Law and Race Commons^™

The Prison To Homelessness Pipeline: Criminal Record Checks, Race, And Disparate Impact, Valerie Schneider

Indiana Law Journal

Study after study has shown that securing housing upon release from prison is critical to reducing the likelihood of recidivism,1 yet those with criminal records— a population that disproportionately consists of racial minorities—are routinely denied access to housing, even if their offense was minor and was shown to have no bearing on whether the applicant would be likely to be a successful renter. In April of 2016, the Office of General Counsel for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued much anticipated guidance dealing directly with the racially disparate impact of barring those with criminal records …

Chaining Kids To The Ever Turning Wheel: Other Contemporary Costs Of Juvenile Court Involvement, Candace Johnson, Mae Quinn

Journal Articles

In this essay, Candace Johnson and Mae Quinn respond to Tamar Birckhead’s important article The New Peonage, based, in part, on their work and experience representing youth in St. Louis, Missouri. They concur with Professor Birckhead’s conclusions about the unfortunate state of affairs in 21st century America— that we use fines, fees, and other prosecution practices to continue to unjustly punish poverty and oppressively regulate racial minorities. Such contemporary processes are far too reminiscent of historic convict leasing and Jim Crow era efforts intended to perpetuate second-class citizenship for persons of color. Johnson and Quinn add to Professor Birckhead’s critique …

An Analysis Of The Legal And Practical Implications Of The Potential Increased Participation In Jury Service By Racial Minorities In The U.S. Criminal Justice System, Brian Keith Leonard

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Paradox Of Political Power: Post-Racialism, Equal Protection, And Democracy, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Racial minorities have achieved unparalleled electoral success in recent years. Simultaneously, they have continued to rank at or near the bottom in terms of health, wealth, income, education, and the effects of the criminal justice system. Social conservatives, including those on the Supreme Court, have latched onto evidence of isolated electoral success as proof of “post-racialism,” while ignoring the evidence of continued disparities for the vast majority of people of color.

This Essay will examine the tension between the Court's conservatives' repeated calls for minorities to achieve their goals through the political process and the Supreme Court's increasingly restrictive "colorblind" …

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 …

Race Discrimination And Human Rights Class Actions: The Virtual Exclusion Of Racial Minorities From The Class Action Device, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In the era of Jim Crow, racial minorities were segregated and excluded from participating in white society. Minorities were segregated in public schools, excluded from public accommodations, excluded from participation on juries, and excluded from living in certain areas. Harkening back to that earlier time, racial minorities now are often excluded from using the class action device to bring civil rights claims.

This paper argues that courts are very tough in how they handle class certification decisions in race discrimination class actions. On the other hand, the courts are quite lenient in how they handle class certification decisions in human …

The Uses Of History In Struggles For Racial Justice: Colonizing The Past And Managing Memory, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

In this Commentary, Professor Katherine Franke offers an analysis on Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic's California's Racial History and Constitutional Rationales for Race-Conscious Decision Making in Higher Education and Rebecca Tsosie's Sacred Obligations: Intercultural Justice and the Discourse of Treaty Rights. These two Articles, she observes, deploy history for the purposes of justifying certain contemporary normative claims on behalf of peoples of color: affirmative action in higher education for Delgado and Stefancic, and sovereignty rights for native peoples in Tsosie's case. Franke explores the manner in which stories of past conquest and discrimination contribute to contemporary conceptions of racial …

The Constitution And Racial Preference In Law School Admissions, Robert A. Sedler

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Victims Of Nimby, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

It is a syndrome, a pejorative, and an acronym of our times: NIMBY, or Not In My Back Yard. It has a political arm, NIMTOO (Not In My Term Of Office), an object of attack, LULUs (Locally Undesired Land Uses), and an extreme form, BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone). Acronyms aside, however, the question remains as to whether or not NIMBY has victims. Is anyone hurt by NIMBY?

Many leading voices in the environmental justice movement believe that minority communities are victims of NIMBY. For example, Professor Robert D. Bullard has written that "[t]he cumulative effect of not-in-my-backyard …