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Full-Text Articles in Law
Postracial Discrimination, Girardeau A. Spann
Postracial Discrimination, Girardeau A. Spann
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Claims of racial injustice can be challenged by arguing that the culture makes it possible for minorities to compete with whites on a level playing field. Under this reasoning, racial disparities that continue to inhere in the allocation of societal benefits and burdens must be caused by the attributes of individual minority group members themselves, rather than by any invidious consideration of their race. The election of President Obama now gives this argument more apparent plausibility than it has had in the past. Indeed, if one were inclined to preserve the nation’s tradition of privileging white interests over the interests …
The Conscience Of A Court, Girardeau A. Spann
The Conscience Of A Court, Girardeau A. Spann
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The author explains his conclusion that the Supreme Court, as a matter of conscience, considers racial discrimination to be good for America. That conclusion, he argues, offers the only plausible account of the Court's repeated insistence on displacing populist efforts to promote racial equality with the Court's own, more-regressive, version of expedient racial politics. Although the Court has had what is at best a checkered history when called upon to adjudicate claims of racial injustice, until now, the contemporary Court might arguably have been accorded the benefit of the doubt. But after its five-to-four ruling in the 2007 Resegregation case, …
Unconscious Racism Revisited: Reflections On The Impact And Origins Of "The Id, The Ego, And Equal Protection", Charles R. Lawrence Iii
Unconscious Racism Revisited: Reflections On The Impact And Origins Of "The Id, The Ego, And Equal Protection", Charles R. Lawrence Iii
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Twenty years ago, Professor Charles Lawrence wrote “The Id, The Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning With Unconscious Racism.” This article is considered a foundational document of Critical Race Theory and is one of the most influential and widely cited law review articles. The article argued that the purposeful intent requirement found in Supreme Court equal protection doctrine and in the Court’s interpretation of antidiscrimination laws disserved the value of equal citizenship expressed in those laws because many forms of racial bias are unconscious. Professor Lawrence suggested that rather than look for discriminatory motive, the Court should examine the cultural meaning …
Terror And Race, Girardeau A. Spann
Terror And Race, Girardeau A. Spann
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The United States is now engaged in an internationally prominent war on terror. That war, however, is being waged in a way that threatens to cause the same types of harm to the democratic values of the United States that the Nation's terrorist enemies are hoping to inflict. Foreign terrorists are attempting to undermine the fundamental liberties that United States culture claims to hold dear. But those are the same liberties that our own government has asked us to forego in its effort to win the war on terror. The paradoxical irony entailed in the United States government's demand that …
Just Do It, Girardeau A. Spann
Just Do It, Girardeau A. Spann
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Racial injustice has always been a problem in the United States. The most salient victims of the Nation's discrimination against racial minorities have included indigenous Indians, Chinese immigrants, Japanese-American citizens, Latinos, and of course blacks. But as the current war on terrorism illustrates, under the right conditions, almost any racial group can come within the scope of America's discriminatory focus. It is common to suppose that that there is a difference between the progressive and the conservative ends of the political spectrum concerning the issue of race. However, those commonly accepted differences pale in comparison to the overriding similarity that …
Planet Asian America, Mari J. Matsuda
Planet Asian America, Mari J. Matsuda
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In forming the Asian Law Caucus, the elders - some of whom are here in this room - chose resistance. They created a space in which Asian Americans were in charge, deciding what mattered to them and what strategies worked for them. If someone else were in charge, things would have gone differently. Risks were taken, and victories were won that would not have happened using traditional litigation strategies or leaving the work to traditional civil rights organizations. It was important to create an Asian American space to do this work: to fight Chinatown evictions, to pursue redress for the …
Writing Off Race, Girardeau A. Spann
Writing Off Race, Girardeau A. Spann
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The constitutionality of affirmative action has now become one of the central topics in the politics of race. Ironically, the United States Constitution says absolutely nothing about affirmative action. The text never mentions the term, and the equal protection language in the Fourteenth Amendment simply begs the question of whether equality requires or precludes the use of affirmative action. The intent of the Framers is similarly unhelpful. We know that the drafters of the Fifth Amendment owned slaves, and the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment envisioned a racially stratified society. But the Fourteenth Amendment was itself an affirmative action measure, …