Digital Commons Network^™

"No New Babies?" Gender Inequality And Reproductive Control In The Criminal Justice And Prisons System, Rachel Roth

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Hon. Steven C. Gonzàlez

Seattle University Law Review

At Seattle University School of Law’s Symposium on Racial Bias and the Criminal Justice System, students, faculty, judges, scholars, lawyers, and community members gathered to address racial disparity in the criminal justice system and to explore ways to keep the promise of our democracy that we all are equal before the law. Race, ethnicity, skin color, and national origin profoundly influence our legal structure and our liberty. The way that race influences perceptions and actions is critically important in the context of our criminal justice system—a system that changes lives, disrupts and protects communities, and represents a key part of …

“Like Wolves In Sheep’S Clothing”: Combating Racial Bias In Washington State’S Criminal Justice System, Krista L. Nelson, Jacob J. Stender

Seattle University Law Review

Despite their differences, both the majority and concurring opinions in Monday present new ways to address prosecutorial misconduct, deter the injection of racial bias into courtroom proceedings, and create substantively similar outcomes. Part II of this Note discusses the traditional prosecutorial misconduct test in Washington State, as well as the rules articulated by the Monday majority and concurrence. Part III discusses the implications of both the majority and concurring opinions, the primary differences in their approaches to deterrence, the degree of racial bias they require to warrant reversal of a conviction, and the discretion they afford the judiciary. Part III …

Methodological Issues In Biased Policing Research With Applications To The Washington State Patrol, Clayton Mosher, J. Mitchell Pickerill

Seattle University Law Review

Racial profiling violates the United States Constitution’s premise that all people are equal under the law, as well as the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that people should be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Racial profiling has been found to result from individual officer racism or stereotyping, from institutionalized biases, and from the organizational culture of law enforcement agencies. We begin this Article by discussing the history of racial profiling before proceeding to consider various studies from a select number of American jurisdictions. We then examine important methodological and theoretical issues in conducting research on racial profiling and racially biased policing, …

Actual Versus Perceived Performance Of Judges, Theodore Eisenberg, Talia Fisher, Issi Rosen-Zvi

Seattle University Law Review

Perceptions of judges ought to be based on their performance. Yet, few studies of the relation between perceived and actual judicial performance exist. Those claiming judicial bias should be especially sensitive to the relation between perception and performance. Judges perceived by the public or by the legal community as disfavoring a group may be regarded as biased, but that perception is unfair if the judges’ votes in cases do not disfavor the group. For example, it may be unfair to accuse an appellate judge of pro-state bias in criminal cases if the judge votes for defendants at a higher rate …

O.P.P.: How "Occupy's" Race-Based Privilege May Improve Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence For All, Lenese C. Herbert

Seattle University Law Review

This Article submits that Occupy’s race problem could, ironically, prove to be a solution if protesters grow more serious about exposing the injury of political subordination and systems of privilege that adhere to the criminal justice system. Privilege is a “systemic conferral of benefit and advantage [as a result of] affiliation, conscious or not and chosen or not, to the dominant side of a power system.” Accordingly, now that police mistreatment affects them personally, Occupy may finally help kill a fictitious Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that ignores oppression through improper policing based on racial stigma. Occupy may also help usher in …

The Impact Of Implicit Racial Bias On The Exercise Of Prosecutorial Discretion, Robert J. Smith, Justin D. Levinson

Seattle University Law Review

The Article is organized as follows: Part II provides an introduction to implicit bias research, orienting readers to the important aspects of implicit bias most relevant to prosecutorial discretion. Part III begins the examination of implicit bias in the daily decisions of prosecutors. The Part presents key prosecutorial discretion points and specifically connects each of them to implicit bias. Part IV recognizes that, despite compelling proof of implicit bias in a range of domains, there is no direct empirical proof of implicit bias in prosecutorial decision-making. It thus calls for an implicit bias research agenda designed to further examine how …

Slavery Revisited In Penal Plantation Labor, Andrea C. Armstrong

Seattle University Law Review

This Article argues that society must critically examine the types of labor we require our inmates to perform and prohibit the imposition of slavery, even when the enslaved is an inmate. Part II focuses on the text and history of Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment11 and argues that the Amendment’s exception allowing forced inmate labor is not as broad as it first appears. Part III examines the Eighth Amendment and how the imposition of slave status on inmates should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Lastly, Part IV applies these concepts to the history and operation of one such …

Preliminary Report On Race And Washington's Criminal Justice System, Task Force On Race And The Criminal Justice System

Seattle University Law Review

For this Report, the Research Working Group reviewed evidence on disproportionality in Washington’s criminal justice system and considered whether crime commission rates accounted for this disproportionality. We found that crime commission rates by race and ethnicity are largely unknown and perhaps unknowable, but that some researchers simply take arrest rates as good proxies for underlying commission rates for all crimes.We found that use of arrest rates likely overstates black crime commission rates for several reasons.68 But even if arrest rates are used as a proxy for underlying crime commission rates, the extent of racial disproportionality is not explained by commission …

Analyzing Stops, Citations, And Searches In Washington And Beyond, Mario L. Barnes, Robert S. Chang

Seattle University Law Review

Racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system is a fact. But the fact of racial disproportionality is the beginning and not the end of the conversation. The fact that blacks are overrepresented in stop, arrest, charge, pretrial detention, conviction, and incarceration statistics demonstrates only correlation and not causation. A number of commentators caution that disproportionality and the overrepresentation of blacks, Native-Americans, and Hispanics in Washington State’s prisons do not prove racial discrimination. Further, the fact of disproportionality at each stage of criminal justice processing does not prove that racial discrimination occurs at each particular stage. For example, the observed disproportionality …

Race Bias And The Importance Of Consciousness For Criminal Defense Attorneys, Andrea D. Lyon

Seattle University Law Review

This Article will begin with a discussion of race bias and will examine who in the criminal justice system has such biases. These concepts will provide a backdrop to the next Part, where I will turn to an analysis about the need for criminal defense lawyers to be conscious of race bias. I focus on two specific circumstances in which awareness of one’s own racial bias is imperative: interacting with clients and voir dire. But first, we must come to an understanding about the nature of race bias itself.

“If Justice Is Not Equal For All, It Is Not Justice”: Racial Bias, Prosecutorial Misconduct, And The Right To A Fair Trial In State V. Monday, Michael Callahan

Seattle University Law Review

This Note argues that of the three opinions from Monday, Washington state courts should follow Chief Justice Madsen’s concurring opinion. The Monday decision also raises three questions that none of the opinions adequately answer: who does Monday apply to, what conduct does Monday forbid, and what is the legal source of the rules from Monday? The court will have to answer these questions in the future to determine the scope of its new rules. Part II of this Note discusses how Washington courts previously addressed the issue of prosecutorial misconduct and appeals to racial bias in trials. Part …

Defending Profiling While Combating Racism: A Companion To Ogletree's Presumption Of Guilt, Amos N. Jones

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Procedure And The Racial Profiling Issue For Professor Gates And Sergeant Crowley, L. Darnell Weeden

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Just A Little Bit Of History Repeating: The California Model Of Marijuana Legalization And How It Might Affect Racial And Ethnic Minorities, Thomas J. Moran

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Burying Our Heads In The Sand: Lack Of Knowledge, Knowledge Avoidance And The Persistent Problem Of Campus Peer Sexual Violence, Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article discusses why two laws that seek to prevent and end sexual violence between students on college campuses, Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 ("Title IX") and the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act ("Clery Act"), are failing to fulfill that goal and how these legal regimes can be improved to reach this goal. It explicates how Title IX and the Clery Act ignore or exacerbate a series of "information problems" that create incentives for schools to "bury their heads in the sand" with regard to campus peer sexual violence. These …

And Death Shall Have No Dominion: How To Achieve The Categorical Exemption Of Mentally Retarded Defendants From Execution, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the Court’s categorical exclusion of mentally retarded defendants from execution and explores how trial courts should employ procedures to accomplish heightened reliability in the mental retardation determination; it maintains that if a mentally retarded defendant is subjected to a death sentence then the Atkins directive has been ignored. To satisfy the Atkins Court’s objective of protecting mentally retarded defendants from the “special risk of wrongful execution,” the article explores whether trial courts should engage in a unified, pre-trial competency assessment in all capital cases where the defendant asserts mental retardation as a bar to execution and how …

Amicus Brief Of The Defender Initiative And Washington Defender Association In Support Vs. Of Motion To Appoint Counsel, The Defender Initiative, Robert C. Boruchowitz, Counsel For Defendant

Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality

The Defender Initiative Amicus Brief

Baby Boomers At Work: Growing Older And Working More, Eve M. Brank

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

In the current chapter, I will first detail the legal framework for workplace age discrimination and court case examples that have largely mirrored race and gender discrimination law. Next, I will discuss the psychological research that details the consequences of age discrimination with a particular focus on the combined effects of stereotype assimilation and notions of deservingness of respect. Last, I will suggest that until we know the causes of age discrimination, we cannot legitimately address its consequences the same way we have addressed other forms of discrimination. Specifically, I will argue that legislating against age discrimination is inherently different …

Child, Please – Stop The Anti-Queer School Bullycides: A Modest Proposal To Hoist Social Conservatives By Their Own “God, Guns, And Gays” Petard, David Groshoff

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Causes, Consequences And Cures Of Racial And Ethnic Disproportionality In Conviction And Incarceration Rates: An Introduction, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This piece introduces Prosecution and Racial Justice, a panel discussion with Wayne McKenzie of the Vera Institute for Justice, by outlining the legal-historical context for reform strategies that detect and correct effects of racial bias in prosecutorial decision-making.

The Viability Of Multi-Party Litigation As A Tool For Social Engineering Six Decades After The Restrictive Covenant Cases, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

Six decades ago, a group of lawyers sought ways to overturn the racially restrictive covenants that were common across the United States. These restrictions on integrated neighborhoods were the first legal battleground of the civil rights movement using the courts of civil justice to remove what many thought were immoral restrictions on the rights of free people. The most famous of those cases was Shelley v. Kraemer, but the doctrine that emerged from that particular case was actually a series of separate, multi-party lawsuits in various locations, using teams of lawyers acting in concert with each other to achieve justice. …

The Family Law Canon In A (Post?) Racial Era, Shani M. King

UF Law Faculty Publications

While the debate about a post-racial society rages, our justice system continues to operate in a way that is race-conscious. It seems as though most of the discussion about race and the justice system concerns criminal justice, juvenile justice, education, and immigration. But race consciousness also impacts family law. Nonetheless, the family law canon does not scrutinize race-based disparities in laws, procedures, and outcomes, and that omission feeds a mistaken notion of a race-blind or a post-racial society. One consequence of this omission is that it obscures race-based decision making by legislatures, judges, legal reform organizations, legal scholars, lawyers, and …

The Fred T. Korematsu Center For Law And Equality And Its Vision For Social Change, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

The Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law takes its name and inspiration from Fred Korematsu. Entrusted with honoring and furthering his legacy, the Korematsu Center, although not speaking as or for him, constructs its identity through its activities as an actor in the legal community and more broadly in the public. The Korematsu Center is very self-consciously engaged in developing a distinct personality as a collective entity that exists not just as a collection of the individuals or projects within the center.

The Korematsu Center is constituted by its commitments, by what …

People V. Guardino: Examined On Appeal In People V. Hecker, Luna Droubi

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

¡Silencio! Undocumented Immigrant Witnesses And The Right To Silence, Violeta R. Chapin

Publications

At a time referred to as "an unprecedented era of immigration enforcement," undocumented immigrants who have the misfortune to witness a crime in this country face a terrible decision. Calling the police to report that crime will likely lead to questions that reveal a witness's immigration status, resulting in detention and deportation for the undocumented immigrant witness. Programs like Secure Communities and 287(g) partnerships evidence an increase in local immigration enforcement, and this Article argues that undocumented witnesses' only logical response to these programs is silence. Silence, in the form of a complete refusal to call the police to report …

A Conversation With President Obama: A Dialogue About Poverty, Race, And Class In Black America, Joseph Karl Grant

Journal Publications

The date is November 13, 2012.1 Just mere days ago, I received the invitation of a lifetime. Last night, I arrived in Washington, D.C. I am staying in the Hay-Adams Hotel on the third floor. I still cannot believe the extent of my life's journey. I have just been summoned to the White House by second term President-elect Barack Obama, who defeated Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for President on November 6, 2012. The 2012 Presidential Election was a hard-fought battle between Barack Obama on the Democratic side, and Mitt Romney on Republican side. The election was a like the …

Lawyers Suing Law Firms: The Limits On Attorney Employment Discrimination Claims And The Prospects For Creating Happy Lawyers, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

It is more than a mild irony that anti-discrimination law fails lawyers in particular. This article addresses doctrinal and pragmatic limits on employment discrimination lawsuits by lawyers against their law firms. It considers the failures of the Title VII template to remedy the sorts of discrimination and dissatisfactions lawyers face in the practice of law, and concludes that many of the things that make lawyers unhappy are simply not reachable through employment discrimination lawsuits. The latter portion of the article turns to the recently emerging science of happiness literature. It suggests that the interests of lawyers and their firms may …

Localities As Equality Innovators, Robin A. Lenhardt

Faculty Scholarship

This Article thus argues that instead of regarding cities and localities that, like Seattle and Louisville, try to develop serious solutions to existing racial disparities as "bad cities" no different from those whose notorious policies spurred the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, we should be regarding them as potential "equality innovators.” Their on-the-ground experience with the realities of race and its operation in the twenty-first century arguably places them in a better position than courts to develop innovative approaches to the structural racial inequities with which so many municipalities must grapple. Existing doctrine limits dramatically the ability …

Racial Epithets In The Criminal Process, Sheri Lynn Johnson, John H. Blume, Patrick M. Wilson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The evidence of modern bias is often difficult to document and, even when documented, still capable of racially neutral interpretations. In contrast, the use of racial epithets is neither subtle nor ambiguous. Prior to the research that generated this article and our representation of two clients whose cases involved racial epithets, we would have assumed that the use of a racial epithet by a decision-maker in a criminal trial would be rare, but that assumption turns out to be wrong. We also would have assumed that the use of an epithet by any of the decision makers would lead to …