Law Commons^™

"Cerd-Ain" Reform: Dismantling The School-To-Prison Pipeline Through More Thorough Coordination Of The Departments Of Justice And Education, Lisa A. Rich

Lisa A. Rich

In the last year of his presidency, President Barack Obama and his administration have undertaken many initiatives to ensure that formerly incarcerated individuals have more opportunities to successfully reenter society. At the same time, the administration has been working on education policy that closes the achievement gap and slows the endless flow of juveniles into the school-to-prison pipeline. While certainly laudable, there is much more that can be undertaken collaboratively among executive branch agencies to end the school-to-prison pipeline and the endless cycle of people re-entering the criminal justice system.

This paper examines the rise of the school-to-prison pipeline through …

Today's Porn: Not A Constitutional Right; Not A Human Right, Patrick Trueman

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Executive Estoppel, Equitable Enforcement, And Exploited Immigrant Workers, Angela D. Morrison

Angela D. Morrison

Unauthorized workers in abusive workplaces have found themselves in a tug-of-war between federal agencies. On one side are federal prosecutors with the Department of Justice or Immigration and Customs Enforcement--who seek to criminally prosecute or deport the workers and treat the workers as defendants. On the other side are agencies like the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who have determined the workers are victims of workplace exploitation and deserve protection. This mixed message—protection from one federal agency and prosecution by another—is contrary to Congressional intent and undermines the enforcement of …

Executive Estoppel, Equitable Enforcement, And Exploited Immigrant Workers, Angela D. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

Unauthorized workers in abusive workplaces have found themselves in a tug-of-war between federal agencies. On one side are federal prosecutors with the Department of Justice or Immigration and Customs Enforcement--who seek to criminally prosecute or deport the workers and treat the workers as defendants. On the other side are agencies like the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who have determined the workers are victims of workplace exploitation and deserve protection. This mixed message—protection from one federal agency and prosecution by another—is contrary to Congressional intent and undermines the enforcement of …

Keynote Remarks, Vanita Gupta

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In communities across America today, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Flint, Michigan, too many people—especially young people and people of color—live trapped by the weight of poverty and injustice. They suffer the disparate impact of policies driven by, at best, benign neglect, and at worst, deliberate indifference. And they see how discrimination stacks the deck against them. So today, as we discuss the inequality that pervades our criminal justice system—a defining civil rights challenge of the 21st century—we must also acknowledge the broader inequalities we face in other segments of society. Because discrimination in so many areas—from the classroom, to the …

"Cerd-Ain" Reform: Dismantling The School-To-Prison Pipeline Through More Thorough Coordination Of The Departments Of Justice And Education, Lisa A. Rich

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In the last year of his presidency, President Barack Obama and his administration have undertaken many initiatives to ensure that formerly incarcerated individuals have more opportunities to successfully reenter society. At the same time, the administration has been working on education policy that closes the achievement gap and slows the endless flow of juveniles into the school-to-prison pipeline. While certainly laudable, there is much more that can be undertaken collaboratively among executive branch agencies to end the school-to-prison pipeline and the endless cycle of people re-entering the criminal justice system.

This paper examines the rise of the school-to-prison pipeline through …

Doj Clears Wilson But Excoriates Ferguson Police, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

A Cure Worse Than The Disease?, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

The pending challenge to section 5 of the Voting Rights Act insists the statute is no longer necessary. Should the Supreme Court agree, its ruling is likely to reflect the belief that section 5 is not only obsolete but that its requirements do more harm today than the condition it was crafted to address. In this Essay, Professor Ellen D. Katz examines why the Court might liken section 5 to a destructive treatment and why reliance on that analogy in the pending case threatens to leave the underlying condition unaddressed and Congress without the power to address it.

South Carolina's 'Evolutionary Process', Ellen D. Katz

Articles

When Congress first enacted the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965, public officials in South Carolina led the charge to scrap the new statute. Their brief to the Supreme Court of the United States described the VRA as an “unjustified” and “arbitrary” affront to the “Equality of Statehood” principle, and a “usurp[ation]” of the State’s legislative and executive functions. Not surprisingly, the Warren Court was unpersuaded and opted instead to endorse broad congressional power to craft “inventive” remedies to address systematic racial discrimination and to “shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of evil to its victims.” …

Shelby County V. Holder: Why Section 2 Matters, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Editor’s Note: Professor Ellen D. Katz writes and teaches about election law, civil rights and remedies, and equal protection. She and the Voting Rights Initiative at Michigan Law filed a brief as amicus curiae in Shelby County v. Holder, on which the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments February 27. Here, she examines why Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act bears consideration in the case, which involves a challenge to Section 5 of the act.

Democrats At Doj: Why Partisan Use Of The Voting Rights Act Might Not Be So Bad After All, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

In notable ways, the ongoing dispute over redistricting in Texas offers a mirror image to one of the major redistricting battles of the last decade, only with Democratic and Republican roles reversed. In both Texas v. United States and Georgia v. Ashcroft, a state attorney general (AG) decided he would not ask the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to approve new redistricting plans enacted in his state. In both cases, the state AGs were well aware that the Voting Rights Act (VRA) required them to obtain federal approval, known as preclearance, before changing any aspect of their state's election …

The Politics Of Preclearance, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay examines recent charges of political motivation against the Department of Justice and its enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. These accusations appear well-deserved, on the strength of the Department's recent handling of the Texas redistricting submission and Georgia's voting identification requirement. This Essay reaches two conclusions. First, it is clear that Congress wished to secure its understanding of the Act into the future through its preclearance requirement. Many critics of the voting rights bill worried about the degree of discretion that the legislation accorded the Attorney General. Supporters worried as well, for this degree of discretion might lead …

Mission Accomplished?, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

My study of voting rights violations nationwide suggests that voting problems are more prevalent in places “covered” by the Act than elsewhere. Professor Persily’s careful and measured defense of the renewed statute posits that this evidence is the best available to support reauthorization. The evidence matters because if, as critics charge, the regional provisions of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) are no longer needed, minority voters should confront fewer obstacles to political participation in places where additional federal safeguards protect minority interests than in places where these safeguards do not operate. In fact, minority voters confront more.

The End Of Preclearance As We Knew It: How The Supreme Court Transformed Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act, Peyton Mccrary, Christopher Seaman, Richard Valelly

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article’s analysis reveals that by the 1990s the intent, or purpose, prong of Section 5 had become the dominant basis for objections to discriminatory voting changes. During that decade an astonishing 43 percent of all objections were, according to this assessment, based on discriminatory purpose alone. Thus, a key issue for Congress in determining how to deal with the preclearance requirement of the Act due to expire in 2007-assuming it seeks to restore the protection of minority voting rights that existed before January 2000-is whether to revise the language of Section 5 so as to restore the long-accepted definition …

Preclearance, Discrimination, And The Department Of Justice: The Case Of South Carolina, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Freedom Of Information Act Post-9/11: Balancing The Public's Right To Know, Critical Infrastructure Protection, And Homeland Security, Kristen Elizabeth Uhl

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reinforcing Representation: Enforcing The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

A large body of academic scholarship accuses the Rehnquist Court of "undoing the Second Reconstruction," just as the Waite Court has long been blamed for facilitating the end of the First. This critique captures much of what is meant by those generally charging the Rehnquist Court with "conservative judicial activism." It posits that the present Court wants to dismantle decades' worth of federal antidiscrimination measures that are aimed at the "reconstruction" of public and private relationships at the local level. It sees the Waite Court as having similarly nullified the civil-rights initiatives enacted by Congress following the Civil War to …

Racial Profiling Under Attack, Samuel R. Gross, D. Livingston

Articles

The events of September 11, 2001, have sparked a fierce debate over racial profiling. Many who readily condemned the practice a year ago have had second thoughts. In the wake of September 11, the Department ofJustice initiated a program of interviewing thousands of men who arrived in this country in the past two years from countries with an al Qaeda presence-a program that some attack as racial profiling, and others defend as proper law enforcement. In this Essay, Professors Gross and Livingston use that program as the focus of a discussion of the meaning of racial profiling, its use in …

Federalism, Preclearance, And The Rehnquist Court, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Lopez v. Monterey County is an odd decision. Justice O'Connor's majority opinion easily upholds the constitutionality of a broad construction of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in language reminiscent of the Warren Court. Acknowledging the "substantial 'federalism costs" resulting from the VRA's "federal intrusion into sensitive areas of state and local policymaking," Lopez recognizes that the Reconstruction Amendments "contemplate" this encroachment into realms "traditionally reserved to the States." Justice O'Connor affirms as constitutionally permissible the infringement that the section 5 preclearance process "by its nature" effects on state sovereignty, and applies section 5 broadly, holding the statute …

Government Lawyers And Their Private “Clients” Under The Fair Housing Act, Eugene R. Gaetke, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In strengthening enforcement of the federal Fair Housing Act, Congress in the 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act ("FHAA") authorized government lawyers from the Justice Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and state and local civil rights agencies to prosecute cases "on behalf of” persons aggrieved by housing discrimination. This new enforcement scheme has led to a heightened level of administrative complaints and litigated cases in which government lawyers are put in the potentially difficult position of having to represent both their agency and private complainants.

The "triangular" relationships created by the FHAA between government lawyers and their public …

George Bush's America Meets Dante's Inferno: The Americans With Disabilities Act In Prison, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Introduction: The conditions in America's correctional facilities have long been cause for concern. Even those who do not advocate a comfortable quality of life for inmates recognize that basic problems such as overcrowding, inmate violence,' inadequate staffing,2 and increasing costs of building and maintaining prisons have approached crisis levels. Meanwhile, the prison population continues to swell. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the United States Department of Justice, the number of prisoners incarcerated at state and federal prisons annually has grown at a rate of 8.4% in recent years.'

George Bush's America Meets Dante's Inferno: The Americans With Disabilities Act In Prison, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

A Technical Look At The Eighty Per Cent Rule As Applied To Employee Selection Procedures, Jacob Van Bowen Jr., C. Allen Riggins

University of Richmond Law Review

In litigation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, statistical data has been referred to as "the only game in town." This characterization only slightly overstates the importance of statistical data to prove or rebut a case of employment discrimination. In the first decade of Title VII litigation, statistical analysis in the courts was relatively uncomplicated, sometimes involving a mere recital of percentage differences or lack thereof between minority and majority classes. In recent years, however, courts and Title VII litigants have begun to take a more sophisticated view of the use of statistics in Title VII …

Busing To Desegregate Schools: The Perspective From Congress, Hugh Scott

University of Richmond Law Review

The controversy over transporting pupils to desegregate schools or "busing" as the issue popularly is known, is the narrowest and perhaps most limited aspect of school desegregation. Yet, it threatens to undo school desegregation completely unless the issue is re- solved in a way which will permit continued desegregation of schools accompanied by the understanding and support of the majority of people of all races.

Carr: Federal Protection Of Civil Rights: Quest For A Sword, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of FEDERAL PROTECTION OF CIVIL RIGHTS: QUEST FOR A SWORD. By Robert K. Carr.