Law Commons^™

Commodified Inequality: Racialized Harm To Children And Families In The Injustice Enterprise, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses the systemic racialized harm of a vast injustice enterprise, with a focus on the symbiotic operations of agencies and justice systems monetizing vulnerable children and families, including the impact of contractual revenue schemes uncovered in my new book, Injustice, Inc. Our foundational justice systems are permeated by a history of racial injustice, and that history reverberates into factory-like operations that churn children and the poor into revenue. The revenue-generating mechanisms used by juvenile and family courts, prosecutors, probation departments, police, sheriffs, and detention facilities all draw the concerning historical connection—interlinked with the practices of child and …

A Butterfly In Covid: Structural Racism And Baltimore's Pretrial Legal System, Doug Colbert, Colin Starger

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Summer of 2020 represented a potentially pivotal moment in the movements against mass incarceration and for racial justice. The authors commenced a study of Baltimore’s pretrial legal system just as the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and urgent cries of Black Lives Matter appeared to present a once-in-a-generation opportunity for meaningful decarceration. Over forty-four weekdays in June and July, the team observed bail review hearings in 509 cases and collected extensive data from the arguments and recommendations offered by the pretrial agency and prosecuting and defense attorneys. Unfortunately, the hoped-for reform failed to materialize as judges held nearly 62% of …

Lessons On Race And Place-Based Participation From Environmental Justice And Geography, Sonya Ziaja

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As scholars grapple with racism in Administrative Law, it is important to consider place-based scholarship from the perspectives of Environmental Justice and Geography. Both provide important insights into how administrative agencies can be instruments of strategic-structural racism and how administrative law can facilitate equity in regulation.

Reproducing Gender And Race Inequality In The Blawgosphere, Jane C. Murphy, Solangel Maldonado

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The use of the Internet and other digital media to disseminate scholarship has great potential for expanding the range of voices in legal scholarship. Legal blogging, in particular, with its shorter, more informal form, seems ideal for encouraging commentary from a diverse group of scholars. This Chapter tests this idea by exploring the role of blogging in legal scholarship and the level of participation of women and scholars of color on the most visible academic legal blogs. After noting the predominance of white male scholars as regular contributors on these blogs, we analyze the relative lack of diversity in this …

Voting Realism, Gilda R. Daniels

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Since Shelby County v. Holder, the country has grown accustomed to life without the full strength of the Voting Rights Act. Efforts to restore Section 4 have been met with calls to ignore race conscious remedies and employ race neutral remedies for modern day voting rights violations. In this new normal, the country should adopt “voting realism” as the new approach to ensuring that law and reality work to address these new millennium methods of voter discrimination.

From Fugitives To Ferguson: Repairing Historical And Structural Defects In Legally Sanctioned Use Of Deadly Force, José F. Anderson

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The lawful use of lethal force to subdue suspected wrongdoers has a long tradition in our nation. There is certainly nothing wrong with securing, incapacitating, or even killing violent persons who pose a serious threat to the lives of innocent individuals. One of the important roles of government is to protect people from harm and keep the peace. Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, have highlighted the tension between the officers on the beat and citizens on the street. These tensions are not likely to subside unless there are major structural changes in the way the police do their job and …

"Law Is Coercion": Revisiting Judicial Power To Provide Equality In Public Education, José F. Anderson

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This article is an attempt to start a conversation about where we find ourselves in the plight to help our most challenged public schools. It is not intended to be a comprehensive solution to the problem, but rather a hard look at how, after decades of many efforts, we are further away from the equal education contemplated by the United States Supreme Court's historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education. This article does not desire to simply cast blame for the failures of our children, but to send a reminder that, as Frederick Douglass would say, we can hardly …

Converge! Reimagining The Movement To End Gender Violence Symposium: Panel On Intersections Of Gender, Economic, Racial, And Indigenous (In) Justice, Margaret E. Johnson

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JOHNSON: This presentation envisions what a better domestic violence legal system might look like for persons subjected to domestic abuse who have not had their needs met or who have been harmed by the current legal system. The paper reframes the focus of the civil legal system from a paradigm of safety into a paradigm of security, including economic, housing, health, and relationship security. This reframing permits a focus on the domestic violence legal system and its intersecting systems of oppression such as race, gender, class, and ethnicity.

Currently, the domestic violence legal system targets short-term physical safety of the …

Lining Up: Ensuring Equal Access To Vote, Gilda R. Daniels

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This booklet ( a joint project of the Advancement Project and the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law) provides an extensive overview of restrictive voting laws, especially concerning minority voters. Daniels begins with a summary of voter obstructions and intimidation in the 2012 election, and then places that within the context of the history of voting and race in America.

Most recently, the Section 5 protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were effectively removed by the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision. Daniels then explains what this means practically and legally for minority voters and how …

The Voting Rights Amendment Act Of 2014: A Constitutional Response To Shelby County, Gilda R. Daniels, William Yeomans, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Gabriel J. Chin, Samuel Bagenstos

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This Issue Brief from the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy begins by explaining the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County v. Holder, and the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 (VRAA). The remaining sections then explain the four specific ways the VRAA attempted to counter the holding from the Shelby County decision.