Law and Society Commons^™

Injustice Is An Underlying Condition, Yael Cannon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Race, poverty, and zip code serve as critical determinants of a person's health. Research showed the links between these factors and poor health and mortality before COVID-19, and they have only been amplified during this pandemic.

People of color experience higher rates of asthma, heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. People of color who live in poverty are even more likely to suffer from poor health; they face a “double burden” of health disparities associated with both racial and socioeconomic marginalization. Neighborhoods with concentrated poverty and with residents who are primarily people of color have even faced a life …

The Costs And Benefits Of Affordable Housing: A Partial Solution To The Conflict Of Competing Goods, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, I extend a prior inquiry into the costs borne by society due to the lack of enough decent, affordable housing units. I previously outlined those costs and suggested a combination of public cost savings and public and private benefits that would accrue by providing that housing. I posited that the savings and benefits, in the aggregate, could at least substantially offset the costs and might even exceed them. If that is so, I queried, why has society not produced the needed units? In answering that question, I offered several possible responses: inadequate resources, racism, and public choice …

Affordable Housing: Of Inefficiency, Market Distortion, And Government Failure, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this essay, I examine the types of costs that are imposed on society as a whole due to the absence of a sufficient number of decent housing units that are affordable to the low-income population. These costs present themselves in relation to health care, education, employment, productivity, homelessness, and incarceration. Some of the costs are direct expenditures while others are the result of lost opportunities.

My hypothesis is that these costs are significant and offer, at the very least, a substantial offset to the cost of creating and subsidizing the operation of the necessary number of affordable housing units …

Community Lawyering: Introductory Thoughts On Theory And Practice, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There are several fundamental questions that one might ask in seeking the meaning of the term "community lawyer." Albeit somewhat theoretical, the most basic questions involve delving into exactly what is meant by the term "community." For what, exactly, is the community-lawyer lawyering? Further, once a client has been identified, questions will arise about how the lawyer should relate to that client and about the role the lawyer ought to play in assisting the client to achieve its goals. There is a long and rich literature concerning the latter question but a fairly sparse body of legal writing on the …

Middle-Class Black Suburbs And The State Of Integration: A Post-Integrationist Vision For Metropolitan America, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Despite the gradual move towards integration in the United States, segregated communities, divided along socio-economic and racial lines, continue to exist, and indeed have taken on new forms. Given the choice between racial segregation and integration as minority members of a community, some middle-class African Americans have chosen to create their own communities, thus forming the modern day middle-class black suburb. Now, majority African-American suburbs rest adjacent to majority-white suburbs, but the segregated communities share little but the town line.

In this Article, Professor Cashin addresses the timely and difficult question of whether the middle-class black suburb is a new …