Legal History Commons^™

Going Forward: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions And The Broader Construction Of Society, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review

The third annual EPOCH symposium, a partnership between the Seattle University Law Review and the Black Law Student Association took place in late summer 2023 at the Seattle University School of Law. It was intended to uplift and amplify Black voices and ideas, and those of allies in the legal community. Prompted by the swell of public outcry surrounding ongoing police violence against the Black community, the EPOCH partnership marked a commitment to antiracism imperatives and effectuating change for the Black community. The published symposium in this volume encompasses some, but not all, the ideas and vision detailed in the …

Race Ethics: Colorblind Formalism And Color-Coded Pragmatism In Lawyer Regulation, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

The recent, high-profile civil and criminal trials held in the aftermath of the George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery murders, the Kyle Rittenhouse killings, and the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally violence renew debate over race, representation, and ethics in the U.S. civil and criminal justice systems. For civil rights lawyers, prosecutors, and criminal defense attorneys, neither the progress of post-war civil rights movements and criminal justice reform campaigns nor the advance of Critical Race Theory and social movement scholarship have resolved the debate over the use of race in pretrial, trial, and appellate advocacy, and in the lawyering process more …

How The “Black Criminal” Stereotype Shapes Black People’S Psychological Experience Of Policing: Evidence Of Stereotype Threat And Remaining Questions, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Cultural stereotypes that link Black race to crime in the U.S. originated in and are perpetuated by policies that result in the disproportionate criminalization and punishment of Black people. The scientific record is replete with evidence that these stereotypes impact perceivers’ perceptions, information processing, and decision-making in ways that produce more negative criminal legal outcomes for Black people than White people. However, relatively scant attention has been paid to understanding how situations that present a risk of being evaluated through the lens of crime-related stereotypes also directly affect Black people. In this article, I consider one situation in particular: encounters …

Color Of Creatorship - Author's Response, Anjali Vats

Articles

This essay is the author's response to three reviews of The Color of Creatorship written by notable intellectual property scholars and published in the IP Law Book Review.

How In The World Could They Reach That Conclusion?, Hon. Carlton Reeves

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Truth And Reconciliation: The Ku Klux Klan Hearings Of 1871 And The Genesis Of Section 1983, Tiffany R. Wright, Ciarra N. Carr, Jade W.P. Gasek

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Over the course of seven months in 1871, Congress did something extraordinary for the time: It listened to Black people. At hearings in Washington, D.C. and throughout the former Confederate states, Black women and men—who just six years earlier were enslaved and barred from testifying in Southern courts—appeared before Congress to tell their stories. The stories were heartbreaking. After experiencing the joy of Emancipation and the initial hope of Reconstruction, they had been subjected to unspeakable horror at the hands of white terrorists. They had been raped and sexually humiliated. Their children and spouses murdered. They had been savagely beaten …

Whiteness As Contract, Marissa Jackson Sow

Faculty Publications

2020 forced scholars, policymakers, and activists alike to grapple with the impact of “twin pandemics”—the COVID-19 pandemic, which has devastated Black and Indigenous communities, and the scourge of structural and physical state violence against those same communities—on American society. As atrocious acts of anti-Black violence and harassment by law enforcement officers and white civilians are captured on recording devices, the gap between Black people’s human and civil rights and their living conditions has become readily apparent. Less visible human rights abuses camouflaged as private commercial matters, and thus out of the reach of the state, are also increasingly exposed as …

Law School News: Rwu Law Introduces Required Course On Race And The Law 06/28/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Bright Anniversaries In Uncertain Times 10/06/2020, Nicole Dyszlewski, Louisa Fredey

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Color Of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, And The Making Of Americans (Introduction), Anjali Vats

Book Chapters

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW, the body of legal doctrine and practice that governs the ownership of information, is animated by a dichotomy of creatorship and infringement. In the most often repeated narratives of creatorship/infringement in the United States, the former produces a social and economic good while the latter works against the production of that social and economic good. Creators, those individuals whose work is deemed protectable under copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, and unfair competition law, create valuable products that contribute to economic growth and public knowledge. Infringers, those individuals who use the work of creators without their permission, steal …

Not Yet America's Best Idea: Law, Inequality, And Grand Canyon National Park, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Even the nation’s most cherished and protected public lands are not spaces apart from the workings of law, politics, and power. This Essay explores that premise in the context of Grand Canyon National Park. On the occasion of the Park’s 100th Anniversary, it examines how law — embedded in a political economy committed to rapid growth and development in the southwestern United States — facilitated the violent displacement of indigenous peoples and entrenched racialized inequalities in the surrounding region. It also explores law’s shortcomings in the context of sexual harassment and discrimination within the Park. The Essay concludes by suggesting …

'Race, Racism, And American Law': A Seminar From The Indigenous, Black, And Immigrant Legal Perspectives, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Flagrant racism has characterized the Trump era from the onset. Beginning with the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has inflamed long-festering racial wounds and unleashed White supremacist reaction to the nation’s first Black President, in the process destabilizing our sense of the nation’s racial progress and upending core principles of legality, equality, and justice. As law professors, we sought to rise to these challenges and prepare the next generation of lawyers to succeed in a different and more polarized future. Our shared commitment resulted in a new course, “Race, Racism, and American Law,” in which we sought to explore the roots …

The Amazing Dorothy Crockett: How An African-American Woman From Providence Became, In 1932, The 7th Woman Ever Admitted To The Rhode Island Bar 05-14-2019, Michael M. Bowden

RWU Law

No abstract provided.

Acting Differently: How Science On The Social Brain Can Inform Antidiscrimination Law, Susan Carle

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Legal scholars are becoming increasingly interested in how the literature on implicit bias helps explain illegal discrimination. However, these scholars have not yet mined all of the insights that science on the social brain can offer antidiscrimination law. That science, which researchers refer to as social neuroscience, involves a broadly interdisciplinary approach anchored in experimental natural science methodologies. Social neuroscience shows that the brain tends to evaluate others by distinguishing between "us" versus "them" on the basis of often insignificant characteristics, such as how people dress, sing, joke, or otherwise behave. Subtle behavioral markers signal social identity and group membership, …

The Brandeis Thought Experiment: Reflection On The Elimination Of Racial Bias In The Legal System, Patrick C. Brayer

Faculty Works

This essay prompts the reader to engage in a thought experiment and consider their own limits in advancing the cause of; a legal system free from racism and bias, and lawyers are encouraged to use the experience of a young Louis Brandeis as a guide in this self-reflection. Specifically, this essay calls attention to the fact that Louis Brandeis started his legal career, at the same time when, and in the same place where thousands of African Americans were escaping persecution and traveling in search of economic and political freedom, yet he was publicly absent on issues of race. As …

Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Foreword, I make the case for an abolition constitutionalism that attends to the theorizing of prison abolitionists. In Part I, I provide a summary of prison abolition theory and highlight its foundational tenets that engage with the institution of slavery and its eradication. I discuss how abolition theorists view the current prison industrial complex as originating in, though distinct from, racialized chattel slavery and the racial capitalist regime that relied on and sustained it, and their movement as completing the “unfinished liberation” sought by slavery abolitionists in the past. Part II considers whether the U.S. Constitution is an …

A Painful History : Symbols Of The Confederacy: A Conversation About The Tension Between Preserving History And Declaring Contemporary Values 1-19-2018, Michael M. Bowden

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Courts In Creating Racial Identity In Early New Orleans, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing Kenneth R. Aslakson, Making Race in the Courtroom: The Legal Construction of Three Races in Early New Orleans (New York University Press 2014).

The racial history of New Orleans is unique among American cities, as is Louisiana's among the history of American states. In the antebellum period, there were more free people of color in New Orleans than in any other city in the South, and free people of color lived, and often prospered, throughout Louisiana. The presence of so many free people of color in New Orleans, and Louisiana more generally, arose from many factors, including the consequences …

Dedication To Freedom, Emily M.S. Houh

Freedom Center Journal

The articles in this issue of The Freedom Center Journal are timely challenges to the persistent efforts to undermine the American values enshrined in the Preamble of the Constitution and the body of the Constitution itself with its three Civil War Amendments.

The student editors of this volume intended the selected contributions to offer readers a nuanced view of our nation’s current identity crisis. The collection is offered in the hope that it will encourage further thinking and discussion about what it means to be part of the American experiment with democratic self-governance in an age of resurgent white supremacy.

The Thirteenth Amendment And Constitutional Change, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

This article builds upon remarks the author originally delivered at the Nineteenth Annual Derrick Bell Lecture on Race in American Society at NYU Law in November of 2014. The Article describes the history and purpose of the Thirteenth Amendment’s proscription of the badges and incidents of slavery and argues that an understanding of the Amendment's context and its Framers' intent can provide the basis for a more progressive vision for advancing civil rights. The Article discusses how the Thirteenth Amendment could prove to be more effective in addressing persisting forms of inequality that have escaped the reach of the Equal …

Introduction To The Workplace Constitution From The New Deal To The New Right, Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Today, most American workers do not have constitutional rights on the job. As The Workplace Constitution shows, this outcome was far from inevitable. Instead, American workers have a long history of fighting for such rights. Beginning in the 1930s, civil rights advocates sought constitutional protections against racial discrimination by employers and unions. At the same time, a conservative right-to-work movement argued that the Constitution protected workers from having to join or support unions. Those two movements, with their shared aim of extending constitutional protections to American workers, were a potentially powerful combination. But they sought to use those protections to …

Governing By Guidance: Civil Rights Agencies And The Emergence Of Language Rights, Ming Hsu Chen

Publications

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this Article asks how federal civil rights laws evolved to incorporate the needs of non-English speakers following landmark immigration reform (the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act) that led to unprecedented migration from Asia and Latin America. Based on a comparative study of the emergence of language rights in schools and workplaces from 1965 to 1980, the Article demonstrates that regulatory agencies used nonbinding guidances to interpret the undefined statutory term "national origin discrimination" during their implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Their efforts facilitated the creation of language rights, …

Legalized Lynch Mobs In The 21st Century: Racial Improprieties In The Death Penalty, Betsy A. Daniller

Betsy A Daniller

No abstract provided.

Dignité/Dignidade: Organizing Against Threats To Dignity In Societies After Slavery, Rebecca J. Scott

Book Chapters

This chapter is not an attempt to join the fractious debate over philosophical first principles or juridical first usages of the term 'dignity'. Instead, it explores the tight connection between the institution of slavery and the giving of specific meanings to the concept of dignity, in particular times and particular places. To explore the dynamics of the intertwined process of creating and drawing upon meaning for the terms 'dignity' and 'slavery', I examine two historical movements that emerged after formal abolition.

Pauli Murray And The Twentieth-Century Quest For Legal And Social Equality, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Thought Experiment, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Herewith, Justice Antonin Scalia's long lost dissenting opinion in Brown v. Board of Education.

Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Willie Morris was in many ways larger than life. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he moved with his family to Yazoo City, Mississippi at the age of six months. He attended and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where his scathing editorials against racism in the South earned him the hatred of university officials. After graduation, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. He would join Harper’s Magazine in 1963, rising to become the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history. He remained at this post until 1971 when he resigned amid dropping ad sales and a lack of …

Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Many in the legal academy have heard of Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness. It has been making waves. One need only attend any number of legal conferences in the past year or so, or read through the footnotes in recent law review articles. Furthermore, this book has been reviewed in journals from a number of academic fields, suggesting Alexander has provided a text with profound insights across the university and public spheres. While I will briefly talk about the book as a book, I will spend the majority of this …

Personae Non Suspect: Sexual Orientation Discrimination Under The Supreme Court’S New Anticlassification Regime, Chris R. Copeland

Chris R Copeland

As Perry v. Schwarzenegger seemingly makes its way to the Supreme Court, LGBT advocates are staking their legal claims around the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause – arguing for the designation of LGBTs as a suspect or quasi-suspect group. The desire for suspect class designation is in vain though. In the late 1970s, the Supreme Court closed the set of suspect and quasi-classifications, and the set will likely remain closed. Around the same time, the Court faced a series of affirmative action cases in which it was forced to choose between two approaches to equal protection: antisubordination and anticlassification. It …

Slavery And The Law In Atlantic Perspective: Jurisdiction, Jurisprudence, And Justice, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

The four articles in this special issue experiment with an innovative set of questions and a variety of methods in order to push the analysis of slavery and the law into new territory. Their scope is broadly Atlantic, encompassing Suriname and Saint-Domingue/Haiti, New York and New Orleans, port cities and coffee plantations. Each essay deals with named individuals in complex circumstances, conveying their predicaments as fine-grained microhistories rather than as shocking anecdotes. Each author, moreover, demonstrates that the moments when law engaged slavery not only reflected but also influenced larger dynamics of sovereignty and jurisprudence.