Law Commons^™

Technological Tethereds: Potential Impact Of Untrustworthy Artificial Intelligence In Criminal Justice Risk Assessment Instruments, Sonia M. Gipson Rankin

Faculty Scholarship

Issues of racial inequality and violence are front and center in today’s society, as are issues surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). This Article, written by a law professor who is also a computer scientist, takes a deep dive into understanding how and why hacked and rogue AI creates unlawful and unfair outcomes, particularly for persons of color.

Black Americans are disproportionally featured in criminal justice, and their stories are obfuscated. The seemingly endless back-to-back murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and heartbreakingly countless others have finally shaken the United States from its slumbering journey towards intentional criminal justice …

Can “Asians” Truly Be Americans?, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

Recent, tragic events have brought more attention to hate and bias crimes against Asian Americans. It is important to address these crimes and prevent them in the future, but the discourse on Asian Americans should not end there. Many non-Asian Americans are unaware or only superficially aware of the vast diversity that exists among us, along with the challenges posed by that diversity. Some have basic knowledge of the immigration and exclusion of Asian Americans, the internment of Japanese Americans which was upheld in Korematsu v. United States, and the “model minority stereotype”, but these are Asian Americans 101. This …

Racial Triangulation, Interest-Convergence, And The Double-Consciousness Of Asian Americans, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay integrates Professor Claire Jean Kim’s racial triangulation framework, Professor Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence theory, and W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of double-consciousness, all to examine the racial positioning of Asian Americans and the dilemmas we face as a result. To do so, this Essay considers the history of Asian immigration to the United States, the model minority and perpetual foreigner stereotypes, Asian Americans’ positioning in the affirmative action debate, COVID-19-related hate and bias incidents, and Andrew Yang’s 2020 Democratic presidential candidacy. The Essay examines how racial stereotypes of Asian Americans have emerged through historical cycles of valorization and ostracism, as …

Bad Apples Or A Rotten Tree: Ameliorating The Double Pandemic Of Covid-19 And Racial Economic Inequality, Nathalie Martin

Faculty Scholarship

Black Lives Matter signs pepper our rural, middle class neighborhood. The lawn signs raise a fundamental question: if Black Lives Matter, what will it take to reverse the longstanding trend that has left many dead and so many others, perhaps all others, suffering? What will it take to create some semblance of equality and equity across racial lines in America?

Part I of this essay discusses race and Covid 19. It reviews and updates statistics on Covid deaths and race, and discusses some of the reasons for the racial disparities in Covid deaths. Part II briefly reviews the stratification of …

The Role Of Lawyers In Bridging The Gap Between The Robust Federal Rights To Education And Relatively Low Education Outcomes In Guatemala, Maryam Ahranjani

Faculty Scholarship

Relative to other countries in the world and in Central America, the Guatemalan Constitution and the federal education law include a robust and detailed right to education. However, literacy rates and secondary educational attainment, particularly for Indigenous people and young women living in rural communities, remain low. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated disparities. Once children return to schools after the pandemic, the gaps will be even larger. Lawyers can play a critical role in making the strong Constitutional right to education more meaningful.

Is It Time To Revisit Qualified Immunity?, Joseph A. Schremmer, Sean M. Mcgivern

Faculty Scholarship

The right to sue and defend in the courts of the several states are essential privileges of citizenship. Eight generations ago, this right was unavailable to black people, because descendants of African slaves were never intended to be citizens. Then, and for years to come, local governments failed to protect African Americans from violence and discrimination and were sometimes complicit in those violations.

Qualified immunity was born in 1982 when the Supreme Court decided Harlow v. Fitzgerald. With an outflow of questionable court decisions shielding officers solely because they act under color of state law, it is time for the …

Civil Rights In Living Color, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

This Article will examine how American civil rights law has treated “color” discrimination and differentiated it from “race” discrimination. It is a comprehensive analysis of the changing legal meaning of “color” discrimination throughout American history. The Article will cover views of “color” in the antebellum era, Reconstruction laws, early equal protection cases, the U.S. Census, modern civil rights statutes, and in People v. Bridgeforth—a landmark 2016 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals. First, the Article will lay out the complex relationship between race and color and discuss the phenomenon of colorism—oppression based on skin color—as differentiated from …

Flint Drinking Water Contamination: Frames Of Reference, Clifford J. Villa

Faculty Scholarship

Presentation given at Harvard Law School on Flint, Michigan, lead toxicity and what we can do as a matter of law.