Law and Race Commons^™

Startup Biases, Jennifer S. Fan

Articles

This Article provides an original descriptive account of bias in the startup context and explains why litigation is eschewed and what happens when it is used as a mechanism to combat bias in the venture capital ecosystem. Further, this Article identifies two particular phenomena in the startup context that exacerbate gender and racial bias. First, homophily—the idea that like attracts like—abounds and has been part of the DNA of venture capital since its inception. The thick networks that developed as venture capital made its way from the East Coast to the West Coast were limited to an elite group that …

The Scarlet Letter "E": How Tenancy Screening Policies Exacerbate Housing Inequity For Evicted Black Women, Yvette N.A. Pappoe

Journal Articles

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unprecedented health and economic crisis in the United States. In addition to more than nine hundred thousand deaths in the United States and counting, another kind of crisis emerged from the pandemic: an eviction crisis. In August 2020, an estimated thirty to forty million people in America were at risk of facing eviction by the end of the year. Black women renters faced a higher risk of losing their homes than other groups. At the onset of the pandemic, the federal government implemented eviction moratoria to prevent the evictions of tenants who were unable …

Law School News: Welcome, Professor Bernard Freamon 04-20-2022, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Empty Promises Of Diversity Mou's: How The Fcc Can Strengthen Commitments To Racial Equity, Jeleesa Omala

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

African Americans have been systematically disenfranchised from nearly all sectors of American society since the country’s founding. As such, African Americans do not just perceive the problem of racial discrimination as a matter of personal prejudice but also a matter of survival. Without access to fundamental resources like higher education, healthcare, and economic opportunity, the quality of Black life decreases astronomically. The nation begins to equate being Black with being “less than,” and continues to disinvest in Black populations, which signals to Black people that their lives do not matter.

Nevertheless, determined Black entrepreneurs continue to fight to expand …

The Color Of Pain: Racial Bias In Pain And Suffering Damages, Maytal Gilboa

Georgia Law Review

For more than half a century, our legal system has formally eschewed race-based discrimination, and nearly every field of law has evolved to increase protections for minority groups historically burdened by racial prejudice. Yet, even today, juries in tort actions routinely consider a plaintiff’s race when calculating compensatory tort damages, and they do so in a manner that systematically results in lower awards to Black plaintiffs than to White. This Article examines this problem, zeroing in on the specific issue of racial bias in calculations of tort damages for pain and suffering.

The severity of a plaintiff’s injury is commonly …

Changemakers: To Empower And Amplify Lgbtq+ Voices, Michelle Choate

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: The Honorable Edward C. Clifton: Doctor Of Laws, Honoris Causa 05-17-2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

How The Supreme Court Can Improve Educational Opportunities For African American And Hispanic Students By Ruling Against Harvard College’S Use Of Race Data, Genevieve Kelly

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard has not only exposed ways in which Harvard College’s admissions office unfairly assesses Asian American applicants, but it has also revealed that Harvard’s fixation on race per se can disadvantage the very African American and Hispanic students best positioned to bring instructive and underrepresented perspectives to the college. The facts show that Harvard’s “tips” and “one-pager” system values African American and Hispanic students for their ability to boost Harvard’s racial profile more than for their actual experiences confronting racial discrimination. This Comment explains how, by ruling against Harvard (and without overruling Grutter or Fisher …

Affirmative Inaction: A Quantitative Analysis Of Progress Toward “Critical Mass” In U.S. Legal Education, Loren M. Lee

Michigan Law Review

Since 1978, the Supreme Court has recognized diversity as a compelling government interest to uphold the use of affirmative action in higher education. Yet the constitutionality of the practice has been challenged many times. In Grutter v. Bollinger, for example, the Court denied its use in perpetuity and suggested a twenty-five-year time limit for its application in law school admissions. Almost two decades have passed, so where do we stand? This Note’s quantitative analysis of the matriculation of and degrees awarded to Black and Latinx students at twenty-nine accredited law schools across the United States illuminates a stark lack of …

Ethics In An Echo Chamber: Legal Ethics & The Peremptory Challenge, Kayley A. Viteo

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Abstract forthcoming.

Going Beyond Rule 8.4(G): A Shift To Active And Conscious Efforts To Dismantle Bias, Meredith R. Miller

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

Scholarly Works

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 …

Models, Race, And The Law, Moon Duchin, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

Capitalizing on recent advances in algorithmic sampling, The Race-Blind Future of Voting Rights explores the implications of the long-standing conservative dream of certified race neutrality in redistricting. Computers seem promising because they are excellent at not taking race into account—but computers only do what you tell them to do, and the rest of the authors’ apparatus for measuring minority electoral opportunity failed every check of robustness and numerical stability that we applied. How many opportunity districts are there in the current Texas state House plan? Their methods can give any answer from thirty-four to fifty-one, depending on invisible settings. But …

Equal Protection Under Algorithms: A New Statistical And Legal Framework, Crystal S. Yang, Will Dobbie

Michigan Law Review

In this Article, we provide a new statistical and legal framework to understand the legality and fairness of predictive algorithms under the Equal Protection Clause. We begin by reviewing the main legal concerns regarding the use of protected characteristics such as race and the correlates of protected characteristics such as criminal history. The use of race and nonrace correlates in predictive algorithms generates direct and proxy effects of race, respectively, that can lead to racial disparities that many view as unwarranted and discriminatory. These effects have led to the mainstream legal consensus that the use of race and nonrace correlates …

Challenges And Opportunities: Intersectional Leadership In Law Schools, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In 2019, the Author organized with Maria Isabel Medina and participated as a panelist in the Roundtable on Intersectionality and Strengths and Challenges in Leadership at the Fourth National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference. This Essay is one of four in the cited article. The Essay summarizes the Author’s remarks at the Roundtable on contemplating a leadership role, the value of mentorship, and the profound impact that a woman of color as dean can have, simply by occupying that role.

Police Brutality And State-Sanctioned Violence In 21st Century America, Itohen Ihaza

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Misdemeanors By The Numbers, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan T. Stevenson

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent scholarship has underlined the importance of criminal misdemeanor law enforcement, including the impact of public-order policing on communities of color, the collateral consequences of misdemeanor arrest or conviction, and the use of misdemeanor prosecution to raise municipal revenue. But despite the fact that misdemeanors represent more than three-quarters of all criminal cases filed annually in the United States, our knowledge of misdemeanor case processing is based mostly on anecdote and extremely localized research. This Article represents the most substantial empirical analysis of misdemeanor case processing to date. Using multiple court-record datasets, covering several million cases across eight diverse jurisdictions, …

Law, Race, And The Epistemology Of Ignorance, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Philosophers and other theorists have developed the field of epistemology which is the study of human knowledge. Critical race theorists have begun to explore how epistemological theory and insights may illuminate the study of race, including the analysis of race and the law. Such use of epistemology is appropriate because theoretical work on knowledge can be used to advance one of the key goals of critical race theory which is to understand how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in America. In this regard, philosophers and other theorists have …

The Changing Student Body At The University Of Michigan Law School, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

Most of the content of the memo that follows has been previously published in the article "Who We Were and Who We Are: How Michigan Law Students Have Changed Since the 1950s: Findings from 40 Years of Alumni Surveys." T. K. Adams, co-author. Law Quad. Notes 51, no. 1 (2009): 74-80, available through this website. This memo provides more detail about changing entry credentials and about the great expansion beginning in the 1970s in the numbers of women students and of racial/ethnic minority students. It also provides information not in the article about the patterns over time in students’ …

Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mason

AI-DR Collection

Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.

This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …

Interview With Khaled Beydoun, Khaled Beydoun, Nina Mozeihem, Samuel Bagenstos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The following is a transcription of an interview with Professor Khaled Beydoun, conducted at the University of Michigan Law School on March 15, 2019. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Policing Corporate Conduct Toward Minority Communities: An Insurance Law Perspective On The Use Of Race In Calculating Tort Damages, Dhruti J. Patel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Courts commonly use U.S. Department of Labor actuarial tables, which explicitly take into account the race of the tort victim, to determine average national wage, work-life expectancy, and life expectancy. This practice has led to wide discrepancies between average damage awards for minority plaintiffs compared to white plaintiffs even if both plaintiffs are similarly situated. While recent legal scholarship criticizes the use of race-based tables and addresses the Equal Protection and incentive concerns such tables present, few courts have deviated from the explicit use of race in determining tort damages.

Though the use of demographic features, such as race, to …

Race Ipsa Loquitur, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The goal of this Article is to make the existence of invidious racial discrimination in the United States so palpable that it can no longer be denied. Part I argues that racial inequality is so pervasive, unconscious, and structural that it has simply become an assumed fixture of United States and is rarely even noticed. Section I.A describes the history of racial subordination in the United States. Section I.B invokes the concept of disparate impact to illustrate the continuing manifestations of invidious discrimination in contemporary culture. Part II describes the manner in which the culture nevertheless chooses to deny the …

Jury Selection In The Weeds: Whither The Democratic Shore?, Jeffrey Abramson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article reports on four federal jury challenges in which the trial judge or defendants retained the author to provide research on jury selection plans. The research shows a persistent and substantial loss of representation for African Americans and Hispanics on federal juries, even though no intentional discrimination took place. Problems with undeliverable jury summonses, as well as failure to respond to summonses, were the main causes of departures from the ideal of cross-sectional jury selection. However, a cramped understanding of what it takes for a defendant to prove that minority jurors were systematically excluded, as required by Duren v. …

What About #Ustoo?: The Invisibility Of Race In The #Metoo Movement, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

Women involved in the most recent wave of the #MeToo movement have rightly received praise for breaking long-held silences about harassment in the workplace. The movement, however, has also rightly received criticism for both initially ignoring the role that a woman of color played in founding the movement ten years earlier and in failing to recognize the unique forms of harassment and the heightened vulnerability to harassment that women of color frequently face in the workplace. This Essay highlights and analyzes critical points at which the contributions and experiences of women of color, particularly black women, were ignored in the …

Batson For Judges, Police Officers & Teachers: Lessons In Democracy From The Jury Box, Stacy L. Hawkins

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In our representative democracy we guarantee equal participation for all, but we fall short of this promise in so many domains of our civic life. From the schoolhouse, to the jailhouse, to the courthouse, racial minorities are underrepresented among key public decision-makers, such as judges, police officers, and teachers. This gap between our aspirations for representative democracy and the reality that our judges, police officers, and teachers are often woefully under-representative of the racially diverse communities they serve leaves many citizens of color wanting for the democratic guarantee of equal participation. This critical failure of our democracy threatens to undermine …

Section 2 After Section 5: Voting Rights And The Race To The Bottom, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Five years ago, Shelby County v. Holder released nine states and fifty-five smaller jurisdictions from the preclearance obligation set forth in section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). This obligation mandated that places with a history of discrimination in voting obtain federal approval—known as preclearance—before changing any electoral rule or procedure. Within hours of the Shelby County decision, jurisdictions began moving to reenact measures section 5 had specifically blocked. Others pressed forward with new rules that the VRA would have barred prior to Shelby County.

Criminal Justice And The Mattering Of Lives, Deborah Tuerkheimer

Michigan Law Review

A review of James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.

Reassessing American Democracy: The Enduring Challenge Of Racial Exclusion, Johanna Kalb, Didi Kuo

Michigan Law Review Online

American democracy is in trouble. Since the 2016 election, a sizable literature has developed that focuses on diagnosing and assessing the state of American democracy, most of which concludes that our system of government is in decline.[2] These authors point to the rise in party polarization, the increasingly bipartisan abandonment of the norms of the democratic process, the rise of populism, the degradation of the public sphere, and the proliferation of gerrymandered districts and voting restrictions to illustrate the breakdown. And while attributing varying levels of significance to these factors, a common theme is that American democracy, once stable, is …