Law and Race Commons^™

Affirmative Action: Alive And Well After Stotts, Ralph J. Conrad

Akron Law Review

This comment examines the current state of affirmative action in light of the special protection that the Supreme Court grants seniority systems. This comment also discusses the future of affirmative action and how the changes in affirmative action will affect collective bargaining agreements and consent decrees.

Edmonson V. Leesville Concrete Co.: State Action Or Inaction - Does It Matter?, Chad Murdock

Akron Law Review

This note first reviews the facts of Edmonson. Second, this note examines the history of judicial inquiry into the use of peremptory challenges. Third, this note reviews the application of Batson to civil cases. Finally, this note analyzes the extension of the state action doctrine in Edmonson and discusses an alternative to the Edmonson approach to state action

Civil Rights In The 1990'S: Non-Discrimination Or Quotas?, Donald B. Ayer

Akron Law Review

I would like today to offer some thoughts on the way that we as a country have handled the issue of reverse discrimination as a means of pursuing equal opportunity.

My first observation is that there is an undeniable tension between competing approaches to racial and gender justice that have been advanced and pursued in recent years. I take as my starting point the fundamental principle embodied in the Equal Protection Clause (as well as the Declaration of Independence), that, as the elder Justice Harlan said in dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson,' the Constitution is colorblind, and does not allow …

The Supreme Court's Impact On Litigation, Stephen L. Wasby

Akron Law Review

The focus of this article is on that segment of the litigation cycle in which lawyers' attention to the Court's rulings affects the cases they bring and how they bring them. To indicate the Court's importance for litigating organizations' existence and functioning, we first explore a set of cases involving the NAACP. These cases, involving the organization's survival, show how the need for organizational maintenance affects an organization's ability to litigate as it would like to do. Drawing on the law of procedure, we next examine cases affecting organizations' ability to bring cases. Then we turn to see how Supreme …

The Second Rodney King Trial: Justice In Jeopardy?, Robert C. Gorman

Akron Law Review

This Comment will trace the roots of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the U.S. Constitution and provide a detailed look at the development of the dual sovereignty doctrine. After this overview, it will analyze the historical, legal and policy arguments advanced by supporters and opponents of the doctrine. It will examine proposals for altering or abolishing the doctrine. Finally, in light of the underlying analysis, it will revisit the Rodney King case and examine whether the defendants' second trial - or any successive prosecution - is justified.

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 …

The First Justice Harlan By The Numbers: Just How Great Was "The Great Dissenter?", Gabriel J. Chin

Akron Law Review

Considering these kinds of evidence together may offer an informed picture of a judge’s disposition. By these measures, Harlan cannot be regarded as a defender of Asian civil rights. Based on his voting record, he was the most ardent defender of African American civil rights. By contrast, his record in Asian cases was one of the worst. His votes in favor of African American civil rights were in critical cases. In most of the critical cases with respect to Asian litigants, he voted against them.

White Privilege And Affirmative Action, Sylvia A. Law

Akron Law Review

Since 1996, many authoritative voices challenge the legitimacy of affirmative efforts to achieve racial integration. The Supreme Court has struck down many affirmative action programs. The Court has not upheld any affirmative action program since 1989, when, by a 5-4 decision, it approved a narrowly targeted Congressional program to encourage minority ownership of broadcast licences. In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209, broadly prohibiting any form of affirmative action on the basis of race or gender. In the same year, in the Hopwood decision, the Fifth Circuit held that the University of Texas could not give any consideration to race …

Law And The Boundaries Of Place And Race In Interracial Marriage: Interstate Comity, Racial Identity, And Miscegenation Laws In North Carolina, South Carolina, And Virginia, 1860s-1960s, Peter Wallenstein

Akron Law Review

This essay draws from case materials in three states to explore two of the main problems in enforcing—or escaping conviction under—laws in the United States against interracial marriage during the hundred years after the Civil War. Questions of interstate comity and racial identity, though not both involved in every miscegenation case, would remain issues in many such cases as long as laws against interracial marriage remained in effect. Only in 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia and declared such laws unconstitutional, would the boundaries of race and place no longer have any bearing on the law …

Jack Johnson: Reluctant Hero Of The Black Community, Denise C. Morgan

Akron Law Review

The difficulties which both White and Black Americans had with Jack Johnson, the first Black man to win the world heavyweight boxing championship, resulted from his status as a reluctant hero. Johnson was hated by White Americans for exhibiting a strong sense of individuality, for excelling in a sport that had previously been closed to men of his race, and for asserting his right to love the three White women whom he married. And although Black Americans admired his courage and felt vindicated by his success in the ring, they were troubled by the ways that Johnson’s uncompromising individuality distanced …

From Rights To Resources: The Southern Federal District Courts And The Transformation Of Civil Rights In Education, 1968-1974, Charles L. Zelden

Akron Law Review

This situation would change. Seemingly out of nowhere, and in a very short period of time, the federal courts transformed the concept of civil rights, taking it in a new and expansive direction almost impossible to predict a mere decade before. Reinterpreting a mix of government laws, regulations and past judicial orders, the courts, along with other branches of the federal government, began to reallocate social and economic resources such as access to education, jobs, political power and housing away from the majority toward the social margins. By 1974, a system of governmnt-ordered, race and gender-based, redistributive remedies to the …

Affirmative Action For The Master Class: The Creation Of The Proslavery Constitution, Paul Finkelman

Akron Law Review

The Constitution of 1787 was a proslavery document, designed to prevent any national assault on slavery, while at the same time structured to protect the interests of slaveowners at the expense of African Americans and their antislavery white allies. To understand this earliest form of affirmative action, I begin with a view of the Constitution first articulated by the great abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and then turn to an examination of the Convention that wrote the Constitution and the document that convention produced.

Teaching Slavery In American Constitutional Law, Paul Finkelman

Akron Law Review

From 1787 until the Civil War, slavery was probably the single most important economic institution in the United States. On the eve of the Civil War, slave property was worth at least two billion dollars. In the aggregate, the value of all the slaves in the United States exceeded the total value of all the nations railroads or all its factories. Slavery led to two major political compromises of the antebellum period, as well as to the most politically divisive Supreme Court decision in our history. Vast amounts of political and legal energy went into dealing with the institution. It …

Hate Crimes And The Need For Stronger Federal Legislation, Troy A. Scotting

Akron Law Review

This Comment focuses on the HCPA, concluding that such legislation is necessary to help combat the onslaught of hate crimes in America. Part II focuses on the problem of hate crimes, including the incidence of hate crimes, the characteristics of hate crimes, and the effects of hate crimes on the individual and the community. Part III examines state legislation concerning hate crimes, including the rise of hate crimes legislation, and treatment by the Supreme Court. In Parts IV and V, this Comment examines current federal legislation and the recently proposed HCPA. Part VI looks at the proposed extension of federal …

Acknowledgments

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

The 2014 Farm Bill: Farm Subsidies And Food Oppression, Andrea Freeman

Seattle University Law Review

The 2014 Farm Bill ushered in some significant and surprising changes. One of these was that it rendered the identity of all the recipients of farm subsidies secret. Representative Larry Combest, who is now a lobbyist for agribusiness, first introduced a secrecy provision into the bill in 2000. The provision, however, only applied to subsidies made in the form of crop insurance. Until 2014, the majority of subsidies were direct payments and the identity of the people who received them was public information. In fact, the Environmental Working Group’s release of the list of recipients led to a series of …

From Slavery To Obama: The Affirmative Action Revolution, Tanya Washington

Tanya Monique Washington

No abstract provided.

Jurisprudential Ties That Blind: The Means To Ending Affirmative Action, Tanya M. Washington

Tanya Monique Washington

No abstract provided.

Welfare Reform In A Global Economy, 11 J. Gender Race & Just. 209 (2008), Steven D. Schwinn

Steven D. Schwinn

No abstract provided.

Segregation In The Chicago Metropolitan Area: Some Immediate Measures To Reverse This Impediment To Fair Housing (2013), F. Willis Caruso

F. Willis Caruso

No abstract provided.

“You've Got To Be Carefully Taught”: Justifying Affirmative Action After Croson And Adarand, 74 N.C. L. Rev. 1141 (1996), Donald L. Beschle

Donald L. Beschle

In this Article Professor Beschle assesses the continuing legitimacy of affirmative action as a governmental response to racial discrimination. The author begins with a historical review of Supreme Court decisions in which the Court has determined the circumstances under which affirmative action programs are permissible. Next, Professor Beschle surveys the views of contemporary social scientists who contend that racial bias is an instinctive human characteristic, rather than simply a learned attitude. Finally, the author considers the implications of the work of these theorists for the future of affirmative action. Professor Beschle concludes that the ongoing need for governmental action to …

Richard Delgado And Ice Cube: Brothers In Arms, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

Critical Race Theory as a movement is best understood through the lens of founding voice Richard Delgado. Delgado’s prolific and fearless writings have inspired thousands and launched theories that have literally changed the course of race law in the United States. In fact, two explosive movements were born in the United States in the 1970s. While the founding of both movements was humble and lightly noticed, both grew to become global phenomena that have profoundly changed the world. Founded by prescient agitators, these two movements were borne of disaffect, disappointment, and near desperation — a desperate need to give voice …

The Cairo Experience: Civil Rights Litigation In A Racial Powder Keg, 61 Or. L. Rev. 285 (1982), Michael P. Seng

Michael P. Seng

No abstract provided.

Counseling A Victim Of Racial Discrimination In A Fair Housing Case, 26 J. Marshall L. Rev. 53 (1992), Michael P. Seng, Jay Einhorn, Merilyn D. Brown

Michael P. Seng

No abstract provided.

How The Border Crossed Us: Filling The Gap Between Plume V. Seward And The Dispossession Of Mexican Landowners In California After 1848, 52 Clev. St. L. Rev. 297 (2005), Kim D. Chanbonpin

Kim D. Chanbonpin

No abstract provided.

Truth Stories: Credibility Determinations At The Illinois Torture Inquiry And Relief Commission, 45 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 1085 (2014), Kim D. Chanbonpin

Kim D. Chanbonpin

This is the first scholarly Article to investigate the inner workings of the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (“TIRC”). The TIRC was established by statute in 2009 to provide legal redress for victims of police torture. Prisoners who claim that their convictions were based on confessions coerced by police torture can utilize the procedures available at the TIRC to obtain judicial review of their cases. For those who have exhausted all appeals and post-conviction remedies, the TIRC represents the tantalizing promise of justice long denied. To be eligible for relief, however, the claimant must first meet the TIRC’s strict …

Restricting Hate Speech Against Private Figures: Lessons In Power-Based Censorship From Defamation Law, Victor C. Romero

Victor C. Romero

This article examines the debate between those who favor greater protection for minorities vulnerable to hate speech and First Amendment absolutists who are skeptical of any burdens on pure speech. The author also provides another perspective on the debate by highlighting the "public/private figure" distinction as an area within First Amendment law that acknowledges differences in power, a construct anti-hate speech advocates should use to further their cause. Specifically, the author places the "public/private figure" division in a theoretical and historical context and then provides empirical support for the thesis that whites enjoy a more prominent societal role and greater …

Transformation: Turning Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act Into Something It Is Not, J. Christian Adams

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Testing, Discrimination, And Opportunity: A Reply To Professor Harvey Gilmore, Dan Subotnik

Dan Subotnik

This article was written as part of an ongoing dialog about the author’s previous article, "Does Testing = Race Discrimination?: Ricci, The Bar Exam, the LSAT, and the Challenge to Learning," which defended the Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, as well as defending testing more generally against charges of irrelevance, racial obtuseness, and most seriously, race discrimination. This article specifically responds to an article written by Professor Harvey Gilmore which focuses mostly on the SAT and the LSAT.

Voter Rights And Civil Rights Era Cold Cases: Section Five And The Five Cities Project, Paula C. Johnson

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.