African American Studies Commons^™

Nowhere To Run To, Nowhere To Hide, Praveen Kosuri, Lynnise Pantin

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As the COVID-19 global pandemic ravaged the United States, exacerbating the country’s existing racial disparities, Black and brown small business owners navigated unprecedented obstacles to stay afloat. Adding even more hardship and challenges, the United States also engaged in a nationwide racial reckoning in the wake of the murder of George Floyd resulting in wide-scale protests in the same neighborhoods that initially saw a disproportionate impact of COVID-19 and harming many of the same Black and brown business owners. These business owners had to operate in an environment in which they experienced recurring trauma, mental anguish and uncertainty, along with …

Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts

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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 Dose Of Color, A Dose Of Reality: Contextualizing Intentional Tort Actions With Black Documentaries, Regina Austin

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This article describes the way documentary films can provide important cultural context in the assessment of tort claims. This kind of contextual analysis exposes the social conditions that drive legal disputes. For example, in the case of Klayman v. Obama, Larry Klayman claimed that Black Lives Matter, among other defendants, was liable for various intentional torts (including intentional infliction of emotional distress) by fomenting hostility toward the police in black communities. The court dismissed the case but declined to hold Klayman liable for sanctions. One documentary film, I Am Not Your Negro, locates Klayman’s claims in a historical …

The Loving Story: Using A Documentary To Reconsider The Status Of An Iconic Interracial Married Couple, Regina Austin

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The Loving Story (Augusta Films 2011), directed by Nancy Buirski, tells the backstory of the groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, that overturned state laws barring interracial marriage. The article looks to the documentary to explain why the Lovings should be considered icons of racial and ethnic civil rights, however much they might be associated with marriage equality today. The film shows the Lovings to be ordinary people who took their nearly decade long struggle against white supremacy to the nation’s highest court out of a genuine commitment to each other and a determination to live in …

Intersectionality And Title Vii: A Brief (Pre-)History, Serena Mayeri

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Title VII was twenty-five years old when Kimberlé Crenshaw published her path-breaking article introducing “intersectionality” to critical legal scholarship. By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reached its thirtieth birthday, the intersectionality critique had come of age, generating a sophisticated subfield and producing many articles that remain classics in the field of anti-discrimination law and beyond. Employment discrimination law was not the only target of intersectionality critics, but Title VII’s failure to capture and ameliorate the particular experiences of women of color loomed large in this early legal literature. Courts proved especially reluctant to recognize multi-dimensional discrimination against …

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

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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 …

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

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No abstract provided.

Privacy Law: Positive Theory And Normative Practice, Anita L. Allen

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No abstract provided.

First Amendment Privacy And The Battle For Progressively Liberal Social Change, Anita L. Allen

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No abstract provided.

Associational Privacy And The First Amendment: Naacp V. Alabama, Privacy And Data Protection, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review (Paul Frymer's Black And Blue: African Americans, The Labor Movement, And The Decline Of The Democratic Party)., Sophia Z. Lee

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No abstract provided.

Book Review (Judith Kilpatrick's There When We Needed Him: Wiley Austin Branton, Civil Rights Warrior), Sophia Z. Lee

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No abstract provided.

Book Review (Risa L. Goluboff's The Lost Promise Of Civil Rights), Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hotspots In A Cold War: The Naacp's Postwar Workplace Constitutionalism, 1948-1964, Sophia Z. Lee

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No abstract provided.

A National Issue: Segregation In The District Of Columbia And The Civil Rights Movement At Mid-Century, Wendell E. Pritchett

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No abstract provided.

Race, Face, And Rawls, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Racial Dimensions Of Credit And Bankruptcy, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"The Shame Of It All": Stigma And The Political Disenfranchisement Of Formerly Convicted And Incarcerated Persons, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Of Predatory Lending And The Democratization Of Credit: Preserving The Social Safety Net Of Informality In Small-Loan Transactions, Regina Austin

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No abstract provided.

Privacy Isn't Everything: Accountability As A Personal And Social Good, Anita L. Allen

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No abstract provided.

''Step On A Crack, Break Your Mother's Back'': Poor Moms, Myths Of Authority, And Drug-Related Evictions From Public Housing, Regina Austin

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No abstract provided.

Interview With Michele Tuck-Ponder, Diankha Warren, Michele Tuck-Ponder, Legal Oral History Project, University Of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Legal Oral History Project

For transcript, click the Download button above. For video index, click the link below.

Michele Tuck-Ponder (L '83) has held many positions in law, government, education, media relaions, and the non-profit sector. From 1995 to 1997 she served as mayor of Princeton, New Jersey.

"Bad For Business": Contextual Analysis, Race Discrimination, And Fast Food, Regina Austin

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No abstract provided.

Interview With Regina Austin, Randy Lee, Regina Austin, Legal Oral History Project, University Of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Legal Oral History Project

For transcript, click the Download button above. For video index, click the link below.

Regina Austin (L '73), William A. Schnader Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, pursues her interest in the overlapping burdens of race, gender, and class oppression in traditional legal scholarship, as well as in her work on documentary films. She is the director of the Penn Program on Documentaries & the Law, which holds an annual Visual Legal Advocacy Roundtable for public interest lawyers, hosts screenings of law-genre documentary films throughout the year, and maintains a national repository of dozens of clemency videos as …

Of False Teeth And Biting Critiques: Jones V. Fisher In Context, Regina Austin

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No abstract provided.

"Not Just For The Fun Of It!" Governmental Restraints On Black Leisure, Social Inequality, And The Privatization Of Public Space, Regina Austin

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No abstract provided.

The Nature Of Blacks' Skepticism About Genetic Testing, Dorothy E. Roberts

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No abstract provided.

Genetic Testing, Nature, And Trust, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Nest Eggs And Stormy Weather: Law, Culture, And Black Women's Lack Of Wealth, Regina Austin

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No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of Blacks' Fidelity To The Constitution, Dorothy E. Roberts

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No abstract provided.