influencing Why They Return The Verdicts They Do - A Guide For Practicing And Future Trial Attorneys, Mitchell J. Frank, Osvaldo F. Morera

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Significance Of Skin Color In Asian And Asian-American Communities: Initial Reflections, Trina Jones

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Untoward Consequences: The Ironic Legacy Of Keyes V. School District No. 1, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

The Keyes case began with high hopes that desegregation would lead to educational equity for black and Latino students in the Denver Public Schools. The lawsuit made history by successfully using circumstantial evidence to establish intentional discrimination and bring court-ordered busing to a school system outside the South. In the intervening years, that initial success became laden with irony. Because Denver was a tri-ethnic community of whites, blacks, and Latinos, the litigation revealed the complexities of pursuing reform in a school district not defined by a history of black-white relations.

The courts had to decide whether Latinos would count as …

Las Voces De America: Reflecting On Mari Matsuda's Voice, Stories, And Analysis, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Matsuda's exhortation to listen to people of color was certainly heard and seized by people of color. It spoke to me personally and inspired me as I was writing my first article, Mascaras, Trenzas y Grerias. Once the multiracial group of scholars that took the name "LatCrit" organized ourselves, we deliberately and intentionally centered our annual conferences around listening to the voices at the bottom, including the local activists in the cities in which we met. We listened to such voices as both method and substance.

Civic Education As An Instrument Of Social Mobility, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

Economic inequality—the relative distance between the wealthy and the poor—is growing in the United States. Relatedly, social mobili-ty—the opportunity to rise economically—has stalled for many in the nation. This is most true for the urban poor, who experience extreme poverty and are trapped in American inner cities. Meaningful economic opportunity and robust public educational support are among the tradi-tionally discussed means by which the urban poor may attain enhanced economic and physical mobility. The question becomes whether civic education—an understanding of the structure and contents of the U.S. Constitution and of the American government more broadly—has any-thing to offer in …

Toward A Field Of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, And Praxis, Sumi Cho, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Leslie Mccall

Faculty Scholarship

Intersectional insights and frameworks are put into practice in a multitude of highly contested, complex, and unpredictable ways. We group such engagements with intersectionality into three loosely defined sets of practices: applications of an intersectional framework or investigations of intersectional dynamics; debates about the scope and content of intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological paradigm; and political interventions employing an intersectional lens. We propose a template for fusing these three levels of engagement with intersectionality into a field of intersectional studies that emphasizes collaboration and literacy rather than unity. Our objective here is not to offer pat resolutions to all …

Measuring The Racial Unevenness Of Law School, Jonathan Feingold, Doug Souza

Faculty Scholarship

In "Measuring the Racial Unevenness of Law School," Jonathan Feingold and Doug Souza introduce and analyze the concept of racial unevenness, which refers to the particularized burdens an individual encounters as a result of her race. These burdens, which often arise because an individual falls outside of the racial norm, manifest across a spectrum. At one end lie obvious forms of overt and invidious racial discrimination. At the other end, racial unevenness arises from environmental factors and institutional culture independent from any identifiable perpetrator. As the authors detail, race-dependent burdens can arise in institutions and communities that expressly promote racial …