Law Commons^™

Antidiscrimination Law And The Multiracial Experience: A Reply To Nancy Leong, Tina F. Botts J.D., Ph.D.

Tina F Botts J.D., Ph.D.

Nancy Leong’s thesis, in “Judicial Erasure of Mixed-Race Discrimination,” is that antidiscrimination law should make a switch from defining race “categorically” to defining it in terms of the perception of the would-be discriminator so as to better accommodate claims of multiracial discrimination and so as to better achieve what Leong sees as the goals of antidiscrimination law, i.e., the promotion of racial understanding, and the elimination of racism and racial discrimination. But, while Leong’s goals are admirable, the method she proposes for achieving these goals will not succeed. Antidiscrimination law cannot operate to promote racial understanding, or to eliminate racism …

Coalition, Cross-Cultural Lawyering, And Intersectionality: Immigrant Identity As A Barrier To Effective Legal Counseling For Domestic Violence Victims, Jessica H. Stein

Jessica Stein

Cultural differences can be the most difficult barrier to overcome and the hardest to define when working with immigrant victims of domestic violence. This issue also seems to be the most puzzling and frustrating to attorneys, with answers that can be uncomfortable and that offend a progressive, liberal sense of lawyering. Drawing on critical race theory, I argue that the problems faced by immigrant victims in seeking help can only be solved by the recognition of the intersectionalities apparent in immigrant domestic violence cases, by the use and encouragement of cross-cultural lawyering, requiring a sincere effort by attorneys to be …

Emergent Disability & The Limits Of Equality: A Critical Reading Of The Un Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Elizabeth R. Ribet

Elizabeth R Ribet

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities marks a shift in international legal relationships to and conceptions of disability. The Convention is the first binding international instrument of its kind related to disability. Its premises differ from the earlier World Programme on Disability, and more closely integrate the frameworks of U.S. domestic equal protection and disability civil rights law. Drawing on critical race and feminist theoretical literature, this paper critically examines the implications of internationalizing a U.S. disability law framework, with particular attention to the problem of "emergent disability", or disability which is specifically produced as a …

Emergent Disability & The Limits Of Equality: A Critical Reading Of The Un Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Elizabeth R. Ribet

Elizabeth R Ribet

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities marks a shift in international legal relationships to and conceptions of disability. The Convention is the first binding international instrument of its kind related to disability. Its premises differ from the earlier World Programme on Disability, and more closely integrate the frameworks of U.S. domestic equal protection and disability civil rights law. Drawing on critical race and feminist theoretical literature, this paper critically examines the implications of internationalizing a U.S. disability law framework, with particular attention to the problem of "emergent disability", or disability which is specifically produced as a …

Emergent Disability & The Limits Of Equality: A Critical Reading Of The Un Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Elizabeth R. Ribet

Elizabeth R Ribet

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities marks a shift in international legal relationships to and conceptions of disability. The Convention is the first binding international instrument of its kind related to disability. Its premises differ from the earlier World Programme on Disability, and more closely integrate the frameworks of U.S. domestic equal protection and disability civil rights law. Drawing on critical race and feminist theoretical literature, this paper critically examines the implications of internationalizing a U.S. disability law framework, with particular attention to the problem of "emergent disability", or disability which is specifically produced as a …

Fitting Square Pegs Into Round Holes: How Race-Based Affirmative Action In Higher Education Admissions Is An Inadequate And Inequitable Means To An End, Justin C. Aday

Justin C Aday

Race-based affirmative action in higher educaction admissions presents problems for all persons involved in the admissions process - insitution administrators who develop admissions policies, students who apply for admission to the insitution, and especially the never-envied admissions director (or admissions committee). This paper presents a critique of race-based affirmative action and jurisprudential theories that support the practice, from the perspective of a law school admissions director. After admitting 98 of 100 students into an entering law school class, the admissions director must chose the remaining two students for admission from only a pool of four applicants - two privileged minorities, …

Turn The Chapter Or Change The Book: Taking Critical Race Theory Forward, Trevor Tan

Trevor Tan

Differentiations between groups are now conceived along cultural lines instead of morphological or geographical lines. This is substantively reflected in academia, law and practical experience. Adoption of an alter-cultural solution will sweep aside arbitrary limits based on an old idea of race, replacing them with porous and readily traversed boarders. It will place autonomy and self-agency firmly at the core of human ambition and achievement. I illustrate this by applying an altercultural lens to a persistent area of Critical Race debate – racial underrepresentation in the legal profession.

Critical Race literature should begin to adopt culture as its root concept, …

Book Review: Henry J. Richardson Iii, The Origins Of African-American Interests In International Law, D. A. Jeremy Telman

D. A. Jeremy Telman

This short review evaluates Professor Richardson's book both as a contribution to the history of the Atlantic slave trade and as contribution to critical race theory.Professor Richardson has read innumerable historical monographs, works of legal and sociological theory, international law and critical race theory. Armed with this store of knowledge, he is able to recount a detailed narrative of African-American claims to, interests in and appeals to international law over approximately two centuries spanning, with occasional peeks both forward and backward in time, from the landing of the first African slaves at Jamestown in 1619 to the 1815 Treaty of …

"Nigger": A Critical Race Realist Analysis Of The N-Word Within Hate Crimes Law, Shayne E. Jones, Gregory S. Parks

Shayne E Jones

On a 2005 summer morning, Nicholas “Fat Nick” Minucci (White) beat Glenn Moore (Black) with a baseball bat and robbed him. During the assault, Minucci repeatedly screamed the N-word. At trial, Minucci’s attorney argued that he had not committed a hate crime. The essence of the defense’s argument was that Minucci’s use of the N-word while assaulting and robbing Moore was not indicative of any bias or prejudice. The defense went on to indicate that Minucci had Black friends, was immersed in Black culture, and employed the N-word as part of his everyday vocabulary. Two Black men—Gary Jenkins (hip hop …

The Anatomy Of Grey: A Theory Of Interracial Convergence, Kevin Noble Maillard, Janis L. Mcdonald

Kevin Noble Maillard

This article offers a theory of racial identity divorced from biological considerations. Law fails to recognize the complexity of racial performance and identity, thus categorically simplifying a perceived polarity of black and white. Ground-breaking scholarship addressing racial boundaries, as written by Randall Kennedy, Elizabeth Bartholet, and Angela Onwauchi-Willig, generally focuses on the enduring legacy of race discrimination. We approach these boundaries from a different angle—whites who become “less white.” We bring together the challenges of passing and adoption to offer a theory of fluid racial boundaries.

Transracial adoption provides one viable channel to discuss the possibilities of white-to-black racial identity …

Theorizing The Connections Among Systems Of Subordination, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

Theorizing the Connections Among Systems of Subordination introduces a symposium that addresses issues on the leading edge of identity theory, race theory, and critical social theory. It explains the concepts of anti-essentialism, intersectionality, multiple consciousness, multi-dimensionality, and post-intersectionality. It investigates the ways specific types of oppression - such as racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia - support and feed off of one another. It explores the dynamics of subordination that make different forms of subordination connected to each other - the mechanisms by which subordinating systems buttress each other. Where one sees sexism, one frequently can find racism; where classism exists, …

Critical Of Race Theory: Race, Reason, Merit And Civility, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

A hazard lurks in any but the most careful representation of another's viewpoint. Call it "slippage" or the "essentialist error," the point is that communication rarely does complete justice to its object. The problem is compounded when the communication is mediated. We all know that between a story and its retelling, something will get lost in translation. Consider feminism, gay legal theory, and critical race theory, and their depictions in academic journals and the popular media. Newspapers and news magazines have recently published a spate of academic trash talk accusing critical race theorists of "playing the race card" and indulging …

The Tales Of White Folk: Doctrine, Narrative, And The Reconstruction Of Racial Reality, Robert L. Hayman, Nancy A. Levit

Nancy Levit

Black America, some people said, was dying. And they wondered what they would hear in the souls of white folk when white America heard the news.

Part of the story was told in June 1995, by the Supreme Court. The session of the Court had not been convened explicitly or exclusively to determine the fate of black America. Still, it was clearly on the agenda, with no less than three major race-related disputes on the High Court's docket.

And what the Court had to say on such matters did matter. As the highest tribunal in the land, it possessed the …