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Law and Society

2008

Economic inequality

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Constitutionalizing Class Inequality: Due Process In State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey Dec 2008

Constitutionalizing Class Inequality: Due Process In State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey

Buffalo Law Review

This essay takes a step toward building a story of economic class in U.S. constitutional law, as part of a special essay issue of the Buffalo Law Review developed from a series of workshops titled ClassCrits: Toward a Critical Analysis of Economic Inequality, sponsored by the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo. The essay focuses on the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in State Farm Mutual Insurance Co. v. Campbell, one of a series of recent cases using the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to limit punitive damage awards against corporate defendants …


Introducing Classcrits: Rejecting Class-Blindness, A Critical Legal Analysis Of Economic Inequity, Athena D. Mutua Dec 2008

Introducing Classcrits: Rejecting Class-Blindness, A Critical Legal Analysis Of Economic Inequity, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

In 2007, two workshops at the University at Buffalo launched a project bringing together legal scholars interested in exploring the relationship between law and economic inequality. This article provides an overview of the workshops’ key understandings and discussions. The essay suggests that these understandings, informed by critical legal scholarship, constituted a set of shared assumptions among the participants and informed the groups’ rejection of class blindness, a society-wide blindness to the existence and use of economic power. Discussing some of the functional similarities of gender, race and class blindness, the article argues that feminist and critical race scholars’ critiques of …