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Articles 241 - 263 of 263

Full-Text Articles in Law and Race

Scholars' Reply To Professor Fried, Yale Kamisar, Lee C. Bollinger, Judith C. Areen, Barbara A. Black Jan 1989

Scholars' Reply To Professor Fried, Yale Kamisar, Lee C. Bollinger, Judith C. Areen, Barbara A. Black

Articles

As Solicitor General of the United States, Charles Fried, like any good advocate, was often in the position of attempting to generate broad holdings from relatively narrow and particularistic Supreme Court decisions. This was especially true in affirmative action cases. There, the Department of Justice argued that cautious precedents actually stood for the broad proposition that measures designed to put members of disadvantaged groups on a plane of equality should, for constitutional purposes, be treated the same as measures intended to stigmatize or subordinate them. The Supreme Court, however, has consistently rejected this reading of its precedents and the broad …


Interpreting Legislative Inaction, William N. Eskridge Jr. Oct 1988

Interpreting Legislative Inaction, William N. Eskridge Jr.

Michigan Law Review

This month the Supreme Court will hear reargument in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union on the question of whether section 1981 prohibits discrimination by private parties. In this article, Professor Eskridge addresses the issue of how legislative inaction should affect statutory interpretation. He begins by constructing a detailed analysis of the Court's legislative inaction cases, arguing that the case law is much more coherent than previous analysts have suggested. Professor Eskridge then considers Justice Scalia's critique of that case law and provides support for Justice Scalia's views by distinguishing actual and presumed legislative intent, arguing that, based on a conception …


Statutory Interpretation, Legislative Inaction, And Civil Rights, Daniel A. Farber Oct 1988

Statutory Interpretation, Legislative Inaction, And Civil Rights, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

This month the Supreme Court will hear reargument in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union on the question of whether section 1981 prohibits discrimination by private parties. Professor Farber identifies three issues which lie at the heart of Patterson: Must statutes be construed to conform to the intent of the drafters? Does legislative inaction provide reliable guidance to interpreters of statutes? And should the nature of the claim at issue - here a claim of civil rights - influence the interpreters? On this last point, Professor Farber argues that public values must be relevant to statutory interpretation and that judges …


Attacking The Judicial Protection Of Minority Rights: The History Ploy, John E. Nowak Apr 1986

Attacking The Judicial Protection Of Minority Rights: The History Ploy, John E. Nowak

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Disabling America: The "Rights Industry" in Our Time by Richard E. Morgan


Of Cultural Determinism And The Limits Of Law, Paul R. Dimond, Gene Sperling Feb 1985

Of Cultural Determinism And The Limits Of Law, Paul R. Dimond, Gene Sperling

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? by Thomas Sowell


Salt Survey: Minority Group Persons In Law School Teaching, David L. Chambers Jan 1982

Salt Survey: Minority Group Persons In Law School Teaching, David L. Chambers

Articles

In the summer and fall of 1981 we sent questionnaires to faculty members1 at all 172 law schools accredited by the AALS, asking questions about current numbers of minority group members and women on their faculties and about numbers of offers made and offers accepted, tenure decisions and denials, and resignations. Our principal goal was to measure the progress that has been achieved in adding minorities and women to law faculties. In this issue, we report on our findings about minority groups.


Britain, Blacks, And Busing, Derrick Bell Mar 1981

Britain, Blacks, And Busing, Derrick Bell

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Doing Good By Doing Little: Race and Schooling in Britain by David L. Kirp


Minority Preferences In Law School Admissions, Terrance Sandalow Jan 1980

Minority Preferences In Law School Admissions, Terrance Sandalow

Book Chapters

In addressing the subject of "reverse discrimination," I want to caution at the outset against permitting the use of the word "discrimination" to prejudice consideration of the subject. "Discrimination" has, in recent years, become a bad word. It tends to be used as a shorthand for "unjustifiably unequal treatment." In its original and still proper meaning, however, the word is quite neutral. Discrimination merely means differentiation. It comes from a Latin word that means "to distinguish." Accordingly, when we discriminate-i.e., when we differentiate or distinguish-among people, the propriety of our action depends upon the reasons that we have acted as …


Race And Sentencing Equality In Kentucky, Robert L. Hurley Dec 1979

Race And Sentencing Equality In Kentucky, Robert L. Hurley

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Disparity in sentencing felons based on racial considerations has long has been considered a problem for civil libertarians and scholars alike. Examining data gathered in Kentucky, this thesis addresses this issue through the application of recently developed methodological techniques. Utilizing an index of sentencing equality, this study shows that while differences do exist in black and white offender offense characteristics, these differences do not account for the variations in sentences rendered in cases of white as opposed to black felons. This exploratory research reviews and critiques previous research and provides evidence which should prove useful in resolving the problem of …


The Changing, But Not Declining, Significance Of Race, Thomas F. Pettigrew Mar 1979

The Changing, But Not Declining, Significance Of Race, Thomas F. Pettigrew

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions by William Julius Wilson


Racial Vote Dilution In Multimember Districts: The Constitutional Standard After Washington V. Davis, Michigan Law Review Mar 1978

Racial Vote Dilution In Multimember Districts: The Constitutional Standard After Washington V. Davis, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the effect-oriented standard for multimember-district vote-dilution claims is unaffected by the Washington intent requirement. Part I outlines the manner in which multimember districts can dilute minority voting strength. After summarizing Washington's intent requirement, Part II surveys the post-Washington vote dilution cases and demonstrates that the applicability of the intent standard to vote dilution claims is uncertain. Part III first suggests two ways in which White and Washington may be reconciled. That section then argues that White is unaffected by the intent requirement because the standard for vote dilution fits within a fundamental interest analysis …


Judicial Protection Of Minorities, Terrance Sandalow May 1977

Judicial Protection Of Minorities, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

In United States v. Carolene Products Co., Justice Stone suggested by indirection that there "may be narrower scope for operation of the presumption of constitutionality" when courts are called upon to determine the validity "of statutes directed at particular religious . . . or national . . . or racial minorities."' In such cases, he explained, "prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry."' Forty years later, …


Bakke: A Compelling Need To Discriminate, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1977

Bakke: A Compelling Need To Discriminate, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Two of America's most cherished values collided head-on a few months ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court began to come to grips with the most significant civil rights suit since the school desegregation cases of 1954. Arrayed on one side is the principle of governmental "color-blindness," the appealing notion that the color of a person's skin should have nothing to do with the distribution of benefits or burdens by the state. Set against it is the goal of a truly integrated society, and the tragic realization that this objective cannot be achieved within the foreseeable future unless race and color …


Proportional Representation By Race: The Constitutionality Of Benign Racial Redistricting, Michigan Law Review Jan 1976

Proportional Representation By Race: The Constitutionality Of Benign Racial Redistricting, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Wilson raises two questions that are basic to the use of "benign" racial classifications in drawing legislative districts. First, is there a constitutional right to proportional representation and, second, if there is no such right, are there circumstances under which a scheme devised to provide proportional representation is constitutionally permissible. This Note will demonstrate that, while the Supreme Court recognizes the constitutional right of each individual to participate on an equal basis in the community's political process and to enjoy an undiluted vote, it denies any constitutional right of groups to proportional political representation. It will then show that the …


Affirmative Action: Hypocritical Euphemism Or Noble Mandate?, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1976

Affirmative Action: Hypocritical Euphemism Or Noble Mandate?, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was adopted in an atmosphere of monumental naivete. Congress apparently believed that equal employment opportunity could be achieved simply by forbidding employers or unions to "discriminate" on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin," and expressly disavowed any intention to require "preferential treatment." Perhaps animated by the Supreme Court's stirring desegregation decisions of the 1950's, the proponents of civil rights legislation made "color-blindness" the rallying cry of the hour. Today we know better. The dreary statistics, so familiar to anyone who works in this field, tell the story. …


Preferential Remedies For Employment Discrimination, Harry T. Edwards, Barry L. Zaretsky Nov 1975

Preferential Remedies For Employment Discrimination, Harry T. Edwards, Barry L. Zaretsky

Michigan Law Review

A basic thesis of this article is that much of the current concern about alleged "reverse discrimination" in employment ignores the reality of the situation. In Part I it will be contended that although color blindness is a laudable long-run objective, it alone will not end discrimination; thus, it will be argued that some form of "color conscious" affirmative action must be employed in order to achieve equal employment opportunity for minorities and women. The most effective form of affirmative action is temporary preferential treatment, and it will be asserted in Part II that such relief can be justified under …


Racial Preferences In Higher Education: Political Responsibility And The Judicial Role, Terrance Sandalow Jan 1975

Racial Preferences In Higher Education: Political Responsibility And The Judicial Role, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

Controversy continues unabated over the question left unresolved by DeFunis v. Odegaard: whether in its admissions process a state law school may accord preferential treatment to certain racial and ethnic minorities. In the pages of two journals published by the University of Chicago, Professors John Hart Ely and Richard Posner have established diametrically opposed positions in the debate. Their contributions are of special interest because each undertakes to answer the question within the framework of a theory concerning the proper distribution of authority between the judiciary and the other institutions of government. Neither position, in my judgment, adequately confronts the …


Packer & Ehrlich: New Directions In Legal Education, Richard C. Maxwell Mar 1973

Packer & Ehrlich: New Directions In Legal Education, Richard C. Maxwell

Michigan Law Review

A Review of New Directions in Legal Education by Herbert L. Packer and Thomas Ehrlich


Minority Enterprise, Federal Contracting, And The Sba's 8 (A) Program: A New Approach To An Old Problem, Michigan Law Review Dec 1972

Minority Enterprise, Federal Contracting, And The Sba's 8 (A) Program: A New Approach To An Old Problem, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

In partial response to the problems of the minority businessman, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has developed the 8(a) Program to channel government contracts to businesses owned by disadvantaged persons. This is accomplished through a procedure whereby the SBA contracts with another federal agency to provide that agency with goods or services, and then subcontracts that obligation to a qualified small business on a noncompetitive basis. The withdrawal of these contracts from competitive bidding has recently resulted in the institution of a number of federal court suits alleging inter alia that the 8(a) Program denies to whites the equal protection …


Effective Representation And Multimember Districts, Michigan Law Review Aug 1970

Effective Representation And Multimember Districts, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The Supreme Court has not decided a case involving an assertion of the claim that a multimember district denies the right of effective representation since Fortson and Burns. However, there have been several subsequent challenges in lower courts to the validity of such districts, and these challenges have generally failed because the factual evidence did not demonstrate conclusively that the voting strength of a legally cognizable racial or political element had been minimized or cancelled. In Chavis v. Whitcomb, however, a three-judge federal district court in Indiana found that the plaintiff had presented sufficient factual evidence to sustain …


Community Control, Public Policy, And The Limits Of Law, David L. Kirp Jun 1970

Community Control, Public Policy, And The Limits Of Law, David L. Kirp

Michigan Law Review

This Article deals with those two points of conflict-disputes about governance, race, and political power; and constitutional concerns, rooted in Brown v. Board of Education, about racially heterogeneous education. Both are central to understanding, and to giving content to, the disagreements about community control. The questions about power provide a context within which to understand the terms of the debate. The constitutional discussion suggests some inevitable judicial difficulties in resolving disputes that emerge from the debate. Such questions are increasingly before the courts, whose decisions may alter the bounds of acceptable conduct in ways that permit or deny the …


New York City School Decentralization, Barry D. Hovis Dec 1969

New York City School Decentralization, Barry D. Hovis

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The 1969 New York Education Act grew out of a movement demanding decentralization of the New York City school system. The ultimate goals of this movement were to: (1) encourage community awareness and participation in the development of educational policy, and (2) create sufficient flexibility in the school system to enable administrators to resolve the diverse needs of the varying communities within the city. Support for the plan arose out of more than a decade of dissatisfaction with the centralized system by educators, school administrators, and parents. Supporters of decentralization had pointed in particular to the failure of the centralized …


Comment On Powell V. Mccormack, Terrance Sandalow Jan 1969

Comment On Powell V. Mccormack, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

The rapid pace of constitutional change during the past decade has blunted our capacity for surprise at Supreme Court decisions. Nevertheless, Powell v. McCormack is a surprising decision. Avoidance of politically explosive controversies was not one of the most notable characteristics of the Warren Court. And yet, it is one thing for the Court to do battle with the Congress in the service of important practical ends or when the necessity of doing so is thrust upon it by the need to discharge its traditional responsibilities. It is quite another to tilt at windmills, especially at a time when the …