Law Commons^™

Tribal Court Jurisdiction And The Exhausting Nature Of Federal Court Interference, Kekek Jason Stark

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Beanstalk: Folklore As Traditional Cultural Expressions, Ainsley E. Marlette

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Racecraft And Identity In The Emergence Of Islam As A Race, Cyra Akila Choudhury

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Can a religion, over time and through its social and legal resignification, come to be a race? Drawing on Critical Race Theory (“CRT”), Critical Discourse Theory, the work of Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields and Cedric Robinson, this article argues that Islam has emerged as a race and Muslims as a racial group. To support the claim, Part I examines the theoretical basis for the argument. Applying the concept of “racecraft,” the article theorizes that racism produces both the racial group and race. As many have already argued, race is not based in biology; it is not a fact …

Mitigating The Discretion Disaster: How Changes In The Law Can Help Fema Effectuate Its Critical Mission, Paul G. Rando

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Not Groovy Man: Psilocybin's Long And Complicated History With The Law, And Its Potential To Treat The Growing Mental Health Crisis In America, Zachary Lecompte

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Should Inheritance Law Remediate Inequality?, Felix B. Chang

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Essay argues that trusts and estates (“T&E”) should prioritize intergenerational economic mobility—the ability of children to move beyond the economic station of their parents—above all other goals. The field’s traditional emphasis on testamentary freedom fosters the stickiness of inequality. For wealthy settlors, dynasty trusts sequester assets from the nation’s system of taxation and stream of commerce. For low-income decedents, intestacy splinters property rights and inhibits their transfer, especially to nontraditional heirs.

Holistically, this Essay argues that T&E should promote mean regression of the wealth distribution curve over time. This can be accomplished by loosening spending in ultrawealthy households and …

Reclaiming Safety: Participatory Research, Community Perspectives, And Possibilities For Transformation, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This paper offers the first known interdisciplinary, community-based participatory research study to focus directly on two questions that have drawn increased attention in the wake of global protests over racialized police violence: 1) What is the definition of safety? and 2) How can safety be made equally accessible to all? The study is part of a larger project that was co-designed by community members and academic researchers. The project aimed to strengthen local justice reform efforts by adding new data literacy skills to existing community-organizing capacity among Black residents of the Cincinnati, Ohio metropolitan area. Community-led roundtable discussions offered community …

Authority, Obedience, And Justification, Michelle Madden Dempsey

University of Cincinnati Law Review

We have a duty to think for ourselves. The law claims authority over us. We have a duty, at least sometimes, to obey the law. Alone, each of these premises is fairly uncontroversial. Combined, they create some intriguing puzzles. Can law’s claim of authority be justified? If so, does justified legal authority entail an obligation to obey the law? If not, are we nonetheless justified, and perhaps even obligated, to act as if such an obligation exists? While this essay is hardly the first to address these questions, it is the first to do so by combining elements of Joseph …

Foreword, Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones

Freedom Center Journal

The articles in this issue of The Freedom Center Journal are timely challenges to the persistent efforts to undermine the American values enshrined in the Preamble of the Constitution and the body of the Constitution itself with its three Civil War Amendments.

The student editors of this volume intended the selected contributions to offer readers a nuanced view of our nation’s current identity crisis. The collection is offered in the hope that it will encourage further thinking and discussion about what it means to be part of the American experiment with democratic self-governance in an age of resurgent white supremacy.

A Candid Discussion About Social Justice: Iris Roley, The Black United Front, And The History Of Cincinnati’S Collaborative Agreement, Ashton Hood

Freedom Center Journal

In early April of 2001 I was growing up in the community of Glendale, a northern suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. I vividly remember the media coverage of the civil unrest occurring downtown in response to the killing of Timothy Thomas.1 The following interview with Iris Roley, member of the Cincinnati Black United Front, attempts to shed light on the origins of the rage felt in the city during that time period. Proactive steps have been taken since Cincinnati was placed in a national spotlight for its embarrassing race relations. Much work still needs to be done to ensure equity, but …

The System Is Working The Way It Is Supposed To: The Limits Of Criminal Justice Reform, Paul Butler

Freedom Center Journal

Ferguson has come to symbolize a widespread sense that there is a crisis in American criminal justice. This Article describes various articulations of what the problems are and poses the question of whether law is capable of fixing these problems. I consider the question theoretically by looking at claims that critical race theorists have made about law and race. Using Supreme Court cases as examples, I demonstrate how some of the “problems” described in the U.S. Justice Department’s Ferguson report, like police violence and widespread arrests of African-Americans for petty offenses, are not only legal, but integral features of policing …

Development In Over The Rhine: Can Otr Defeat The Pitfalls Of Gentrification And Create An Economically Diverse Community?, Madeline High

Freedom Center Journal

This paper focuses on the emergence of gentrification, the negative consequences it creates, and the ways in which these consequences can be alleviated. These topics are addressed both through a broad national lens and through a more narrow focus on Over-the-Rhine (OTR), a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. This paper specifically focuses on displacement in the realm of housing, culture, and economics as well as the potential creation of long-term segregation, and on how such displacement has led to a loss of autonomy of existing residents. The rise of gentrification and its impact is explored through an examination of literature, personal …

Linking Mission And Identity At The University Of Cincinnati, David Straddler

Freedom Center Journal

This essay traces the major shifts in UC’s mission and identity, keeping in mind the questions of who it serves, and what service it provides. These may seem rather straightforward concerns, especially for an institution that has had 200 years to hone its mission, but a quick review of UC’s history makes clear that the university community has rarely reached a consensus on these central questions. Just as important, in the recent past, conceptions of UC’s mission and identity have become especially muddled. What follows addresses some broad shifts in the role of higher education in the United States, but …

Conditionality And Constitutional Change, Felix B. Chang

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The burgeoning field of Critical Romani Studies explores the persistent subjugation of Europe’s largest minority, the Roma. Within this field, it has become fashionable to draw parallels to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Yet the comparisons are often one-sided; lessons tend to flow from Civil Rights to Roma Rights more than the other way around. It is an all-too-common hagiography of Civil Rights, where our history becomes a blueprint for other movements for racial equality.

To correct this trend, this Essay reveals what American scholars can learn from Roma Rights. Specifically, this Essay argues that the European Union’s Roma integration …

Trump V. Hawaii: Dissecting The Controversy Over Presidential Immigration Policies, Paul Taske

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Maslenjak V. United States: A Concern About Prosecutors’ Limitless Leverage Regarding The International Refugee Policy, Fengming Jin

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reclaiming The Intellectual, Emily Houh

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

I was invited to deliver the September 2017 Dean's Lecture, on which this essay is based, in March of 2017, shortly after the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States. I had originally planned to present on one of my longstanding research areas, the intersections of contract law and critical race theory, but as the spring wore on, I began to feel an urgency about using my expertise to comment more directly on the increasingly overt but trenchant race, gender, sex, and class inequalities and conflicts that have plagued our nation for centuries.

Yet, …

Twenty-Ninth Annual Corporate Law Center Symposium: Corporate Social Responsibility And The Modern Enterprise: Foreword, Felix B. Chang

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In December 2015, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, publicly pledged to give ninety-nine percent of their Facebook shares, then worth over $45 billion, to charitable purposes. As the receptacle for their philanthropy, the couple created a limited liability company. This touched off a flurry of commentary over the merits of limited liability companies (LLCs) versus nonprofit organizations and for-profit social enterprises such as benefit corporations. Anticipating the debates to follow, the Corporate Law Center at the University of Cincinnati College of Law (UC) held its 29th Annual Symposium (the Symposium) on corporate social responsibility and the …

Introduction To Law In Literature And Philosophy, Joseph P. Tomain

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

As the title indicates, this is an Introductory Memorandum for a course entitled: Law In Literature and Philosophy. The memorandum begins to explore the themes of the course more particularly it explores the relationships between and among law, literature, and philosophy by posing questions such as: Is the intersection of law and literature limited to stories about law and methods of interpretation? Or is law and literature a movement to reclaim law as part of the humanities rather than as a social science such as economics as Judge Posner questions? Or, does literature, as Professor Martha Nussbaum has written, help …

Guns, Sex, And Race: The Second Amendment Through A Feminist Lens, Verna L. Williams

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This article uses a recent move on the part of feminist legal advocates-social justice feminism ("SJF')--to explore the contours of the Second Amendment. Feminist legal theory, specifically SJF, reveals that the Second Amendment and attendant societal understandings ofthe right to keep and bear arms played a role in establishing and reproducing white male dominance. Understood in this way, the Court's decisions in Heller and McDonald reinforce structural oppression under the guise of promoting individual rights. To make that case, this article proceeds in four parts. Part I briefly addresses the question of why a feminist lens is useful in this …

The Antidemocratic Sixth Amendment, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Criminal procedure experts often claim that poor people have no Sixth Amendment right to choose their criminal defense lawyers. These experts insist that the Supreme Court has reserved the Sixth Amendment right to choose for the small minority of defendants who can afford to hire counsel. This Article upends that conventional wisdom with new doctrinal, theoretical, and practical arguments supporting a Sixth Amendment right to choose for all defendants, including the overwhelming majority who are indigent. The Article’s fresh case analysis shows the Supreme Court’s “no-choice” statements are dicta, which the Court’s own reasoning and rulings refute. The Article’s new …

Sketches Of A Redemptive Theory Of Contract Law, Emily Houh

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Article is about the game we call contract law and what it does and means to those who, at one time or another, have been categorically barred from play. How have "outsider" players-such as racial minorities, women, and sexual minorities -entered the game and, subsequently, how have its governing rules-that is, contract doctrines applied or not applied to them? On the flipside, how have common law contract doctrines responded to the entry of new players in the game? And, to the extent contract law has so responded, why has it done so? In asking and responding to these questions, …

The John W. Anderson Slave Pen, Carl B. Westmoreland

Freedom Center Journal

At the end of 18th century America, a series ofevents occurred that forever changed the economic and political status of white Americans. These changes were heavily influenced by the transportation of blacks to this country, the circumstances surrounding their enslavement, and the increasing demand for cotton. America's founders prohibited the importation of enslaved Africans into the United States at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. This prohibition, however, occurred at a time when America was expanding and additional labor was necessary. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 increased the amount of market ready cotton. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size …

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth And Nicholas Kristof: 2013 Recipients, Priya Walia

Freedom Center Journal

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center proudly presented the 2013 recipients the International Freedom Conductor Award to Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and Nicholas Kristof. Rev. Shuttlesworth was known as the courageous, charismatic, blunt preacher who vowed to "kill segregation or be killed by it." After his successes with racial desegregation, Shuttlesworth spent the rest of his life fighting for equality for impoverished people. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Nicholas Kristof changed the course of social justice philanthropy through his work. Through individual personal narratives, Kristof compels the audience to delve further into seemingly remote global issues and inspires the American public …

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center And Human Trafficking, Brooke Hathaway

Freedom Center Journal

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is a hybrid: one part history musemn and one part non-governmental organization (NGO). An early internal report by the Freedom Center clarified that the focus of contemporary efforts should be on "Unfreedom." The report defined Unfreedom as the conditions subjecting an individual to constraints on her/his personal wellbeing, free action, and/or thought, imposed by an outside power, and enforced by the threat of physical harm (tacit or explicit). There are six root causes of Unfreedom: poverty, poor healthcare, lack of education, prejudice, oppression, and conflict. These root causes are the basis for four major …

From Freedom Narrative To Freedom Leadership Narrative, Michael E. Battle

Freedom Center Journal

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center enters its second decade excited about the opportunities and challenges of balancing the focus on the historical realities of the antebellum freedom narratives and the modem day freedom narratives unfolding in the stories of millions of people worldwide who seek to be free. In terms of the rewards of freedom, The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center focuses on the development of freedom leadership which seeks to empower emerging freedom heroes to fully understand the meaning and application of freedom. Entering its second decade of presence and purpose, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center sees …

Dedication To Freedom, Emily Houh

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This special volume of the Freedom Center Journal comprises two issues, both dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center ("Freedom Center"), which first opened its doors in 2004.

A Symposium On Social Justice Feminism: Introduction, Emily Houh, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem, Verna L. Williams

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This special issue of the Freedom Center Journal, includes a set of truly diverse and interdisciplinary pieces, each individually interpreting and performing social justice feminism in original and unique ways. Collectively, these pieces demonstrate how SJF can be constructively employed across academic disciplines and through lived realities and, further, how SJF can be used to connect theory to our own individual and collective advocacy and activism.

It’S Critical: Legal Participatory Action Research, Emily Houh, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The ongoing community-based research project that we describe in this article will contribute, we hope, to an understanding of the fringe economy by offering insights into what remains “unexplained” in the current existing literature, namely the gender and race disparities relating to who uses “alternative financial service” (AFS) products. This article likewise contributes to a growing body of literature within Critical Race Theory and Critical Race Feminism that deals with economic inequalities and how they are inextricably and structurally linked to race and gender subordination. By explicitly incorporating “participatory action research” (PAR) values and methods into our work as critical …

Reading Poets, Joseph P. Tomain

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Lawrence Joseph, the poet, has been the subject of a symposium published by the University of Cincinnati Law Review. Lawrence Joseph, the nonfiction novelist, has been similarly honored by the Columbia Law Review. With the publication of The Game Changed, his work should be so recognized and he should be given scholarly attention as a critic/essayist. Joseph the lawyer/poet/scholar has developed a jurisprudence of his own. Joseph’s jurisprudence, however (and to the good), cannot be reduced to a single word like originalism, or even a label like liberal democratic (though he may be in fact). Rather, the resultant jurisprudence refracts …