Law Commons^™

Implicit Bias, Election '08, And The Myth Of A Post-Racial America, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Gregory S. Parks

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth President of the United States signals that the traditional modes of thinking about race in America are outdated. Commentators and pundits have begun to suggest that the election of a black man to the nation's highest office means that the United States has entered a post-racial era in which civil rights laws are becoming unnecessary. Although President Obama's election means that explicit, open anti-black racism has largely faded, an analysis of the campaign's rhetoric and themes suggests that unconscious racism is alive and well. Rather than suggest a retreat from traditional civil …

Michelle Obama: The "Darker Side" Of Presidential Spousal Involvement And Activism, Gregory S. Parks, Quinetta M. Roberson, Phd

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Pundits and commentators have attempted to make sense of the role that race and gender have played in the 2008 presidential campaign. Whereas researchers are drawing on varying bodies of scholarship (legal, cognitive and social psychology, and political science) to illuminate the role that Senator Obama’s race and Senator Clinton’s gender has/had on their campaign, Michelle Obama has been left out of the discussion. As Senator Clinton once noted, elections are like hiring decisions. As such, new frontiers in employment discrimination law place Michelle Obama in context within the current presidential campaign. First, racism and sexism are both alive and …

Unconscious Bias And The 2008 Presidential Election, Gregory S. Parks, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The 2008 presidential campaign and election will be historic. It marks the first time a Black person (Barack Obama) and a woman (Hillary Clinton) have a real chance at winning the Presidency. Their viability as candidates symbolizes significant progress in overcoming racial and gender stereotypes in America. But closer analysis of the campaigns reveals that race and gender have placed enormous constraints on how these two Senators can run their candidacy. This is not surprising in light of the history of race and gender in voting and politics in America. But what is perhaps more surprising is how the campaigns …

Debate, Implicit Race Bias And The 2008 Presidential Election: Much Ado About Nothing?, Gregory S. Parks, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Richard A. Epstein

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The election of Barack Obama marks a significant milestone for race relations in our nation—on this much our debaters agree. The meaning of this milestone for the future of race-based policies, such as affirmative action and antidiscrimination laws, is where they disagree. Dr. Gregory Parks and Professor Jeffrey Rachlinski argue that any announcement of the arrival of a “post-racial America” is premature, as the presidential campaign actually revealed an implicit racial bias present in “most white adult brains.” The stereotypical criticisms of Obama, explicit racial references by supporters of opposing candidates, and “deeply racially stratified voting” were, in fact, “reflection[s] …

Racism, Unreasonable Belief, And Bernhard Goetz, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

How should the law respond when one person (D) kills another person (V), who is black, because D believes that V is about to kill him, but D would not have so believed if V had been white? Should D be exonerated on grounds of self-defense? The canonical case raising this question is People v. Goetz. Some commentators argue that norms of equal treatment and anti-discrimination require that D’s claim of self-defense be rejected. I argue that denying D’s claim of self-defense would be at odds with the principle that criminal liability should only be imposed on an actor if …

Myth Of Black Juror Nullification: Racism Dressed Up In Jurisprudential Clothing, Elissa Krauss, Martha Schulman

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Racist Speech Outsider Jurisprudence And The Meaning Of America , Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Racist Speech, Outsider Jurisprudence, And The Meaning Of America, Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications