Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
-
- University of Michigan Law School (17)
- Roger Williams University (5)
- Selected Works (3)
- Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center (3)
- University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (2)
-
- Georgetown University Law Center (1)
- Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School (1)
- Maurer School of Law: Indiana University (1)
- SelectedWorks (1)
- St. Mary's University (1)
- University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law (1)
- University of Colorado Law School (1)
- University of Florida Levin College of Law (1)
- University of Georgia School of Law (1)
- University of the District of Columbia School of Law (1)
- Western Kentucky University (1)
- Western New England University School of Law (1)
- Publication Year
- Publication
-
- Michigan Journal of Race and Law (7)
- Life of the Law School (1993- ) (5)
- Michigan Law Review (5)
- Articles (3)
- All Faculty Scholarship (2)
-
- Faculty Scholarship (2)
- Touro Law Review (2)
- Angela P Harris (1)
- Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works (1)
- Indiana Law Journal (1)
- Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity (1)
- Kenneth B. Nunn (1)
- Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review (1)
- Masters Theses & Specialist Projects (1)
- Michigan Journal of Gender & Law (1)
- Other Publications (1)
- Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London (1)
- Publications (1)
- Samuel J. Levine (1)
- Scholarly Works (1)
- The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice (1)
- UF Law Faculty Publications (1)
- University of the District of Columbia Law Review (1)
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 30 of 42
Full-Text Articles in Law
Changemakers: The Long Road To The Law : Kiron Ireland, Michelle Choate
Changemakers: The Long Road To The Law : Kiron Ireland, Michelle Choate
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
'To Empower And Amplify Lgbtq+ Voices' 09-16-2022, Michelle Choate
'To Empower And Amplify Lgbtq+ Voices' 09-16-2022, Michelle Choate
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Law School News: Welcome, Professor Bernard Freamon 04-20-2022, Michael M. Bowden
Law School News: Welcome, Professor Bernard Freamon 04-20-2022, Michael M. Bowden
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Changemakers: To Empower And Amplify Lgbtq+ Voices, Michelle Choate
Changemakers: To Empower And Amplify Lgbtq+ Voices, Michelle Choate
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Erasing Evidence Of Historic Injustice: The Cannabis Criminal Records Expungement Paradox, Julie E. Steiner
Erasing Evidence Of Historic Injustice: The Cannabis Criminal Records Expungement Paradox, Julie E. Steiner
Faculty Scholarship
Cannabis prohibition and its subsequent enforcement have yielded an epic societal tragedy. The decision to criminalize cannabis was a paradigm-shifting moment in legal history because it converted lawful medicinal or intoxicant seeking conduct into criminal activity, inviting government intrusion into matters previously self-controlled.
Scholars increasingly recognize that prohibition was built upon a decades-long, false, media-driven narrative that “marijuana” was one of society’s worst menacing enemies. Using overtly racist propaganda, the narrative successfully captured the audience, fomenting public anxiety and unfairly demonizing cannabis and its users. This misinformation campaign ultimately led to its current status as prohibited under the federal Controlled …
Analyzing Wrongful Convictions Beyond The Traditional Canonical List Of Errors, For Enduring Structural And Sociological Attributes, (Juveniles, Racism, Adversary System, Policing Policies), Leona D. Jochnowitz, Tonya Kendall
Analyzing Wrongful Convictions Beyond The Traditional Canonical List Of Errors, For Enduring Structural And Sociological Attributes, (Juveniles, Racism, Adversary System, Policing Policies), Leona D. Jochnowitz, Tonya Kendall
Touro Law Review
Researchers identify possible structural causes for wrongful convictions: racism, justice system culture, adversary system, plea bargaining, media, juvenile and mentally impaired accused, and wars on drugs and crime. They indicate that unless the root causes of conviction error are identified, the routine explanations of error (e.g., eyewitness identifications; false confessions) will continue to re-occur. Identifying structural problems may help to prevent future wrongful convictions. The research involves the coding of archival data from the Innocence Project for seventeen cases, including the one for the Central Park Five exonerees. The data were coded by Hartwick College and Northern Vermont University students …
Equal Protection Under Algorithms: A New Statistical And Legal Framework, Crystal S. Yang, Will Dobbie
Equal Protection Under Algorithms: A New Statistical And Legal Framework, Crystal S. Yang, Will Dobbie
Michigan Law Review
In this Article, we provide a new statistical and legal framework to understand the legality and fairness of predictive algorithms under the Equal Protection Clause. We begin by reviewing the main legal concerns regarding the use of protected characteristics such as race and the correlates of protected characteristics such as criminal history. The use of race and nonrace correlates in predictive algorithms generates direct and proxy effects of race, respectively, that can lead to racial disparities that many view as unwarranted and discriminatory. These effects have led to the mainstream legal consensus that the use of race and nonrace correlates …
First Amendment “Harms”, Stephanie H. Barclay
First Amendment “Harms”, Stephanie H. Barclay
Indiana Law Journal
What role should harm to third parties play in the government’s ability to protect religious rights? The intuitively appealing “harm” principle has animated new theories advanced by scholars who argue that religious exemptions are indefensible whenever they result in cognizable harm to third parties. This third-party harm theory is gaining traction in some circles, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s pending cases in Little Sisters of the Poor and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. While focusing on harm appears at first to provide an appealing, simple, and neutral principle for avoiding other difficult moral questions, the definition of harm …
Police Brutality And State-Sanctioned Violence In 21st Century America, Itohen Ihaza
Police Brutality And State-Sanctioned Violence In 21st Century America, Itohen Ihaza
Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
No abstract provided.
Misdemeanors By The Numbers, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan T. Stevenson
Misdemeanors By The Numbers, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan T. Stevenson
All Faculty Scholarship
Recent scholarship has underlined the importance of criminal misdemeanor law enforcement, including the impact of public-order policing on communities of color, the collateral consequences of misdemeanor arrest or conviction, and the use of misdemeanor prosecution to raise municipal revenue. But despite the fact that misdemeanors represent more than three-quarters of all criminal cases filed annually in the United States, our knowledge of misdemeanor case processing is based mostly on anecdote and extremely localized research. This Article represents the most substantial empirical analysis of misdemeanor case processing to date. Using multiple court-record datasets, covering several million cases across eight diverse jurisdictions, …
Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson
Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson
Scholarly Works
Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.
This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …
Criminal Justice And The Mattering Of Lives, Deborah Tuerkheimer
Criminal Justice And The Mattering Of Lives, Deborah Tuerkheimer
Michigan Law Review
A review of James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.
Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson
Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson
All Faculty Scholarship
Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impacts. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race; (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines; and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.
This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …
Race And Wrongful Convictions In The United States, Samuel R. Gross, Maurice Possley, Klara Stephens
Race And Wrongful Convictions In The United States, Samuel R. Gross, Maurice Possley, Klara Stephens
Other Publications
African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in “group exonerations.” We see this racial disparity for all major crime categories, but we examine it in this report in the context of the three types of crime that produce the largest numbers …
The Tyranny Of Small Things, Yxta Maya Murray
The Tyranny Of Small Things, Yxta Maya Murray
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In this legal-literary essay, I recount a day I spent watching criminal sentencings in an Alhambra, California courthouse, highlighting the sometimes mundane, sometimes despairing, imports of those proceedings. I note that my analysis resembles that of other scholars who tackle state over-criminalization and selective law enforcement. My original addition exists in the granular attention I pay to the moment-by-moment effects of a sometimes baffling state power on poor and minority people. In this approach, I align myself with advocates of the law and literature school of thought, who believe that the study (or, in this case, practice) of literature will …
When The Police Get The Law Wrong: How Heien V. North Carolina Further Erodes The Fourth Amendment, Vivan M. Rivera
When The Police Get The Law Wrong: How Heien V. North Carolina Further Erodes The Fourth Amendment, Vivan M. Rivera
Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Lgbt Piece Of The Underenforcement-Overenforcement Puzzle, Aya Gruber
The Lgbt Piece Of The Underenforcement-Overenforcement Puzzle, Aya Gruber
Publications
No abstract provided.
Newsroom: The Jail Trap: Mass Incarceration In Ri, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Newsroom: The Jail Trap: Mass Incarceration In Ri, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
The Politics Of The Bail System: What's The Price For Freedom., Lydia D. Johnson
The Politics Of The Bail System: What's The Price For Freedom., Lydia D. Johnson
The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice
The only factor determining the release of a defendant from custody before his trial date is money. The government should eliminate the current bail system and replace it with mandated pre-trial release unless the state can prove the defendant to be a flight risk or a danger to society. This bail system has an adverse economic impact on minorities and on poor communities. Some states have used their constitutions to implement pre-trial release. Texas has four constitutional provisions which would permit similar implementations. However, clashing political ideologies and institutional alliances continue to prevent the construction of a workable solution. Dismantling …
Racial Disparity In Federal Criminal Sentences, M. Marit Rehavi, Sonja B. Starr
Racial Disparity In Federal Criminal Sentences, M. Marit Rehavi, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain most of the large raw racial disparity in federal sentences, but significant gaps remain. Across the distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than those of comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of this disparity can be explained by prosecutors’ initial charging decisions, particularly the filing of charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Ceteris paribus, the odds of black arrestees facing such a charge are 1.75 times higher than …
New Explorations In Culture And Crime: Definitions, Theory, Method, Kenneth B. Nunn
New Explorations In Culture And Crime: Definitions, Theory, Method, Kenneth B. Nunn
Kenneth B. Nunn
Culture affects criminal law in at least two key ways. First, culture and crime symbiotically define each other. Second, culture helps explain which courtroom narratives will be successful, and which will not. Culture influences who will be arrested, charged, convicted, and what sentence they will receive. Indeed, the invisible hand of culture drives the process of criminalization and helps to determine which acts we will sanction through criminal statutes.
Systemic Racial Bias And Rico's Application To Criminal Street And Prison Gangs, Jordan Blair Woods
Systemic Racial Bias And Rico's Application To Criminal Street And Prison Gangs, Jordan Blair Woods
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article presents an empirical study of race and the application of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to criminal street and prison gangs. A strong majority (approximately 86%) of the prosecutions in the study involved gangs that were affiliated with one or more racial minority groups. All but one of the prosecuted White-affiliated gangs fell into three categories: international organized crime groups, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and White supremacist prison gangs. Some scholars and practitioners would explain these findings by contending that most criminal street gangs are comprised of racial minorities. This Article challenges and problematizes this …
Urgent Reform 'In The Name Of Our Children': Revamping The Role Of Disproportionate Minority Contact In Federal Juvenile Justice Legislation, Atasi Satpathy
Urgent Reform 'In The Name Of Our Children': Revamping The Role Of Disproportionate Minority Contact In Federal Juvenile Justice Legislation, Atasi Satpathy
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Disproportionate minority contact ("DMC") has plagued the United States juvenile justice system for decades, but federal legislation has lacked the clarity and guidance to battle this affliction. A strong partnership must exist between state and federal entities in order to directly target DMC and thereby decrease the appallingly disproportionate number of minority children who come into contact with the juvenile justice system. This Note discusses the problem of DMC, identifies state and private efforts to combat the crisis, and indicates deficiencies in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act as well as its reauthorization bill, S. 678. The Note urges …
Toward A Religious Minority Voice: A Look At Free Exercise Law Through A Religious Minority Perspective, Samuel J. Levine
Toward A Religious Minority Voice: A Look At Free Exercise Law Through A Religious Minority Perspective, Samuel J. Levine
Samuel J. Levine
Legal scholars have recently advanced theories emphasizing the importance of perspectives in the law. Perspective scholarship recognizes that laws are necessarily shaped by society's dominant forces, including its biases and preconceptions. Perspective scholars attempt to understand how these forces have shaped our laws, and they suggest changes to accommodate those affected by society's biases.
In this Article, Professor Levine introduces the concept of a religious minority perspective. He develops the concept of a religious minority perspective in the context of several, prominent Free Exercise cases. Professor Levine discusses these cases in his presentation of the central themes of a religious …
Vindicating The Matriarch: A Fair Housing Act Challenge To Federal No-Fault Evictions From Public Housing, Melissa A. Cohen
Vindicating The Matriarch: A Fair Housing Act Challenge To Federal No-Fault Evictions From Public Housing, Melissa A. Cohen
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
Pearlie Rucker, sixty-three years old, had been living in public housing in Oakland, California for thirteen years. Ms. Rucker lived with her mentally disabled adult daughter, Gelinda, as well as two grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Ms. Rucker regularly searched Gelinda's room for signs of drugs, and had warned Gelinda that any drug activity on the premises could result in eviction. Nevertheless, Gelinda was caught with drugs three blocks from the apartment. Despite the fact that Ms. Rucker had no knowledge of Gelinda's drug activity, and in fact had been carefully monitoring what happened in her apartment, the Oakland Housing Authority …
Cumulative Jurisprudence And Hate Speech: Sexual Orientation And Analogies To Disability, Age And Obesity, Eric Heinze
Cumulative Jurisprudence And Hate Speech: Sexual Orientation And Analogies To Disability, Age And Obesity, Eric Heinze
Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London
Non-discrimination norms in human rights instruments generally enumerate specified categories for protection, such as race, ethnicity, sex or religion, etc. They often omit express reference to sexual minorities.
Through open-ended interpretation, however, sexual minorities subsequently become incorporated. That ‘cumulative jurisprudence’ yields protections for sexual minorities through norms governing privacy, employment, age of consent, or freedoms of speech and association.
Hate speech bans, too, are often formulated with reference to traditionally recognised categories, particularly race and religion. It might be expected that the same cumulative jurisprudence should therefore be applied to include sexual minorities. In this article, that approach is challenged. …
Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner
Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article examines the Project Safe Neighborhoods program and considers whether its disproportionate application in urban, majority- African American cities (large and small) violates the guarantee of equal protection under the law. This Article will start with a description of the program and how it operates-the limited application to street-level criminal activity in predominately African American communities. Based on preliminary data showing that Project Safe Neighborhoods disproportionately impacts African Americans, the Article turns to an analysis of the applicable law. Most courts have analyzed Project Safe Neighborhoods' race-based challenges under selective prosecution case law, which requires a showing by the …
Appellate Review Of Racist Summations: Redeeming The Promise Of Searching Analysis, Ryan Patrick Alford
Appellate Review Of Racist Summations: Redeeming The Promise Of Searching Analysis, Ryan Patrick Alford
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article addresses the question of the appropriate response of appellate counsel for Black defendants tarred at trial by the indirect deployment of powerful racial stereotypes. The crux of the problem is that even now, the courts only take exception to blatant racist appeals, even though indirectly racist summations can have a determinative impact at trial. In laying out the contours of the problem, we must draw upon the discipline of rhetoric, or persuasion through oration, to describe various techniques of intentional indirectness that prosecutors use to obviate the possibility of appellate review under the stringent standards of the Fourteenth …
New Explorations In Culture And Crime: Definitions, Theory, Method, Kenneth B. Nunn
New Explorations In Culture And Crime: Definitions, Theory, Method, Kenneth B. Nunn
UF Law Faculty Publications
Culture affects criminal law in at least two key ways. First, culture and crime symbiotically define each other. Second, culture helps explain which courtroom narratives will be successful, and which will not. Culture influences who will be arrested, charged, convicted, and what sentence they will receive. Indeed, the invisible hand of culture drives the process of criminalization and helps to determine which acts we will sanction through criminal statutes.
Vigilante Racism: The De-Americanization Of Immigrant America, Bill Ong Hing
Vigilante Racism: The De-Americanization Of Immigrant America, Bill Ong Hing
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Sadly, the de-Americanization process is capable of reinventing itself generation after generation. We have seen this exclusionary process aimed at those of Jewish, Asian, Mexican, Haitian, and other descent throughout the nation's history. De-Americanization is not simply xenophobia, because more than fear of foreigners is at work. This is a brand of nativism cloaked in a Euro-centric sense of America that combines hate and racial profiling. Whenever we go through a period of de-Americanization like what is currently happening to South Asians, Arabs, Muslim Americans, and people like Wen Ho Lee-a whole new generation of Americans sees that exclusion and …