Law Commons^™

Culture, Nationhood, And The Human Rights Ideal, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Sharon E. Rush

Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

This paper was written as a part of a Symposium on Culture, Nation, and LatCrit (Latina/o Communities and Critical Race) Theory and focuses 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 methodology to analyze and detect the exclusion or silencing of voices. A paradigm is developed that, by internationalizing voice, serves as a useful tool to explore power-based silencing. In Part III, the article illustrates how the proposed paradigm can focus the …

"Not Without Political Power": Gays And Lesbians, Equal Protection, And The Suspect Class Doctrine, Darren Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

The Supreme Court purportedly utilizes the suspect class doctrine in order to balance institutional concerns with the protection of important constitutional rights. The Court, however, inconsistently applies this doctrine, and it has not precisely defined its contours. The political powerlessness factor is especially undertheorized and contradictorily applied. Nevertheless, this factor has become salient in recent equal protection cases brought by gay and lesbian plaintiffs.

A growing body of and federal and state-court precedent addresses the flaws of the Court’s suspect class doctrine. This Article discusses the inadequacies of the suspect class doctrine and highlights problems within the emerging scholarship and …

Zizek/Questions/Failing, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

In this article I am primarily concerned with presenting Slavoj Žižek3 as a legal theorist. Žižek has been a valuable contributor to critical theory and deserves a place in the pantheon of legal thinkers.

While his diverse writings are often relegated to other disciplines, they also position him as an important contributor to law and public discourse. I seek to illuminate how he mediates and interrogates the law by demonstrating how his scholarship is important to the lives of legal thinkers, questions of success and the law, capitalism, political practice, and terrorism. Because Žižek’s work is interdisciplinary and expansive, this …

The Accidental Crit Ii: Culture And The Looking Glass Of Exile, Pedro A. Malavet

Pedro A. Malavet

A LatCritical look at the then-current "Latina/o Musical Moment" represented by the popularity of artists like Carlos Santana, Ricky Martin, Jennifer López, Enrique Iglesias, Marc Anthony, and Christina Aguilera. It specifically focuses on competing cultural constructs of Latinas/os generally, and Puerto Ricans in particular, re/viewed from the author's perspective of exile along the cultural borderlands of Puerto Rico and the Estados Unidos de Norteamérica (the U.S.A.).

[The Accidental Crit I:] Literature And Arts As Antisubordination Praxis Latcrit Theory And Cultural Production: The Confessions Of An Accidental Crit, Pedro A. Malavet

Pedro A. Malavet

This short article: (1) explains the development the Arts Panel at the LatCrit IV Conference and provides an account of its substantive content; (2) it gives the author's reactions to the presentations, while placing them within the planned description and written questions, locating them within the contemporary debate over the use of narrative in legal scholarship and in postmodern philosophical discourse more generally; and (3) the author gives a narrative about his own reluctant, difficult, and ultimately accidental gravitation towards LatCrit theory.

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

Pedro A. Malavet

A study of Puerto Rico's century-old legal relationship with the United States, and how it constructs Puerto Ricans as legal and social second-class citizens because of their cultural nationhood. The discriminatory treatment conflicts with contemporary notions of justice and morality in postmodern political and legal philosophy. The article articulates a framework for legal reform that is consistent with a new progressive theoretical construct of a pluralistic and communitarian form of liberalism. I further developed the material that I discuss in this article in my book: America's Colony: The Political and Cultural Conflict Between the United States and Puerto Rico (NYU …

[The Accidental Crit I:] Literature And Arts As Antisubordination Praxis Latcrit Theory And Cultural Production: The Confessions Of An Accidental Crit, Pedro A. Malavet

Pedro A. Malavet

This short article: (1) explains the development the Arts Panel at the LatCrit IV Conference and provides an account of its substantive content; (2) it gives the author's reactions to the presentations, while placing them within the planned description and written questions, locating them within the contemporary debate over the use of narrative in legal scholarship and in postmodern philosophical discourse more generally; and (3) the author gives a narrative about his own reluctant, difficult, and ultimately accidental gravitation towards LatCrit theory.