Law and Race Commons^™

Lethal Discrimination 2: Repairing The Remedies For Racial Discrimination In Capital Sentencing, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

Journal Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

Race, Sex And Genes At Work: Uncovering The Lessons Of Norman-Bloodsaw, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (“GINA”) is the first federal, uniform protection against the use of genetic information in both the workplace and health insurance. Signed into law on May 21, 2008, GINA prohibits an employer or health insurer from acquiring or using an individual’s genetic information, with some exceptions. One of the goals of GINA is to eradicate actual, or perceived, discrimination based on genetic information in the workplace and in health insurance. Although the threat of genetic discrimination is often discussed in universal terms - as something that could happen to any of us - the …

A Defensible Defense?: Reexamining Castle Doctrine Statutes, Benjamin Levin

Publications

Recent years have seen a proliferation of so-called “castle doctrine” statutes – laws that provide home dwellers with more expansive self-defense protections if they resort to lethal force in confrontations with intruders. The passage of such laws and subsequent uses of the defense have captured the public imagination, prompting significant media attention, as well as skeptical and critical scholarship from the legal academic community.

Considering the current prevalence of castle laws and the often polarized nature of the debate concerning their application, this Article argues that it is important to excavate the doctrine from the culture wars rhetoric in which …

A Bittersweet Heritage: Learning From The Making Of South African Legal Culture, Stephen Ellmann

Articles & Chapters

This essay responds to Martin Chanock's argument that race tainted the entire enterprise of South African judging. It seeks to understand how that could have been so, and looks to such driving forces as whites' guilt, denial, identity-building, self-protection, and legitimation for explanations. Then it asks whether an institution so tainted should now be altogether abandoned as part of the rebuilding of post-apartheid South Africa. The essay answers that much should be changed, but that the existence of a judiciary laying claim to a special expertise and responsibility in interpreting law and protecting rights a key heritage of the old …

Historic And Modern Social Movements For Reparations: The National Coalition Of Blacks For Reparations In America (N'Cobra) And Its Antecedents, Adjoa A. Aiyetoro, Adrienne D. Davis

Faculty Scholarship

Most of the legal scholarship on reparations for Blacks in America focuses on its legal or political viability. This literature has considered both procedural obstacles, such as statutes of limitations and sovereign immunity, as well as the substantive conception of a defensible cause of action. Indeed, Congressman John Conyers introduced H.R. 40, a bill to study reparations, in 1989 and every Congressional session since, and there have been three law suits that have received national attention. This Essay takes a different approach, considering reparations as a social movement with a rich and under-explored history. As Robin Kelley explains, such an …

Historic And Modern Social Movements For Reparations: The National Coalition Of Blacks For Reparations In America (N’Cobra) And Its Antecedents, Adrienne D. Davis, Adjoa A. Aiyetoro

Scholarship@WashULaw

Most of the legal scholarship on reparations for Blacks in America focuses on its legal or political viability. This literature has considered both procedural obstacles, such as statutes of limitations and sovereign immunity, as well as the substantive conception of a defensible cause of action. Indeed, Congressman John Conyers introduced H.R. 40, a bill to study reparations, in 1989 and every Congressional session since, and there have been three law suits that have received national attention. This Essay takes a different approach, considering reparations as a social movement with a rich and under-explored history. As Robin Kelley explains, such an …

Race, American Law And The State Of Nature, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article advances a new theoretical framework to help explain and understand race and American law. In particular, the article argues that we can employ a philosophical model to attempt to understand what often occurs when the dominant group deals with persons of color. The article contends that when the dominant group acts with great power or lack of constraint, it often acts as though it were in what political philosophers have called the state of nature. Thus, this article argues that there is a tendency for the dominant group to act as though it were in the state of …

The Struggling Class: Replacing An Insider White Female Middle Class Dream With A Struggling Black Female Reality, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

“What is the appropriate role of former outsiders who are now on the inside?” I propose that the appropriate role for an outsider who is now an insider, is not to sprawl out on plush, white, crushed velvet sofas, sipping vintage wines or imported teas and nibbling at aged cheese and delicate crackers while enjoying being one among a quota or token few that made it to the inside. Rather, the role of a former outsider is to go to work from the inside to dismantle the house, shrewdly using available tools to remove the nails from the walls, loosening …

The Future Of Disparate Impact, Richard A. Primus

Articles

The Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano foregrounded the question of whether Title VIl's disparate impact standard conflicts with equal protection. This Article shows that there are three ways to read Ricci, one of which is likely fatal to disparate impact doctrine but the other two of which are not.

Negotiating The Situation: The Reasonable Person In Context, Lu-In Wang

Articles

This Essay argues that our understanding of the reasonable person in economic transactions should take into account an individual’s race, gender, or other group-based identity characteristics - not necessarily because persons differ on account of those characteristics, but because of how those characteristics influence the situations a person must negotiate. That is, individuals’ social identities constitute features not just of themselves, but also of the situations they inhabit. In economic transactions that involve social interaction, such as face-to-face negotiations, the actor’s race, gender, or other social identity can affect both an individual actor and those who interact with him or …

Introduction To The Symposium: The Politics Of Identity After Identity Politics, Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

The Essays in this volume seek to shed some light on the politics of identity after the 2008 Presidential election in which identity politics dominated. To explore how 2008 and its aftermath have shifted both academic and political debates, Professor Adrienne Davis invited scholars from a variety of disciplines who embrace diverse methodologies—political theory; cultural studies; history; and law. These authors explore identity politics as a field of academic inquiry; a cultural discourse; a legal claim; a negotiation of institutions and power; and a predicate for political alliances. Collectively, the Articles both develop new frameworks and intervene in old ones …

Pregnant Man: A Conversation, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher, Mary Anne Case, Elizabeth Emens, Berta E. Hernandez-Truyol,, Vivian M. Gutierrez, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Kimberly Mutcherson, Peter Siegelman, Beth Jones

Faculty Scholarship

I'm a law professor who works on gender, sexuality, and culture in the international and comparative context. That's my head working. In "real" life, my partner, Howard, and I have been engaged in having a baby together for several years, a project that came to fruition with the birth of our daughter Melina. Of course, such a project evokes intensely complex feelings and thoughts. Beyond a simple transposition of the personal onto the political, I feel so fortunate to have engaged in myriad conversations with a variety of friends and colleagues who think much more carefully about the family and …

From Reconstruction To Obama: Understanding Black Invisibility, Racism In Appalachia, And The Legal Community's Responsibility To Promote A Dialogue On Race At The Wvu College Of Law, Brandon Stump

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Note focuses on legal education in the United States and West Virginia in particular. Discussions on race, racism, and American law should take place in every legal classroom where race is relevant to the subject being discussed as a way to bridge gaps between communities. This is especially true for the West Virginia University College of Law ("College of Law"), which sits in the third whitest state in the country. The College of Law is the only law school in the state, and a majority of students at the College of Law are white and West Virginian. Thus, at …

Bobbitt, The Rise Of The Market State, And Race, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The importance of Philip Bobbitt’s seminal works is already being recognized as on par with such classics as Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. In these books, Bobbitt argues that the nature of the state is changing in a fundamental way in that our country is shifting from a nation-state into a market-state. Bobbitt's theories have profound significance for many areas of law which scholars are just beginning to explore. This article is seeking to fill a gap in the literature by considering the implications of his views in the area of race and immigration law. Specifically, the article contends that Bobbitt's theories …

Discovering Identity In Civil Procedure (Book Review), Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Personal, The Political, And Race, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay is a response to Richard Lempert’s Law & Society Association Presidential Address.

All In The Family, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi

Faculty Scholarship

Your essay “Pregnant Man?” highlights many significant issues concerning the intersection of law, gender, sexuality, race, class, and family. In an earlier article A House Divided: The Invisibility of the Multiracial Family, we explored many of these issues as they relate to multiracial families, including our own. Specifically, we, a black female-white male married couple, analyzed the language in housing discrimination statutes to demonstrate how law and society function together to frame the normative ideal of family as heterosexual and monoracial. Our article examined the daily social privileges of monoracial, heterosexual couples as a means of revealing the invisibility of …