Law Commons^™

Why Judicial Reversal Of Apartheid Made A Difference, William A. Fischel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Did Buchanan v. Warley' have any practical effect on the economic well-being of black Americans? Michael Klarman argues that it did not, since the enforcement of racial segregation proceeded along other lines, such as regular zoning, racial covenants, informal discrimination, and unofficial violence. David Bernstein disagrees in part with Kiarman's conclusion. He argues that Buchanan v. Warley effectively made more housing available to blacks in urban areas, even if it did not promote racial integration.

I second Bernstein's conclusion by putting Buchanan in the context of the urban-economics theory of housing segregation. Because Buchanan helped blacks gain a foothold, albeit …

Race And The Court In The Progressive Era, Michael J. Klarman

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the second decade of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court decided four prominent (groups of) cases involving race. On each occasion, the civil rights claim won in some significant sense. One set of cases involved so-called peonage legislation-laws that coerced (primarily) black labor. In Bailey v. Alabama, the Court invalidated under the federal Peonage Act of 18672 and the Thirteenth Amendment an Alabama law making it a crime to enter, with fraudulent intent, into a labor contract that provided for advance payment of wages; the law made breach of the contract prima facie evidence of fraudulent intent, and Alabama …

Progressive Era Race Relations Cases In Their "Traditional" Context, Mark V. Tushnet

Vanderbilt Law Review

The pioneering African-American historian Rayford Logan called the early years of the Progressive era the "nadir" of race relations in the United States. Historians and political scientists who study the Supreme Court generally agree that Supreme Court decisions are rarely substantially out of line with the kind of sustained national consensus regarding race relations that Logan described. Professors Bernstein and Karman point to popular culture, including the roaring success of D.W. Griffith's epic Birth of a Nation attacking Reconstruction and defending the Ku Klux Klan, and elite opinion such as the flourishing of scientific racism to demonstrate that there was …

Predicting The Effect Of Italy's Long-Awaited Rape Law Reform On "The Land Of Machismo", Amy J. Everhart

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In 1996, the Italian Parliament enacted a new rape law, replacing a law written in 1936 under the direction of Fascist-era leader Benito Mussolini. While the old law classified rape as a crime against public morality, the new law declares it a crime against the person. That it took sixty years to reform the law is a reflection of Italy's long history of subordinating its women. That the law has finally been reformed is a reflection that those women have united to change that attitude. This Note discusses the history of the rape law in Italy and the role of …