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Full-Text Articles in Law
An Argument Against Unbounded Arrest Power: The Expressive Fourth Amendment And Protesting While Black, Karen Pita Loor
An Argument Against Unbounded Arrest Power: The Expressive Fourth Amendment And Protesting While Black, Karen Pita Loor
Faculty Scholarship
Protesting is supposed to be revered in our democracy, considered “as American as apple pie” in our nation’s mythology. But the actual experiences of the 2020 racial justice protesters showed that this supposed reverence for political dissent and protest is more akin to American folklore than reality on the streets. The images from those streets depicted police officers clad in riot gear and armed with shields, batons, and “less than” lethal weapons aggressively arresting protesters, often en masse. In the first week of the George Floyd protests, police arrested roughly 10,000 people, and approximately 78 percent of those arrests were …
Getting To Death: Race And The Paths Of Capital Cases After Furman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Garth Davies, Ray Paternoster
Getting To Death: Race And The Paths Of Capital Cases After Furman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Garth Davies, Ray Paternoster
Faculty Scholarship
Decades of research on the administration of the death penalty have recognized the persistent arbitrariness in its implementation and the racial inequality in the selection of defendants and cases for capital punishment. This Article provides new insights into the combined effects of these two constitutional challenges. We show how these features of post-Furman capital punishment operate at each stage of adjudication, from charging death-eligible cases to plea negotiations to the selection of eligible cases for execution and ultimately to the execution itself, and how their effects combine to sustain the constitutional violations first identified 50 years ago in Furman …
Where Black Lives Matter Less: Understanding The Impact Of Black Victims On Sentencing Outcomes In Texas Capital Murder Cases From 1973 To 2018, Jelani Jefferson Exum, David Niven
Where Black Lives Matter Less: Understanding The Impact Of Black Victims On Sentencing Outcomes In Texas Capital Murder Cases From 1973 To 2018, Jelani Jefferson Exum, David Niven
Faculty Publications
The systemic disregard for Black lives in America was on full display when footage of a police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd went viral. Mr. Floyd’s resultant death set off protests declaring that Black Lives Matter throughout the nation and across the world. While national attention rightfully turned to demanding police accountability for undue violence, the prevailing conversation also incorporated at least a declared concern for addressing institutionalized racism within the criminal justice system and other American institutions. The term of the day became “antiracism.” With regard to police killings, the lesson is that police officers disproportionately …
Of Afrofuturism, Of Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe
Of Afrofuturism, Of Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe
Faculty Scholarship
Algorithms are proliferating in criminal legal structures. The predictions produced by these algorithms inform life-altering decisions around surveillance and incarceration. Their continued use poses a challenge to ongoing racial justice efforts. Contesting how algorithms of today maintain the racial status quo requires a fundamental rethinking of the algorithm project. This essay explores how Afrofuturism can facilitate such a rethinking. It imagines how applying an Afrofuturist paradigm to the adoption, construction, implementation, and oversight of algorithms could radically change the kind of algorithms developed and the purposes for which they are developed. Tapping into this potential offers the chance for members …