Law Commons^™

Diversity Matters: Race, Gender And Ethnicity In Legal Education., Nancy E. Dowd, Kenneth B. Nunn, Jane E. Pendergast

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article presents more evidence of the inequality that persists in legal education for students. Based on a survey of University of Florida law students conducted in 2001, this study reaffirms the existence of differential experience and an inegalitarian culture in legal education. However, it also demonstrates the importance of diversity and the recognition by a significant majority of students of the value of race and gender pluralism. These competing findings provide a clear guide to the future direction of legal education.

Familias Sin Fronteras: Mujeres Unidas Por Su Historia, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Does there exist a Cuban society that is culturally cohesive? Is Cubanidad dependent on territorial borders and political ideology? Can there be a singular narrative on Cubanidad that transcends geography and politics? This article asks those questions and posits that, while political and economic differences might result in very different lifestyles and ideologies, social and cultural tropes might provide some similarities and cultural cohesion. This thesis is tested through the study of available, albeit sparse, information on the role of Cubanas in society. First the role of women in Cuban society throughout history is examined. Next, changes in the laws …

Law, Culture, And Family: The Transformative Power Of Culture And The Limits Of Law, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

Law inevitably is involved in the resolution of cultural conflicts. Nonintervention acts as powerfully as intervention; in either case, law is a powerful actor in its role as a part of cultural dialogue, as well as in its role as a coercive force. Law is never neutral in my view. If it “stays out” of a situation, then it is complicit in the status quo or in permitting the conflict to be resolved without legal intervention, which may weight the outcome in a particular direction. If law “comes in,” it similarly “sides” with a particular position because, in part, our …

Latcritical Encounters With Culture, In North-South Frameworks, Pedro A. Malavet

UF Law Faculty Publications

A critical introduction of a group of articles in the LatCrit VI Symposium issue, discussing the authors' diverse approaches to Latin American legal cultures and contextualizing the publications in the growing body of LatCrit scholarship. The Essay discusses how the other essays in the issue fit within or challenge the themes of the specific roundtable, plenary, or workshop in which they were presented, and then locates the cluster within the present and the future of LatCrit Theory generally, and LatCritical praxi in particular. This Essay addresses each presentation, the specific conference context(s) in which it was delivered, and how the …

Glocalizing Law And Culture: Towards A Cross-Constitutive Paradigm, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This lecture addresses the relationship between law and culture in three general parts. The first part consists of a brief review of the theories addressing the relationship of law and culture, mainly the mirror theory. But I will suggest that there is more to the relationship of law and culture than one being an inert reflection of the other; hence my proposal for what I call, as a working concept, a cross-constitutive paradigm of law and culture. The second part reviews the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women ("CEDAW''), a law that seeks to effect …

Building Bridges V—Cubans Without Borders: Mujeres Unidas Por Su Historia, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Part I of this Essay traces the role of women in Cuban society throughout history. It includes a review of the development of Cuban laws concerning women, and women's role in developing them. This Part also addresses laws pertaining to women that were adopted by the present revolutionary regime. Part II sets out laws, beyond the laws of Cuba, that address the issue of gender/sex equality. It focuses on international norms that protect sex equality pertinent to women in Cuba as well as to Cuban women outside of Cuba. It also reviews U.S. laws on equality as they affect Cuban …

Race, Crime And The Pool Of Surplus Criminality: Or Why The "War On Drugs" Was A "War On Blacks", Kenneth B. Nunn

UF Law Faculty Publications

The War on Drugs has had a devastating effect on African American communities nationwide. The concept of the pool of surplus criminality may explain the drug war's focus on African Americans. Faced with a perceived drug problem, White Americans naturally identified African American people as the source of that threat and targeted them for police harassment and penal control. There are ways in which the drug war may be construed as a race war. The disproportionate impact on the African American community, evidence that policy makers anticipated the drug war would disproportionately harm the African American community, and the historic …

Dissecting Axes Of Subordination: The Need For A Structural Analysis, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

Proceedings of a criminal trial in Dallas, Texas, demonstrate the vulnerability of LGBT individuals to judicial bias. Although the jury convicted the defendant of murdering two gay males, the judge explained his light sentence: "I put prostitutes and gays at about the same level, and I'd be hard put to give somebody life for killing a prostitute . . . had [the victims] not been out there trying to spread AIDS, they'd still be alive today . . . These two guys that got killed wouldn't have been killed if they hadn't been cruising the streets picking up teen-age boys …

Identity Crisis: “Intersectionality,” “Multidimensionality,” And The Development Of An Adequate Theory Of Subordination, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

While essentialism remains a prominent feature of progressive social movements, critical scholars have offered persuasive arguments against traditional, single-issue politics and have proposed reforms in a variety of doctrinal and policy contexts. The feminist of color critiques of feminism and antiracism provided the earliest framework for analyzing oppression in complex terms. Feminists of color and other critical scholars have examined racism and patriarchy as “intersecting” phenomena, rather than as separate and mutually exclusive systems of domination. Their work on the intersectionality of subordination has encouraged some judges and progressive scholars to discard the “separate spheres” analysis of race and gender. …

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

The current "Latin Music Craze" in United States mass media demands critical analysis from the LatCrit community. LatCrit scholars have engaged in the serious discussion of cultural production -- of culture generally and popular culture in particular. LatCrit theory has analyzed cultural production mostly by "others," that is, cultural production internal to outsider communities. LatCritters also have studied how United States mass media portrays Latinas/os, African-Americans and Filipinas/os. This article will examine the competing narratives of Puerto Rican cultures in Puerto Rico and in the United States that are illuminated by the current Latin Music Craze. It will then explore …

Foreword: Toward A Multicultural Theory Of Property Rights, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

This panel, sponsored by the Minority group and Property Sections of the AALS for the January, 2000 annual meeting, was composed of an exciting group of scholars critically analyzing traditional theories of property and current distribution of resources. The panel, entitled "Reviewing the Legacy of Liberalism: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness -- Linking Property to Rights," challenged traditional notions of property rights, from a discussion of the gender implications of African property law, to a critique of traditional analyses of Johnson v. M'Intosh, to property as heteronormative. Because the articles provide so much rich and thought-provoking material, …

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

I attend LatCrit conferences to be educated on what I regard as the most exciting legal scholarship being produced today. Therefore, I naturally jumped at the opportunity to help organize the Fourth Annual LatCrit Conference and to chair one of its Plenary Panels. I have penned this Essay for the purpose not only of joining Critical Race Theory ("CRT") discourse, but also to create a recorded history of LatCrit travels.

In Part I of this Essay, I will describe the process that led the Planning Committee to include the Literature and Arts as Antisubordination Praxis: LatCrit Theory and Cultural Production …

“Gay Rights” For “Gay Whites”?: Race, Sexual Identity, And Equal Protection Discourse, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

While the resolution of the problem of gay and lesbian inequality will ultimately turn on a host of social, legal, political, and ideological variables, this Article argues that the success or failure of efforts to achieve legal equality for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals will depend in large part on how scholars and activists in this field address questions of racial identity and racial subjugation. Commonly, these scholars and activists currently discuss race by use of analogies between “racial discrimination” and “sexual orientation discrimination,” or between “people of color” and “gays and lesbians.” On one level, the “comparative approach” …

Latindia Ii — Latinas/Os, Natives, And Mestizajes — A Latcrit Navigation Of Nuevos Mundos, Nuevas Fronteras, And Nuevas Teorias, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Essay is a journey that will elucidate a personal exploration of LatCrit's trinitarian goals of engagement of identity interrogations, community building, and self-critical analysis. It will reflect personal travels and travails, bumps in the road and epiphanies, theory and practice. The plot for these musings is a cultural voyage in which this viajera embarks to live and comprehend the meaning of mestizaje in a personal quest for identity location; the stage is LatCrit IV.

My interrelated trips are chartered in three parts. Part I, Nuevos Mundos. Traveling LatCrit Community, presents the historical background of, contexts for, and evolutions …

The "Darden Dilemma": Should African Americans Prosecute Crimes?, Kenneth B. Nunn

UF Law Faculty Publications

Christopher Darden (prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial) has come to epitomize the burdens that African American prosecutors face as they perform their professional tasks. Moreover, the "Darden Dilemma" has become a generic term for the anguish that these prosecutors endure as they negotiate between competing allegiances to the African American community and the State. Much has been written about the sense of isolation that African American prosecutors feel when confronting the conflict between their roles as prosecutors and their obligations to the African American community. This article argues that African Americans should not prosecute crimes in the current criminal …

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

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 …

Beyond The Rhetoric Of “Dirty Laundry”: Examining The Value Of Internal Criticism Within Progressive Social Movements And Oppressed Communities, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

Several historical reasons explain opposition to the airing of internal criticism by scholars and activists within progressive social movements and by members of subordinate communities. Opponents often contend that such criticism might reinforce negative stereotypes of subordinate individuals and that reactionary movements and activists might appropriate and misuse negative portrayals of the oppressed. A related fear holds that internal criticism will dismantle political unity within oppressed communities and progressive social movements, thereby forestalling social change. While these concerns provide some context for understanding the resistance to internal criticism within progressive social movements, I argue in this essay that they do …

Latina Multidimensionality And Latcrit Possibilities: Culture, Gender, And Sex©, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay explores the multiple margins that Latinas inhabit both within majority society and their comunidad Latina because of their compounded outsider status in all their possible communities. Exploring the concept and theme of "Between/Beyond Colors: Outsiders Within Latina/o Communities" elucidates both the challenges and the possibilities the young LatCrit movement presents for Latinas.

From its inception, LatCrit has broadened and sought to reconstruct the race discourse beyond the normalized binary black/white paradigm -- an underinclusive model that effects the erasure of the Latina/o, Native, and Asian experiences as well as the realities of other racial and ethnic groups in …

The Future Of Governmental Ethics: Law And Morality, Jon L. Mills

UF Law Faculty Publications

Based on a speech presented at the 16th International Symposium on Economic Crime, Cambridge University, England September 13-19, 1998.

Ignoring The Sexualization Of Race: Heteronormativity, Critical Race Theory And Anti-Racist Politics, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article, a third in a series of related works, explores the representation of sexual identity within Critical Race Theory and other forms of anti-racist discourse. I argue, after examining representative texts, that anti-racist discourse is often "heteronormative" -- or centered around heterosexual experiences. Most commonly, anti-racist heteronormativity occurs when scholars and activists in the field fail to analyze the homophobic dimensions of acts or conditions of racial inequality and when they dismiss, either implicitly or explicitly, the "morality" of gay and lesbian equality claims. This Article recommends that scholars in Critical Race Theory and related fields adopt a more …

Global Rights, Local Wrongs, And Legal Fixes: An International Human Rights Critique Of Immigration And Welfare "Reform", Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Kimberly A. Johns

UF Law Faculty Publications

The United States enjoys a lofty reputation worldwide as the land of opportunity and dreams, the welcoming home to all who want to be free, the brave new world that embraces huddled masses and offers them limitless possibilities to find freedom, liberty, and happiness. In marked juxtaposition to this welcomeness narrative is the counter-narrative of historic exclusion evidenced by the harsh description of these "huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" as "wretched refuse." Indeed, to describe some immigrants as "wretched refuse" manifests that Lady Liberty's welcome is, at best, highly selective and, at worst, patently discriminatory. The irony, of course, …

Building Bridges Iii - Personal Narratives, Incoherent Paradigms, And Plural Citizens, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Essay, in three parts, explores bridge building among communities of color with the purposes of creating, maintaining, and developing alliances. The first part, Personal Narratives, shares with readers some cuentos (stories) as a method and path in which to position the lectors: to contextualize my frontiers and familiarize them with my daily travels through diverse and varied borderlands; the many communities with which I intersect and interact, and in which I live- all of them my communities; and in all of which I am both insider and outsider. Part II, Incoherent Paradigms, suggests that the prevailing race-based legal paradigms …

Law, Culture, And The Morality Of Judicial Choice, Kenneth B. Nunn

UF Law Faculty Publications

Remarks from Professor Kenneth B. Nunn at the Ray Rushton Distinguished Lecture Series at the Cumberland School of Law on April 24, 1998.

Building Bridges - Latinas And Latinos At The Crossroads: Realities, Rhetoric And Replacement, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay uses the narrative form to share experiences from one latina's perspective. The author aspires to show how latinas/os, a magnificently diverse group, can be a critical factor in building the bridges that can move the stubborn, static oppositionality (normative) perspective towards a "true universalist" approach. I suggest latinas/os can do this because our diverse backgrounds have equipped us with a multiple perspective viewpoint.

Cultural Critique And Legal Change, Charles W. Collier

UF Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Warren And Burger Courts On State, Parent, And Child Conflict Resolution: A Comparative Analysis And Proposed Methodology, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

Developing a framework for analyzing children's rights issues is difficult due to the inherent tension between individual freedom and the traditional role of the family in society. The United States Supreme Court has failed to use a consistent framework in resolving conflicts among the child, parent, and the state. Because increasingly complex and controversial children's rights issues are arising, a consistent framework must be developed to assist courts adjudicating these conflicts. This Article proposes a methodology for resolving state-parent-child conflicts. This methodology reduces each state-parent-child conflict to either a state-parent or a state-child controversy. Under this framework, children are treated …