Law Commons^™

Adding Colors To The Chameleon: Why The Supreme Court Should Adopt A New Compelling Governmental Interest Test For Race-Preference Student Assignment Plans, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

When the Supreme Court ordered the City of Birmingham to desegregate its schools in 1954, it failed to consider the long range implications of its mandate. School districts across the country responded to the Court’s order by adopting race-preference school assignment plans, created to designate the particular public elementary or secondary school a student should attend. Now that these plans have successfully achieved their goals of desegregating classrooms, the question has become whether the continuation of the very programs that helped achieve those goals remain legal? In other words, as Justice Ginsburg recently said in arguments before the Supreme Court, …

Moving Beyond Strict Scrutiny: The Need For A More Nuanced Standard Of Protection Analysis For K Through 12 Integration Programs, Deborah N. Archer

Articles & Chapters

In Comfort v. Lynn School Committee, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit evaluated a race-conscious student assignment program using the affirmative action strict scrutiny framework of Grutter v. Bollinger. Comfort is part of a trend of applying strict scrutiny to race-conscious integration programs that has gained new momentum following the decision in Grutter. Invited by the Supreme Court's seemingly unequivocal language in Adarand Constructors v. Pena, that "all racial classifications, imposed by whatever federal, state, or local governmental actor, must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny," federal district and appellate courts confronted with …

Reading, Writing, And Reparations: Systematic Reform Of Public Schools As A Matter Of Justice, Verna L. Williams

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Article examines reparations as a means of supporting systemic reform of public education, focusing on a recent enactment of the Virginia General Assembly, the Brown v. Board of Education Scholarship Program and Fund (Brown Fund Act). This provision seeks to remedy the state's refusal to integrate schools after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education by providing scholarships to persons denied an education between 1954 and 1964, a period known as massive resistance. Under this regime, the state's executive and legislative branches colluded to develop laws that defied Brown's mandate, including authorizing the governor to close …

Post-Admissions Educational Programming In A Post-Grutter World: A Response To Professor Brown, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

When asked to provide commentary on another scholar's reflections on Grutterl and Gratz and affirmative action, I am usually struck by two fears. First, because so much ink has been spilled on this topic, I worry the main presenter will have nothing new and interesting to say. Today this worry has been put to rest; I am so pleased that Professor Dorothy Brown offers a number of novel and intriguing observations and, in the end, advances a novel and intriguing proposal about the role Critical Race Theory ought to play in our nation's law school classrooms. Second, for the same …

For Whom Does The Bell Toll: The Bell Tolls For Brown?, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

This review essay analyzes Derrick Bell's provocative new book, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (2004). In Silent Covenants, Professor Bell reviews Brown v. Board of Education, and inquires "whether another approach than the one embraced by the Brown decision might have been more effective and less disruptive in the always-contentious racial arena." Specifically, Professor Bell joins black conservatives in critiquing what he describes as a misguided focus on achieving racial balance in schools and argues that the quality of education for minority children, in particular Blacks, would have been better today …

True Integration: Advancing Brown's Goal Of Educational Equity In The Wake Of Grutter, Lia Epperson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Reform Or Retrenchment: Single Sex Education And The Construction Of Race And Gender, Verna L. Williams

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

As parents, policymakers, and educators search for solutions to the crisis in the nation's public schools, single sex education emerges time and again as a promising strategy, particularly for African American students. This article argues that, in order to comprehend fully the implications of single sex schooling in inner city schools, examining the history of sex-based and race-based segregation in education is essential.

History demonstrates that sex and racial segregation in education has supported gender and hierarchies and the attendant subordination of African Americans and white women. For example, when public education became available for Blacks, its primary purpose was …

The Racial Gap In Ability: From The Fifteenth Century To Grutter And Gratz, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Justice O'Connor’s opinion for the United States Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action plan. Beneficiaries of affirmative action clearly meet the necessary qualifications for admissions to selective colleges, universities, and graduate programs. But, the justifications for affirmative action articulated by Justice O'Connor implicitly recognized that underrepresented minorities with a history of discrimination are not as academically qualified as their non-Hispanic white (and Asian counterparts). Their inclusion in affirmative action plans is based on the belief that they provide enough educational and non-educational benefits to offset their academic shortcomings.

There are measurable …

Comparing Remedies For School Desegregation And Employment Discrimination, Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION: Ten years after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, now a symbol of the beginning of the end of racial discrimination, Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII opened the workplace to all races and women in ways that had not previously existed. While discrimination in the workplace has not disappeared in the forty years since Title VII's enactment, one sees minorities and women in a greater variety of jobs, and at higher levels, than one would have seen a generation ago. The promise of Brown, however, has not been …

A Glimpse Behind And Beyond Grutter, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

Many people have suggested that the recent battle over affirmative action was a defining moment for the contemporary relevance of Brown v. Board of Education and that it would determine the promise and potential for widespread societal integration. In my remarks, I want to comment upon a couple of comparisons and links between the Brown, Bakke, Grutter, and Gratz cases.

Constitutional Sunsetting?: Justice O'Connor's Closing Comments On Grutter, Vikram David Amar, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

Most Supreme Court watchers were unsurprised that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's vote proved pivotal in resolving the University of Michigan affirmative action cases; indeed, Justice O'Connor has been in the majority in almost every case involving race over the past decade, and was in the majority in each and every one of the 5-4 decisions the Court handed down across a broad range of difficult issues last Term. Some smaller number of observers were unsurprised that Justice O'Connor decided (along with the four Justices who in the past have voted to allow latitude with regard to race-based affirmative action programs) …

Minority Preferences Reconsidered, Terrance Sandalow

Reviews

During the academic year 1965-66, at the height of the civil rights movement, the University of Michigan Law School faculty looked around and saw not a single African-American student. The absence of any black students was not, it should hardly need saying, attributable to a policy of purposeful exclusion. A black student graduated from the Law School as early as 1870, and in the intervening years a continuous flow of African-American students, though not a large number, had been admitted and graduated. Some went on to distinguished careers in the law.

Rejoinder (Response To Article By William G. Bowen And Derek Bok), Terrance Sandalow

Articles

In The Shape of the River, presidents Bowen and Bok pronounce the race-sensitive admission policies adopted by selective undergraduate schools a resounding success. The evidence they adduce in support of that conclusion primarily concerns the performance of African-American students in and after college. But not all African-American students in those institutions were admitted in consequence of minority preference policies. Some, perhaps many, would have been admitted under race-neutral policies. I argued at several points in my review that since these students might be expected to be academically more successful than those admitted because of their race, the evidence on which …

Hopwood, Bakke And The Future Of The Diversity Justification, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The decision of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Hopwood v. Texas sent shock waves through the academic community with its holding that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited the University of Texas Law School from taking account of race as a factor in its admissions process. In the course of invalidating certain procedures employed by the law school, the Fifth Circuit concluded that Justice Powell's influential opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which recognized the pursuit of diversity in higher education as a compelling state interest, had never constituted …

At Loggerheads: The Supreme Court And Racial Equality In Public School Education After Missouri V. Jenkins, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

June 12th of 1995 marked a somber occasion in the annals of school desegregation litigation. On that day, the United States Supreme Court sent disturbing messages in its opinion in Missouri v. Jenkins. The Court's decision hinders achievement of the objective of school desegregation litigation—providing equal educational opportunities for African-American public school children—and detrimentally impacts other substantive areas of civil rights litigation. This article examines what I believe are several important general consequences of Jenkins's the impairment of a trial judge's discretionary equitable remedial powers; the Court's establishment of a new agenda that sacrifices the interests of African-American …

The Legal Rhetorical Structure For The Conversion Of Desegregation Lawsuits To Quality Education Lawsuits, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

After The Desegregation Era: The Legal Dilemma Posed By Race And Education, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

An Education Of Their Own: The Precarious Position Of Publicly Supported Black Colleges After United States V. Fordice, Darryll K. Jones

Journal Publications

In United States v. Fordice, the United States Supreme Court revisited the awesome task of eliminating race from educational policy. Fordice ostensibly involved the duty of a state to remedy past discrimination in its formerly segregated system of higher education. Mississippi argued that it need only cease further discrimination, while private petitioners and the United States argued that the state must also undertake remedial measures beyond simply ending present discriminatory practices. The Court's rejection of Mississippi's approach and its adherence to the Brown v. Board of Education demand to eliminate race as a factor in educational opportunity uncovered the hidden …

Foreword: Racist Speech On Campus, Kingsley R. Browne

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.