Law Commons^™

Critical Race Theory: Faq, Candace Bond-Theriault

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

CRT is not a comprehensive theory of law. Instead, it is an invitation to consider the role that law, even “good” civil rights laws, plays in the creation and maintenance of racial injustice.

Rewriting Whren V. United States, Jonathan Feingold, Devon Carbado

Faculty Scholarship

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Whren v. United States—a unanimous opinion in which the Court effectively constitutionalized racial profiling. Despite its enduring consequences, Whren remains good law today. This Article rewrites the opinion. We do so, in part, to demonstrate how one might incorporate racial justice concerns into Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, a body of law that has long elided and marginalized the racialized dimensions of policing. A separate aim is to reveal the “false necessity” of the Whren outcome. The fact that Whren was unanimous, and that even progressive Justices signed on, might lead one to conclude that …

Random Justice, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As recent Senate confirmation practices suggest, the Supreme Court is best understood as the head of a political branch of government, whose Justices are chosen in a process that makes their ideological views dispositive. Throughout the nation’s history, the Supreme Court has exercised its governing political ideology in ways that sacrifice the interests of nonwhites in order to advance the interests of Whites. In the present moment of heightened cultural sensitivity to structural discrimination and implicit bias, it would make sense to use affirmative action to help remedy the racially disparate distribution of societal resources that has been produced by …

The Diversity Risk Paradox, Veronica Root Martinez

Faculty Scholarship

There is a growing body of literature discussing the proper role of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts by and within public firms. A combination of forces brought renewed energy to this topic over the past few years. The #MeToo movement demonstrated a whole host of inequities faced by women within workplaces. Business Roundtable’s 2019 Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation rejected the view that the purpose of the corporation was solely to be focused on the maximization of shareholder wealth. And, in 2020, the murder of George Floyd ignited a racial reckoning within the United States, which prompted many …

Towards Racial Justice: The Role Of Medical-Legal Partnerships, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) integrate knowledge and practices from law and health care in pursuit of health equity. However, the MLP movement has not reached its full potential to address racial health inequities, in part because its original framing was not explicitly race conscious. This article aims to stimulate discussion of the role of MLPs in racial justice. It calls for MLPs to name racism as a social determinant of health and to examine how racism may operate in the field. This work sets the stage for the next step: operationalizing racial justice in the MLP model, research, and practice.

Blinding Justice And Video Conferencing?, Elayne E. Greenberg

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

How might dispute resolution processes for civil matters conducted on video conferencing be designed to reduce racial justice inequities and increase Black participants’ sense of procedural justice? In March 2020, responding to Covid-19 pandemic health concerns, all in-person, court-connected, and private dispute resolution processes shifted to video conferencing. Proponents of video conferencing have long touted how video conferencing would increase access to justice by providing an efficient, cost-effective, and time-saving alternative to in-person appearances. An unexplored question in March 2020 was how video conferencing would affect racial justice inequities. Black individuals and other marginalized groups were already disproportionately suffering …

This Is Not A Drill: The War Against Antiracist Teaching In America, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

On January 5, 2022, Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw received the 2021 Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and the Legal Profession from the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). In this modified acceptance speech delivered at the 2022 AALS Awards Ceremony, she reflects on the path that brought her to this moment and the crisis over antiracist and social justice education that is unfolding today. Arguing that the legal academy bears a collective responsibility to fight back against the silencing of antiracist frameworks, she calls on legal educational institutions to confront their historical agnosticism toward racial subordination and …