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Full-Text Articles in Law

Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum Jan 2020

Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

Racially polarized voting makes minorities more vulnerable to discriminatory changes in election laws and therefore implicates nearly every voting rights doctrine. In Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court held that racially polarized voting is a necessary—but not a sufficient—condition for a vote dilution claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court, however, has recently questioned the propriety of recognizing the existence of racially polarized voting. This colorblind approach threatens not only the Gingles factors but also Section 2’s constitutionality.

The Court treats racially polarized voting as a modern phenomenon. But the relevant starting point is the 1860s, …


The Superfluous Fifteenth Amendment?, Travis Crum Jan 2020

The Superfluous Fifteenth Amendment?, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article starts a conversation about reorienting voting rights doctrine toward the Fifteenth Amendment. In advancing this claim, I explore an unappreciated debate—the “Article V debate”—in the Fortieth Congress about whether nationwide black suffrage could and should be achieved through a statute, a constitutional amendment, or both. As the first significant post-ratification discussion of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Article V debate provides valuable insights about the original public understandings of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the distinction between civil and political rights.

The Article V debate reveals that the Radical Republicans’ initial proposal for nationwide black suffrage included both …


Police Violence And The African-American Procedural Habitus, Trevor George Gardner Jan 2020

Police Violence And The African-American Procedural Habitus, Trevor George Gardner

Scholarship@WashULaw

How should an African American respond to a race-based police stop? What approach, disposition, or tactic will minimize his risk within the context of the police stop of being subject to police violence? This Essay advances a conversation among criminal procedural theorists about citizen agency within the field of police-administered criminal procedure, highlighting “The Talk” that parents have with their African American children regarding how to respond to police seizure. It argues that the most prominent version of The Talk—the one in which parents call for absolute deference to police authority in the event of a police stop—may be as …


Teaching With Feminist Judgments: A Global Conversation, Susan Frelich Appleton, Gabrielle J. Appleby, Ross Astoria, Linda L. Berger, Bridget J. Crawford, Sharon Cowan, Rosalind Dixon, Troy Lavers, Andrea L. Mcardle, Elisabeth Mcdonald, Teri A. Mcmurtry-Chubb, Vanessa Munro, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Pam Wilkins Jan 2020

Teaching With Feminist Judgments: A Global Conversation, Susan Frelich Appleton, Gabrielle J. Appleby, Ross Astoria, Linda L. Berger, Bridget J. Crawford, Sharon Cowan, Rosalind Dixon, Troy Lavers, Andrea L. Mcardle, Elisabeth Mcdonald, Teri A. Mcmurtry-Chubb, Vanessa Munro, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Pam Wilkins

Scholarship@WashULaw

This conversational-style essay is an exchange among fourteen professors — representing thirteen universities across five countries — with experience teaching with feminist judgments. Feminist judgments are “shadow” court decisions rewritten from a feminist perspective, using only the precedent in effect and the facts known at the time of the original decision. Scholars in Canada, England, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, India and Mexico have published (or are currently producing) written collections of feminist judgments that demonstrate how feminist perspectives could have changed the legal reasoning or outcome (or both) in important legal cases.

This essay begins to explore …


What Would Mlk Do?: A Civil Rights Model Of “Good Citizenship” In Criminal Procedure, Trevor George Gardner Jan 2020

What Would Mlk Do?: A Civil Rights Model Of “Good Citizenship” In Criminal Procedure, Trevor George Gardner

Scholarship@WashULaw

Good citizenship and eager participation in police investigations would seem to fit hand-in-glove. The good citizen helps to enforce the criminal law, particularly if the physical safety of the citizenry is thought to be at risk. But as Bennett Capers argues in his essay, Criminal Procedure and the Good Citizen, this version of the good citizen—crafted and propagated by our nation’s highest court—falls into direct tension with the activist principles animating the Civil Rights Movement. For instance, Martin Luther King, Jr., insisted that the citizen not suffer from a cultural condition Capers describes as “too much respect for majoritarian …


Virtual Access: A New Framework For Disability And Human Flourishing In An Online World, John D. Inazu, Johanna Smith Jan 2020

Virtual Access: A New Framework For Disability And Human Flourishing In An Online World, John D. Inazu, Johanna Smith

Scholarship@WashULaw

While many commentators have noted the wealth and class disparities that emerge from the digital divide, disability adds another important lens through which to consider questions of access and equity. Online accessibility for disabled people has fallen prey to the same assumptions and impediments that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) addressing disability access in the offline world. Addressing these shortcomings requires a significant conceptual shift in our understanding of “access,” even among disabled people. Offline, the sidewalk or doorway hindered access to those who needed assistance walking or moving. Today’s virtual sidewalks and doorways complicate access in …


Financial Freedom Suits: Bankruptcy, Race, And Citizenship In Antebellum America, Rafael I. Pardo Jan 2020

Financial Freedom Suits: Bankruptcy, Race, And Citizenship In Antebellum America, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article presents a new frame of reference for thinking about how the federal government facilitated citizenship claims by free people of color in the antebellum United States. While scholars have accounted for various ways in which free black litigants may have made such claims, they have not considered how the Bankruptcy Act of 1841 enabled overindebted free people of color to reconstruct their economic lives, thereby restoring the financial freedom that was and continues to be an essential component of American citizenship. Relying on a variety of primary sources, including manuscript court records, this Article shows how six free …