Law Commons^™

Poll Workers, Election Administration, And The Problem Of Implicit Bias, Antony Page, Michael J. Pitts

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Racial bias in election administration-more specifically, in the interaction between poll workers and voters at a polling place on election day-may be implicit, or unconscious. Indeed, the operation of a polling place may present an "optimal" setting for unconscious racial bias. Poll workers sometimes have legal discretion to decide whether or not a prospective voter gets to cast a ballot, and they operate in an environment where they may have to make quick decisions, based on little information, with few concrete incentives for accuracy, and with little opportunity to learn from their errors. Even where the letter of the law …

Performing Discretion Or Performing Discrimination: Race, Ritual, And Peremptory Challenges In Capital Jury Selection, Melynda J. Price

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Research shows the mere presence of Blacks on capital juries-- on the rare occasions they are seated--can mean the difference between life and death. Peremptory challenges are the primary method to remove these pivotal participants. Batson v. Kentucky developed hearings as an immediate remedy for the unconstitutional removal of jurors through racially motivated peremptory challenges. These proceedings have become rituals that sanction continued bias in the jury selection process and ultimately affect the outcome of capital trials. This Article deconstructs the role of the Batson ritual in legitimating the removal of African American jurors. These perfunctory hearings fail to meaningfully …

From Proposition 209 To Proposal 2: Examining The Effects Of Anti-Affirmative Action Voter Initiatives, Michigan Journal Of Race & Law

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Transcript of the symposium held at the University of Michigan Law School on Saturday, February 9, 2008 in Hutchins Hall Room 100

The Current State Of Residential Segregation And Housing Discrimination: The United States' Obligations Under The International Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Racial Discrimination, Michael B. De Leeuw, Megan K. Whyte, Dale Ho, Catherine Meza, Alexis Karteron

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The United States government accepted a number of obligations related to housing when it ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination ("CERD"). For example, the United States government must ensure that all people enjoy the rights to housing and to own property, without distinction as to race; cease discriminatory actions, including those that are discriminatory in effect regardless of intent; and take affirmative steps to remedy past discrimination and eradicate segregation. This Article discusses the United States government's compliance with those obligations, as well as the importance of meaningful compliance in maintaining the United …

We Need Inquire Further: Normative Sterotypes, Hasidic Jews, And The Civil Rights Act Of 1866, William Kaplowitz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

According to modern Supreme Court opinions, The Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibits only "discrimination [against members of protected groups] solely because of their ancestry or ethnic characteristics." The Court refers to this type of discrimination as 'racial animus.' In the 1987 case Shaare Tefila Congregation v. CobbJews were recognized as a protected ethnic group under these statutes, but the Supreme Court also reaffirmed that The Civil Rights Act only prohibits 'ethnic' or 'ancestral' discrimination. The Act does not encompass religious discrimination. Yet, despite the Supreme Court's rulings, the district courts held that both Rabbi LeBlanc-Sternberg's and Mr. Singers' allegations …

The Politics Of Preclearance, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay examines recent charges of political motivation against the Department of Justice and its enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. These accusations appear well-deserved, on the strength of the Department's recent handling of the Texas redistricting submission and Georgia's voting identification requirement. This Essay reaches two conclusions. First, it is clear that Congress wished to secure its understanding of the Act into the future through its preclearance requirement. Many critics of the voting rights bill worried about the degree of discretion that the legislation accorded the Attorney General. Supporters worried as well, for this degree of discretion might lead …

Congressional Power To Extend Preclearance: A Response To Professor Karlan, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Is the core provision of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional? Many people now think that the Act's preclearance requirement is invalid, but Professor Karlan is not among them. In part, that is because she is not convinced the problems that originally motivated Congress to impose preclearance have been fully remedied. Professor Karlan points out the many ways section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) shapes behavior in the jurisdictions subject to the statute--not just by blocking discriminatory electoral changes, but also by influencing less transparent conduct by various political actors operating in these regions. Do not be so sure, …

Mission Accomplished?, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

My study of voting rights violations nationwide suggests that voting problems are more prevalent in places “covered” by the Act than elsewhere. Professor Persily’s careful and measured defense of the renewed statute posits that this evidence is the best available to support reauthorization. The evidence matters because if, as critics charge, the regional provisions of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) are no longer needed, minority voters should confront fewer obstacles to political participation in places where additional federal safeguards protect minority interests than in places where these safeguards do not operate. In fact, minority voters confront more.

Not Like The South? Regional Variation And Political Participation Through The Lens Of Section 2, Ellen D. Katz

Book Chapters

Congress voted last summer to reauthorize the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Among the reauthorized provisions is the Section 5 preclearance process, which requires "covered" jurisdictions to obtain federal approval before implementing changes to their voting laws. It is widely assumed that the reauthorization of Section 5 will survive constitutional scrutiny only if the record Congress amassed to support the statute documents pervasive unconstitutional conduct in covered jurisdictions for which preclearance offers a remedy. This paper takes issue with that assumption, arguing that precedent requiring such a record for new congressional legislation enforcing civil rights ought not apply …

Documenting Discrimination In Voting: Judicial Findings Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act Since 1982, Ellen D. Katz, Margaret Aisenbrey, Anna Baldwin, Emma Cheuse, Anna Weisbrodt

Other Publications

The Voting Rights Initiative ("VRI") at the University of Michigan Law School was created during the winter of 2005 to help inform [...] the debates that led to this latest congressional reauthorization and the legal challenge to it that is certain to follow. A cooperative research venture involving 100 students working under faculty direction set out to produce a detailed portrait of litigation brought since 1982 under Section 2. This Report evaluates the results of that survey. The comprehensive data set may be found in a searchable form at http://www.votingreport.org or http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/votingrights. The aim of this report and the accompanying …

The End Of Preclearance As We Knew It: How The Supreme Court Transformed Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act, Peyton Mccrary, Christopher Seaman, Richard Valelly

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article’s analysis reveals that by the 1990s the intent, or purpose, prong of Section 5 had become the dominant basis for objections to discriminatory voting changes. During that decade an astonishing 43 percent of all objections were, according to this assessment, based on discriminatory purpose alone. Thus, a key issue for Congress in determining how to deal with the preclearance requirement of the Act due to expire in 2007-assuming it seeks to restore the protection of minority voting rights that existed before January 2000-is whether to revise the language of Section 5 so as to restore the long-accepted definition …

From Laredo To Fort Worth: Race, Politics And The Texas Redistricting Case, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

LULAC v. Perry held that Texas violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when it displaced nearly 100,000 Latino residents from a congressional district in Laredo to protect the Republican incumbent they refused to support. At the same time, the Justices let stand the dismantling of a so-called “coalition” district in Fort Worth where African-American voters comprising a minority of the district’s population allegedly enjoyed effective control in deciding the district’s representative. Only Justice Kennedy supported the outcome in both Laredo and Fort Worth. His opinion marks the first time that he, or indeed a majority of the Justices, …

Documenting Discrimination In Voting: Judicial Findings Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act Since 1982, Ellen D. Katz, Margaret Aisenbrey, Anna Baldwin, Emma Cheuse, Anna Weisbrodt

Other Publications

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of one of the most remarkable and consequential pieces of congressional legislation ever enacted. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ("the VRA") targeted massive disfranchisement of African-American citizens in numerous Southern states. It imposed measures drastic in scope and extraordinary in effect. The VRA eliminated the use of literacy tests and other "devices" that Southern jurisdictions had long employed to prevent black residents from registering and voting. The VRA imposed on these jurisdictions onerous obligations to prove to federal officials that proposed changes to their electoral system would not discriminate against minority voters. Resistance …

Applying 42 U.S.C. § 1981 To Claims Of Consumer Discrimination, Abby Morrow Richardson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note explores several interesting legal questions regarding the proper interpretation of 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracting, when discrimination arises in the context of a consumer retail contract. The Note further explores how the Fifth Circuit's and other federal courts' narrow interpretation of § 1981's application in a retail setting (which allows plaintiffs to invoke the statute only when they have been prevented from completing their purchases) is contrary to the statute's express language, congressional intent, and to evolving concepts of contract theory, all of which reflect a commitment to the strict enforcement of civil …

Discrimination In Sentencing On The Basis Of Afrocentric Features, William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article does not challenge the prior research on sentencing discrimination between racial categories that found no significant difference in sentences given to similarly-situated African Americans and Whites. In fact, in the jurisdiction investigated- Florida- no discrimination between African Americans and Whites was found in the sentences imposed on defendants, looking only at racial category differences. Rather, the research suggests that in focusing exclusively on discrimination between racial groups, the research has missed a type of discrimination related to race that is taking place within racial categories: namely, discrimination on the basis of a person's Afrocentric features. By Afrocentric features, …

Resurrecting The White Primary, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

An unprecedented number of noncompetitive or "safe" electoral districts operate in the United States today. Noncompetitive districts elect officials with more extreme political views and foster more polarized legislatures than do competitive districts. More fundamentally, they inhibit meaningful political participation. That is because participating in an election that is decided before it begins is an empty exercise. Voting in a competitive election is not, even though a single vote will virtually never decide the outcome. What a competitive election offers to each voter is the opportunity to be the coveted swing voter, the one whose support candidates most seek, the …

Reinforcing Representation: Enforcing The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

A large body of academic scholarship accuses the Rehnquist Court of "undoing the Second Reconstruction," just as the Waite Court has long been blamed for facilitating the end of the First. This critique captures much of what is meant by those generally charging the Rehnquist Court with "conservative judicial activism." It posits that the present Court wants to dismantle decades' worth of federal antidiscrimination measures that are aimed at the "reconstruction" of public and private relationships at the local level. It sees the Waite Court as having similarly nullified the civil-rights initiatives enacted by Congress following the Civil War to …

Purchasing While Black: How Courts Condone Discrimination In The Marketplace, Matt Graves

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Given the sweeping language of § 1981 and 1982, it cannot be that sellers of goods can engage in intentional discrimination, so long as they make relatively minor attempts to cover it up. By exploring the interaction between substantive law, procedural law, legal culture, and real-world context, Graves seeks to demonstrate that judges cannot offer any legal or practical justification for heightened pleading requirements in § 1981 and 1982 actions. Through this argument, a conclusion is reached that § 1981 and 1982 plaintiffs must be given the same opportunity to litigate their claims that virtually all other plaintiffs are given. …

The Profiling Of Threat Versus The Threat Of Profiling, Frank H. Wu

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This speech covers three points. First, a brief summary of the failed federal criminal prosecution of Wen Ho Lee is given. Second, Wu talks about the racial profiling used in this case. Third, Wu talks about the possibilites for Asian Americans and other racial minorities to engage in principled activism to overcome these unfortunate trends.

Racial Profiling In Health Care: An Institutional Analysis Of Medical Treatment Disparities, René Bowser

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article links unscientific, race-based medical research to a broader, institutionalized pattern of racial profiling of Blacks in clinical decision-making. Far from providing a solution to the problem of racial health disparities, this Article shows that race-based health research fuels a collection of dubious background assumptions, creates a negative profile of Black patients, and reinforces taken-for-granted knowledge that leads to inferior medical treatment. This form of racial profiling is unjust, and also causes countless unnecessary deaths in the Black population.

Race, Peremptories, And Capital Jury Deliberations, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

In Lonnie Weeks's capital murder trial in Virginia in 1993, the jury was instructed: If you find from the evidence that the Commonwealth has proved beyond a reasonable doubt, either of the two alternative aggravating factors], and as to that alternative you are unanimous, then you may fix the punishment of the defendant at death or if you believe from all the evidence that the death penalty is not justified, then you shall fix the punishment of the defendant at life imprisonment ... This instruction is plainly ambiguous, at least to a lay audience. Does it mean that if the …

Direct Measures: An Alternative Form Of Affirmative Action, Daria Roithmayr

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Part I of this essay sets out in detail the direct measures affirmative action program. This section also compares the program to other alternative affirmative action program experiments undertaken by various educational institutions. Parts II and III discuss the constitutionality of a direct measures program.

Federalism, Preclearance, And The Rehnquist Court, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Lopez v. Monterey County is an odd decision. Justice O'Connor's majority opinion easily upholds the constitutionality of a broad construction of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in language reminiscent of the Warren Court. Acknowledging the "substantial 'federalism costs" resulting from the VRA's "federal intrusion into sensitive areas of state and local policymaking," Lopez recognizes that the Reconstruction Amendments "contemplate" this encroachment into realms "traditionally reserved to the States." Justice O'Connor affirms as constitutionally permissible the infringement that the section 5 preclearance process "by its nature" effects on state sovereignty, and applies section 5 broadly, holding the statute …

An Essay On Texas V. Lesage, Christina B. Whitman

Articles

When I was invited to participate in this symposium, I was asked to discuss whether the causation defense developed in Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle applied to cases challenging state action under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As I argue below, it seems clear that Mt. Healthy does apply to equal protection cases. The Supreme Court explicitly so held last November in Texas v. Lesage. But the implications of Lesage go beyond questions of causation. The opinion suggests that the Court may be rethinking (or ignoring) its promise in Carey v. Piphus …

Blood Will Tell: Scientific Racism And The Legal Prohibitions Against Miscegenation, Keith E. Sealing

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article first examines the miscegenation paradigm in terms of a seven-point conceptual framework that not merely allowed but practically demanded anti-miscegenation laws, then looks at the legal arguments state courts used to justify the constitutionality of such laws through 1967. Next, it analyzes the Biblical argument, which in its own right justified miscegenation, but also had a major influence on the development of the three major strands of scientific racism: monogenism, polygenism and Darwinian theory. It then probes the concept upon which the entire edifice is constructed-race--and discusses the continuing vitality of this construct. Next, this article turns to …

Still Unfair, Still Arbitrary - But Do We Care?, Samuel R. Gross

Other Publications

Welcome. It is a pleasure to see everybody at this bright and cheery hour of the morning. My assignment is to try to give an overview of the status of the death penalty in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I will try to put that in the context of how the death penalty was viewed thirty years ago, or more, and maybe that will tell us something about how the death penalty will be viewed thirty or forty years from now.

Cracking The Code: "De-Coding" Colorblind Slurs During The Congressional Crack Cocaine Debates, Richard Dvorak

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article proposes "de-coding" as a method for unveiling the racist purpose behind the enactment of race-neutral legislation. Through the use of "code words," defined as “phrases and symbols which refer indirectly to racial themes, but do not directly challenge popular democratic or egalitarian ideals,” legislators can appeal to racist sentiments without appearing racist. More importantly, they can do so without leaving evidence that can be traced back as an intent to discriminate. This article proposes to use "de-coding" as a method to unmask the racist purpose behind the enactment of the 100:1 crack versus powder cocaine ratio for mandatory …

Lowering The Preclearance Hurdle Reno V. Bossier Parish School Board, 120 S. Ct. 866 (2000), Alaina C. Beverly

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Case Note examines a recent Supreme Court decision that collapses the purpose and effect prongs of Section 5, effectively lowering the barrier to preclearance for covered jurisdictions. In Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board II the Court determined that Section 5 disallows only voting plans that are enacted with a retrogressive purpose (i.e., with the purpose to "worsen" the position of minority voters). The Court held that Section 5 does not prohibit preclearance of a plan enacted with a discriminatory purpose but without a retrogressive effect. Evidence of a Section 2 violation alone will not be enough to prove …

Against Common Sense: Why Title Vii Should. Protect Speakers Of Black English, Jill Gaulding

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The speech of many black Americans is marked by phrases such as 'we be writin"' or "we don't have no problems." Because most listeners consider such "Black English" speech patterns incorrect, these speakers face significant disadvantages in the job market. But common sense suggests that there is nothing discriminatory about employers' negative reactions to Black English because it makes sense to allow employers to insist that employees use correct grammar.

This article argues against this common sense understanding of Black English as bad grammar. The author first analyzes the extent of the job market disadvantages faced by Black English speakers …

Deconstructing The Ideology Of White Aesthetics, John M. Kang

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In this Article, the author provides a discussion on the dynamic between race and aesthetics. The author states that because Whites are the dominant group in America, they dictate what is beautiful. The consequence of this power dynamic is that the dominant group, Whites, can exercise preferences in deciding how to look or express themselves, whereas people of color are limited to either conforming to an imposed White standard or rejecting it. The author starts by laying out some of the features to what he terms the "ideology of White aesthetics." He then commences to examine how this ideology has …