Law Commons^™

Equal Protection And The Social Sciences Thirty Years After Mccleskey V. Kemp, Destiny Peery, Osagie K. Obasogie

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Blind Justice: Why The Court Refused To Accept Statistical Evidence Of Discriminatory Purpose In Mccleskey V. Kemp—And Some Pathways For Change, Reva B. Siegel

Northwestern University Law Review

In McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court refused to accept statistical evidence of race discrimination in an equal protection challenge to the death penalty. This lecture, on the decision’s thirtieth anniversary, locates McCleskey in cases of the Burger and Rehnquist Courts that restrict proof of discriminatory purpose in terms that make it exceedingly difficult for minority plaintiffs successfully to assert equal protection claims.

The lecture’s aims are both critical and constructive. The historical reading I offer shows that portions of the opinion justify restrictions on evidence to protect prosecutorial discretion, while others limit proof of discrimination in ways that …

What Can Brown Do For You?: Addressing Mccleskey V. Kemp As A Flawed Standard For Measuring The Constitutionally Significant Risk Of Race Bias, Mario L. Barnes, Erwin Chemerinsky

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay asserts that in McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court created a problematic standard for the evidence of race bias necessary to uphold an equal protection claim under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. First, the Court’s opinion reinforced the cramped understanding that constitutional claims require evidence of not only disparate impact but also discriminatory purpose, producing significant negative consequences for the operation of the U.S. criminal justice system. Second, the Court rejected the Baldus study’s findings of statistically significant correlations between the races of the perpetrators and victims and the imposition of the death …

Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber

Northwestern University Law Review

McCleskey v. Kemp, the case that upheld the death penalty despite undeniable evidence of its racially disparate impact, is indelibly marked by Justice William Brennan’s phrase, “a fear of too much justice.” The popular interpretation of this phrase is that the Supreme Court harbored what I call a “disparity-claim fear,” dreading a future docket of racial discrimination claims and erecting an impossibly high bar for proving an equal protection violation. A related interpretation is that the majority had a “color-consciousness fear” of remedying discrimination through race-remedial policies. In contrast to these conventional views, I argue that the primary anxiety …

Combating Discrimination Against The Formerly Incarcerated In The Labor Market, Ifeoma Ajunwa, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Northwestern University Law Review

Both discrimination by private employers and governmental restrictions in the form of statutes that prohibit professional licensing serve to exclude the formerly incarcerated from much of the labor market. This Essay explores and analyzes potential legislative and contractual means for removing these barriers to labor market participation by the formerly incarcerated. First, as a means of addressing discrimination by the state, Part I of this Essay explores the ways in which the adoption of racial impact statements—which mandate that legislators consider statistical analyses of the potential impact their proposed legislation may have on racial and ethnic groups prior to enacting …

Equal Protection And White Supremacy, Paul Butler

Northwestern University Law Review

The project of using social science to help win equal protection claims is doomed to fail if its premise is that the Supreme Court post-McCleskey just needs more or better evidence of racial discrimination. Everyone—including the Justices of the Court—already knows that racial discrimination is endemic in the criminal justice system. Social science does help us to understand the role of white supremacy in U.S. police and punishment practices. Social science also can help us understand how to move people to resist, and can inform our imagination of the transformation needed for equal justice under the law.

The Futile Fourth Amendment: Understanding Police Excessive Force Doctrine Through An Empirical Assessment Of Graham V. Connor, Osagie K. Obasogie, Zachary Newman

Northwestern University Law Review

Graham v. Connor established the modern constitutional landscape for police excessive force claims. The Supreme Court not only refined an objective reasonableness test to describe the constitutional standard, but also held that the Fourth Amendment is the sole avenue for courts to adjudicate claims that police violated a person’s constitutional rights in using force. In this Essay, we ask: What impact did this decision have on the nature of police excessive force claims in federal courts? To address this, we engaged in a qualitative examination of 500 federal cases (250 in the twenty-six years before Graham and 250 in the …

"Playing It Safe" With Empirical Evidence: Selective Use Of Social Science In Supreme Court Cases About Racial Justice And Marriage Equality, Russell K. Robinson, David M. Frost

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay seeks to draw connections between race, sexual orientation, and social science in Supreme Court litigation. In some respects, advocates for racial minorities and sexual minorities face divergent trajectories. Among those asserting civil rights claims, LGBT rights claimants have been uniquely successful at the Court ever since Romer v. Evans in the mid-1990s. During this period, advocates for racial minorities have fought to preserve earlier victories in cases such as Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and have failed to overturn precedents that strictly limit equal protection possibilities, such as McCleskey v. Kemp. Nonetheless, we argue …

Diversity Entitlement: Does Diversity-Benefits Ideology Undermine Inclusion?, Kyneshawau Hurd, Victoria C. Plaut

Northwestern University Law Review

Ideologies are most successful (or most dangerous) when they become common-sense—when they become widely accepted, taken-for-granted truths—because these truths subsequently provide implicit guidelines and expectations about what is moral, legitimate, and necessary in our society. In Regents of University of California v. Bakke, the Court, without a majority opinion, considered and dismissed all but one of several “common-sense” rationales for affirmative action in admissions. While eschewing rationales that focused on addressing discrimination and underrepresentation, the Court found that allowing all students to obtain the educational benefits that flow from diversity was a compelling rationale—essential, even, for a quality education. …

Mccleskey V. Kemp: Field Notes From 1977-1991, John Charles Boger

Northwestern University Law Review

The litigation campaign that led to McCleskey v. Kemp did not begin as an anti-death-penalty effort. It grew in soil long washed in the blood of African-Americans, lynched or executed following rude semblances of trials and hasty appeals, which had prompted the NAACP from its very founding to demand “simple justice” in individual criminal cases. When the Warren Court signaled, in the early 1960s, that it might be open to reflection on broader patterns of racial discrimination in capital sentencing, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) began to gather empirical evidence and craft appropriate constitutional responses. As …

Ocr's Bind: Administrative Rulemaking And Campus Sexual Assault Protections, Sheridan Caldwell

Northwestern University Law Review

During President Barack Obama’s Administration, significant light was shed on the depth of the United States’ campus sexual assault problem. As a result, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights increased enforcement of Title IX provisions by way of its 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter.” This Note argues that the Dear Colleague Letter was improperly enforced as if it were a formal legislative rule and was therefore illegitimate. Nevertheless, this Note contends that the preponderance of the evidence standard initially enshrined within the Dear Colleague Letter should be adopted through the notice-and-comment procedures President Donald Trump’s Administration promises in order …

Raped Abroad: Extraterritorial Application Of Title Ix For American University Students Sexually Assaulted While Studying Abroad, Brittany K. Bull

Northwestern University Law Review

Female college students who study abroad are five times more likely to be raped than their counterparts who remain on their domestic campuses. Students raped or sexually assaulted on or around campuses in the United States can seek a remedy under Title IX, which provides administrative and judicial remedies. Very few federal cases have ever addressed whether Title IX applies extraterritorially to allegations of sex discrimination occurring abroad, and courts have reached different results in these cases. Moreover, no federal circuit has ever addressed the issue. This Note explores whether Title IX applies extraterritorially to students raped while studying abroad. …

Rental Home Sweet Home: The Disparate Impact Solution For Renters Evicted From Residential Foreclosures, David Lurie

Northwestern University Law Review

At the end of the last decade, a drastic spike in residential foreclosures brought unprecedented attention to the damage that mass foreclosure often brings to primarily low-income, minority–majority communities. Much of this attention—in both the media and in the legal arena—has been devoted to homeowners disadvantaged by predatory loans and other unsavory practices. However, a recent body of scholarship has shown that the brunt of mass foreclosure often falls on renters, who often have little or no procedural protection from speedy and unexpected eviction from their homes, regardless of lease status or tenure. This Note argues that the Supreme Court’s …

Reforming School Discipline, Derek W. Black

Northwestern University Law Review

Public schools suspend millions of students each year, but less than ten percent of suspensions are for serious misbehavior. School leaders argue that these suspensions ensure an orderly educational environment for those students who remain. Social science demonstrates the opposite. The practice of regularly suspending students negatively affects misbehaving students as well as innocent bystanders. All things being equal, schools that manage student behavior through means other than suspension produce the highest achieving students. In this respect, the quality of education a school provides is closely connected to its discipline policies.

Reformers have largely overlooked the connection between discipline and …

A Free Speech Response To The Gay Rights/Religious Liberty Conflict, Andrew Koppelman

Northwestern University Law Review

The most sensible reconciliation of the tension between religious liberty and public accommodations law, in the recent cases involving merchants with religious objections to same-sex marriage, would permit business owners to present their views to the world, but forbid them either to threaten to discriminate or to treat any individual customer worse than others. Even if such businesses have no statutory right to refuse to facilitate ceremonies they regard as immoral, they are unlikely to be asked to participate in those ceremonies. This solution may, however, be forbidden by the law of hostile environment harassment. That raises a severe free …

War By Legislation: The Constitutionality Of Congressional Regulation Of Detentions In Armed Conflicts, Christopher M. Ford

Northwestern University Law Review

In this essay, Ford considers provisions of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which place restrictions on the disposition of detainees held in Guantánamo Bay. These provisions raise substantial separation of powers issues regarding the ability of Congress to restrict detention operations of the Executive. These restrictions, and similar restrictions found in earlier NDAAs, specifically implicate the Executive's powers in foreign affairs and as Commander in Chief. Ford concludes that, with the exception of a similar provision found in the 2013 NDAA, the restrictions are constitutional.

Opinions I Should Have Written, Judge Nancy Gertner (Ret.)

Northwestern University Law Review

In 1991, the Chicago law firm of Pope & John Ltd. established a lecture series at Northwestern University School of Law. The Pope & John Lecture on Professionalism focuses on the many dimensions of a lawyer’s professional responsibility, including legal ethics, public service, professional civility, pro bono representation, and standards of conduct. The Northwestern University Law Review is pleased to present the November 12, 2014 Pope & John Lecture by Judge Nancy Gertner.

Marriage-Based Immigration For Same-Sex Couples After Doma: Lingering Problems Of Proof And Prejudice, Anna Carron

Northwestern University Law Review

In 2013, the Supreme Court changed the lives of thousands of same-sex couples in America by declaring the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional in United States v. Windsor. This decision allowed same-sex spouses to receive the same marriage-based immigration benefits under federal law that “traditional marriages” had long received. Although this holding is a victory for binational same-sex couples, bias still exists in the practices U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) uses to evaluate the legitimacy of marriages. This bias manifests itself in the proof USCIS requires to show a relationship is bona fide, proof that often assumes …

Ties That Bind? The Questionable Consent Justification For Hosanna-Tabor, Jessie Hill

Northwestern University Law Review

Arguments in favor of religious sovereignty often emphasize the benefits of autonomy for religious institutions while ignoring the civil rights of individuals who belong to or work for those institutions. To justify intrusions on individual civil rights, proponents of strong religious autonomy generally rely on the concept of implied consent. According to this rationale, individuals willingly give up the protection of civil rights laws when they voluntarily join religious organizations. This Essay responds to one scholar’s account of the consent rationale as undergirding the Supreme Court’s recognition of the ministerial exception: Christopher Lund’s excellent article, Free Exercise Reconceived: The Logic …

Protecting Title Vii's Antiretaliation Provision In The Wake Of University Of Texas Southwestern Medical Center V. Nassar, Kimberly A. Pathman

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.