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Who Is An Indian? Searching For An Answer To The Question At The Core Of Federal Indian Law, Margo S. Brownell Dec 2000

Who Is An Indian? Searching For An Answer To The Question At The Core Of Federal Indian Law, Margo S. Brownell

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The definition of Indian is the measure of eligibility for a variety of benefits and programs provided to Indians under federal law. There is confusion, however, at the core of efforts to define "Indian." This confusion raises many concerns about the role that government plays in defining "Indian." This Note surveys the most common definitions of "Indian" found in federal statutes, BIA regulations, and state laws. The author argues that the racial basis of many of these laws and regulations are unconstitutional and tread on the sovereignty of Indian tribes. She evaluates efforts of the federal government to avoid these …


The Racial Origins Of Modern Criminal Procedure, Michael J. Klarman Oct 2000

The Racial Origins Of Modern Criminal Procedure, Michael J. Klarman

Michigan Law Review

The constitutional law of state criminal procedure was born between the First and Second World Wars. Prior to 1920, the Supreme Court had upset the results of the state criminal justice system in just a handful of cases, all involving race discrimination in jury selection. By 1940, however, the Court had interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to invalidate state criminal convictions in a wide variety of settings: mob-dominated trials, violation of the right to counsel, coerced confessions, financially-biased judges, and knowingly perjured testimony by prosecution witnesses. In addition, the Court had broadened its earlier decisions forbidding …


Healing The Blind Goddess: Race And Criminal Justice, Mark D. Rosenbaum, Daniel P. Tokaji May 2000

Healing The Blind Goddess: Race And Criminal Justice, Mark D. Rosenbaum, Daniel P. Tokaji

Michigan Law Review

Once again, issues of race, ethnicity, and class within our criminal justice system have been thrust into the public spotlight. On both sides of the country, in our nation's two largest cities, police are being called to account for acts of violence directed toward poor people of color. In New York City, a West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo was killed by four white police officers, who fired forty-one bullets at the unarmed man as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building in a poor section of the Bronx. Did race influence the officers' decisions to fire the …


Saying No To Stakeholding, Jeffrey S. Lehman, Deborah C. Malamud May 2000

Saying No To Stakeholding, Jeffrey S. Lehman, Deborah C. Malamud

Michigan Law Review

What if America were to make good on its promise of equal opportunity by [XXX]? That's the bold proposal set forth by Yale law professors Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott.... The quotation above is from the Yale University Press announcement describing Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott's new book, with one change: we have substituted "[XXX]" for the authors' catchphrase summary of their proposal. What do you think the missing words might be? How would you enable America "to make good on its promise of equal opportunity"? As you ponder that question, you might consider the following feature of the Ackerman/ …


The Paradox Of Silence: Some Questions About Silence As Resistance, Dorothy E. Roberts Apr 2000

The Paradox Of Silence: Some Questions About Silence As Resistance, Dorothy E. Roberts

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In Part I, I note the difficulty in distinguishing between silencing and silence as resistance. This difficulty has often led people in power to misinterpret the silence of people of color. Part II further explores the complications of incorporating the study of silence into resistance scholarship. I illustrate this complexity by discussing the silencing of welfare mothers and the use of language by women of color to challenge dominant medical discourse. Part III considers Professor Montoya's proposal to use silence as a pedagogical tool. Continuing my examination of silence as both liberating and accommodating, I distinguish between silence in the …


Silencing Culture And Culturing Silence: A Comparative Experience Of Centrifugal Forces In The Ethnic Studies Curriculum, Steven W. Bender Apr 2000

Silencing Culture And Culturing Silence: A Comparative Experience Of Centrifugal Forces In The Ethnic Studies Curriculum, Steven W. Bender

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Using the metaphor of silencing, Professor Margaret Montoya documents the irrelevance of race, gender, and socio-historical perspectives both in legal education and, more broadly, in legal discourse. Although others have invoked this metaphor, Professor Montoya's charting of the physical, rather than merely metaphorical, space of silence moves beyond this legal literature in several respects. Viewing silence not just as dead space, Professor Montoya enlivens and colors silence and other nonverbal aspects of communication as positive cultural traits. She demonstrates how silence can be used as a pedagogical tool (a centrifugal force) in the classroom and in client interviews to bring …


Expanding Directions, Exploding Parameters: Culture And Nation In Latcrit Coalitional Imagination, Elizabeth M. Iglesias, Francisco Valdes Apr 2000

Expanding Directions, Exploding Parameters: Culture And Nation In Latcrit Coalitional Imagination, Elizabeth M. Iglesias, Francisco Valdes

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The articles and commentaries in this Symposium are excellent points of departure for reflecting upon the advances thus far achieved in the evolution of this still very young community of scholars. The articles and commentaries that follow this brief Introduction comprise the second "free-standing" law review Symposium on LatCrit theory organized specifically in response to student interests and initiatives. The timing is fitting, for this Symposium also coincides with the fifth anniversary of LatCrit theory's emergence in the American legal academy. Since then, five annual conferences and four additional colloquia have produced, in total, nine published symposia in both mainstream …


Silence And Silencing: Their Centripetal And Centrifugal Forces In Legal Communication, Pedagogy And Discourse, Margaret E. Montoya Apr 2000

Silence And Silencing: Their Centripetal And Centrifugal Forces In Legal Communication, Pedagogy And Discourse, Margaret E. Montoya

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Language and voice have been subjects of great interest to scholars working in the areas of Critical Race Theory and Latina/o Critical Legal Theory. Silence, a counterpart of voice, has not, however, been well theorized. This Article is an invitation to attend to silence and silencing. The first part of the Article argues that one's use of silence is an aspect of communication that, like accents, is related to one's culture and may correlate with one's racial identity. The second part of the Article posits that silence can be a force that disrupts the dominant discourse within the law school …


Culture, Nationhood, And The Human Rights Ideal, Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol, Sharon Elizabeth Rush Apr 2000

Culture, Nationhood, And The Human Rights Ideal, Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol, Sharon Elizabeth Rush

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Symposium on nation and culture illustrates these LatCrit goals and advances them. The two main works and the commentaries on them are rich explorations and representations of the voices and concerns of LatCrit theory. This Foreword engages all the works by focusing on the concept of voice and silence. Part I locates the works in the axis of silence and power. Part II explores how critical theory and international human rights norms can be used to develop a progressive methodology to analyze and detect the exclusion or silencing of myriad voices. This Part develops a LatCritical Human Rights paradigm …


Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, And Latcrit Theory: Commonalities And Differences Between Latina/O Experiences, Kevin R. Johnson Jan 2000

Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, And Latcrit Theory: Commonalities And Differences Between Latina/O Experiences, Kevin R. Johnson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay situates Professor Malavet's analysis in LatCrit theory. The diminished citizenship status of Puerto Ricans on the island shares important commonalities with and differences from the experiences of persons of Mexican ancestry in the United States. Both Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans enjoy citizenship and membership rights unequal to those accorded Anglos, although one group (Mexican Americans) is composed of citizens by law with full legal rights while the other (Puerto Ricans) includes United States citizens with limited legal rights in Puerto Rico. The guarantees of the law historically have held limited meaning for Mexican Americans; the limitation on …


Blood Will Tell: Scientific Racism And The Legal Prohibitions Against Miscegenation, Keith E. Sealing Jan 2000

Blood Will Tell: Scientific Racism And The Legal Prohibitions Against Miscegenation, Keith E. Sealing

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article first examines the miscegenation paradigm in terms of a seven-point conceptual framework that not merely allowed but practically demanded anti-miscegenation laws, then looks at the legal arguments state courts used to justify the constitutionality of such laws through 1967. Next, it analyzes the Biblical argument, which in its own right justified miscegenation, but also had a major influence on the development of the three major strands of scientific racism: monogenism, polygenism and Darwinian theory. It then probes the concept upon which the entire edifice is constructed-race--and discusses the continuing vitality of this construct. Next, this article turns to …


The Adversity Of Race And Place: Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence In Illinois V. Wardlow, 528 S. Ct. 673 (2000), Adam B. Wolf Jan 2000

The Adversity Of Race And Place: Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence In Illinois V. Wardlow, 528 S. Ct. 673 (2000), Adam B. Wolf

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Case Note lays out Wardlow's pertinent facts, describes the decisions of the Court and lower courts, and then analyzes the ramifications of the Court's holding. In particular, this Case Note argues that the Court's ruling recognizes substantially less Fourth Amendment protections for people of color and indigent citizens than for wealthy Caucasians. This perpetuates a cycle of humiliating experiences, as well as fear and mistrust of the police by many poor people of color.


The New Cultural Diversity And Title Vii, Steven A. Ramirez Jan 2000

The New Cultural Diversity And Title Vii, Steven A. Ramirez

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article will show that the most progressive diversity initiatives taking hold in the business community are facially neutral in their approach, merit-driven, and fundamentally culture-conscious (as opposed to race-conscious). These initiatives do not allow for any racial preference or gender preference and draw any such bias not from the inherent values of diversity but from the largely segregated pre-existing corporate tradition: hiring culturally aware minorities unleashes value because they bring insights previously unavailable to segregated businesses. In other words, White males can be and are hired in the name of cultural diversity when they bring cultural insights to the …


Racial Profiling: "Driving While Mexican" And Affirmative Action, Victor C. Romero Jan 2000

Racial Profiling: "Driving While Mexican" And Affirmative Action, Victor C. Romero

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay will focus on "racial profiling" not just in the way many people think about the term-that is, with respect to stopping motorists for traffic violations based solely on their race, so-called "Driving While Mexican" or "Driving While Black"-but also in the context of "affirmative action"-namely, using race as a factor in employment and educational decisions. More broadly, then, the author wants us to think of "racial profiling" as simply "the use of race to develop an understanding of an individual," which moves us slightly away from more pejorative notions of the phrase that have seeped into the national …


Puerto Rico: Cultural Nation, American Colony, Pedro A. Malavet Jan 2000

Puerto Rico: Cultural Nation, American Colony, Pedro A. Malavet

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article articulates a theory of Puerto Rican cultural nationhood that is largely based on ethnicity. In linking ethnicity and citizenship, it is imperative, however, to avoid the evils of ethnic strife and balkanization, while celebrating rather than imposing difference; community consciousness cannot degenerate into fascism.


Cracking The Code: "De-Coding" Colorblind Slurs During The Congressional Crack Cocaine Debates, Richard Dvorak Jan 2000

Cracking The Code: "De-Coding" Colorblind Slurs During The Congressional Crack Cocaine Debates, Richard Dvorak

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article proposes "de-coding" as a method for unveiling the racist purpose behind the enactment of race-neutral legislation. Through the use of "code words," defined as “phrases and symbols which refer indirectly to racial themes, but do not directly challenge popular democratic or egalitarian ideals,” legislators can appeal to racist sentiments without appearing racist. More importantly, they can do so without leaving evidence that can be traced back as an intent to discriminate. This article proposes to use "de-coding" as a method to unmask the racist purpose behind the enactment of the 100:1 crack versus powder cocaine ratio for mandatory …


Lowering The Preclearance Hurdle Reno V. Bossier Parish School Board, 120 S. Ct. 866 (2000), Alaina C. Beverly Jan 2000

Lowering The Preclearance Hurdle Reno V. Bossier Parish School Board, 120 S. Ct. 866 (2000), Alaina C. Beverly

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Case Note examines a recent Supreme Court decision that collapses the purpose and effect prongs of Section 5, effectively lowering the barrier to preclearance for covered jurisdictions. In Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board II the Court determined that Section 5 disallows only voting plans that are enacted with a retrogressive purpose (i.e., with the purpose to "worsen" the position of minority voters). The Court held that Section 5 does not prohibit preclearance of a plan enacted with a discriminatory purpose but without a retrogressive effect. Evidence of a Section 2 violation alone will not be enough to prove …


Michigan's Minority Graduates In Practice: Answers To Methodological Queries, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams Jan 2000

Michigan's Minority Graduates In Practice: Answers To Methodological Queries, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams

Articles

Before making a few remarks in response to those who commented on our article (Lempert, Chambers, and Adams 2000), we would like to express our gratitude to the editors of Law and Social Inquiry for securing these commentaries and to the people who wrote them. The comments both highlight the potential uses to which our research and similar studies may be put and give us the opportunity to address methodological concerns and questions that other readers of our article may share with those who commented on it. The responses to our work are of two types. Professors Nelson, Payne, and …


Michigan's Minority Graduates In Practice: The River Runs Through Law School, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams Jan 2000

Michigan's Minority Graduates In Practice: The River Runs Through Law School, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams

Articles

This paper reports the results of a 1997-98 survey designed to explore the careers of the University of Michigan Law School's minority graduates from the classes of 1970 through 1996, and of a random sample of Michigan Law School's white alumni who graduated during the same years. It is to date the most detailed quantitative exploration of how minority students fare after they graduate from law school and enter law practice or related careers. The results reveal that almost all of Michigan Law School's minority graduates pass a bar exam and go on to have careers that appear successful by …


The Importance Of Being Biased, Anthony M. Dillof Jan 2000

The Importance Of Being Biased, Anthony M. Dillof

Michigan Law Review

The war against bias crimes is far from finished. In contrast, the battle over bias-crime laws is largely over. Bias-crime laws, as commonly formulated, increase the penalties for crimes motivated by bias. The Supreme Court has held that such laws do not violate the First Amendment. Virtually every state has enacted some sort of biascrime law. Even the federal government, which may consider itself without power to enact a general bias-crime law, has made bias a sentence-aggravating factor for the range of federal criminal offenses. Bias-crime laws thus are an established feature of the legal landscape. Against this background, Frederick …


Building Community In The Twenty-First Century: A Post-Integrationist Vision For The American Metropolis, Sheryll D. Cashin Jan 2000

Building Community In The Twenty-First Century: A Post-Integrationist Vision For The American Metropolis, Sheryll D. Cashin

Michigan Law Review

[T]he problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. When W.E.B. DuBois wrote this prophetic statement at the dawn of the twentieth century, the American metropolis did not yet exist. Perhaps DuBois could not have predicted the sprawled, socioeconomically fragmented landscape that is so familiar to the majority of Americans who now live and work in metropolitan regions. But his prediction of a "color line" that would sear our consciousness and present the chief social struggle for the new century proved all too correct. As we contemplate the twenty-first century, Gerald Frug's book, City Making, makes clear …


Race And The Right To Vote After Rice V. Cayetano, Ellen D. Katz Jan 2000

Race And The Right To Vote After Rice V. Cayetano, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Last Term, the Supreme Court relied on Gomillion [v. Lightfoot] to hold that Hawaii, like Alabama before it, had segregated voters by race in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment. The state law at issue in Rice v. Cayetano provided that only "Hawaiians" could vote for the trustees of the state's Office of Hawaiian Affairs ("OHA"), a public agency that oversees programs designed to benefit the State's native people. Rice holds that restricting the OHA electorate to descendants of the 1778 inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands embodied a racial classification that effectively "fenc[ed] out whole classes of ...ci tizens from decisionmaking …


Race In The Courtroom: Perceptions Of Guilt And Dispositional Attributions, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth Jan 2000

Race In The Courtroom: Perceptions Of Guilt And Dispositional Attributions, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

The present studies compare the judgments of White and Black mock jurors in interracial trials. In Study 1, the defendant’s race did not influence White college students’ decisions but Black students demonstrated ingroup/outgroup bias in their guilt ratings and attributions for the defendant’s behavior. The aversive nature of modern racism suggests that Whites are motivated to appear nonprejudiced when racial issues are salient; therefore, the race salience of a trial summary was manipulated and given to noncollege students in Study 2. Once again, the defendant’s race did not influence Whites when racial issues were salient. But in the non-race-salient version …