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University of Michigan Law School

African Americans

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Constitutional Law

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Race And Constitutional Law Casebooks: Recognizing The Proslavery Constitution, Juan F. Perea Apr 2012

Race And Constitutional Law Casebooks: Recognizing The Proslavery Constitution, Juan F. Perea

Michigan Law Review

Federalist No. 54 shows that part of Madison's public defense of the Constitution included the defense of some of its proslavery provisions. Madison and his reading public were well aware that aspects of the Constitution protected slavery. These aspects of the Constitution were publicly debated in the press and in state ratification conventions. Just as the Constitution's protections for slavery were debated at the time of its framing and ratification, the relationship between slavery and the Constitution remains a subject of debate. Historians continue to debate the centrality of slavery to the Constitution. The majority position among historians today appears …


"Airbrushed Out Of The Constitutional Canon": The Evolving Understanding Of Giles V. Harris, 1903-1925, Samuel Brenner Mar 2009

"Airbrushed Out Of The Constitutional Canon": The Evolving Understanding Of Giles V. Harris, 1903-1925, Samuel Brenner

Michigan Law Review

Richard H. Pildes argued in an influential 2000 article that the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Giles v. Harris, which was written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, was the "one decisive turning point" in the history of "American (anti)-democracy." In Giles, Holmes rejected on questionable grounds Jackson W. Giles's challenge to the new Alabama Constitution of 1901-a document which was designed to disfranchise and had the effect of disfranchising African Americans. The decision thus contributed significantly to the development of the all-white electorate in the South, and the concomitant marginalization of southern African Americans. According to Pildes, however, the …


Education And Labor Relations: Asian Americans And Blacks As Pawns In The Furtherance Of White Hegemony, Xiaofeng Stephanie Da Jan 2007

Education And Labor Relations: Asian Americans And Blacks As Pawns In The Furtherance Of White Hegemony, Xiaofeng Stephanie Da

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Asian Americans and Blacks have been, and continue to be, racialized relative to each other in our society. Asian Americans and Blacks have come to occupy marginalized positions as the polarized ends on the economic spectrums of education and labor relations, with an expanding "Whiteness" as the filler in the middle as Whites manipulate the differing interests of both subordinated groups to align with White (the dominant group's) interests. Although Whites purport to champion the interests of one subordinate group over the other, in reality the racialization of Asian Americans and Blacks in our country is rooted in the preservation …


Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner Jan 2007

Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article examines the Project Safe Neighborhoods program and considers whether its disproportionate application in urban, majority- African American cities (large and small) violates the guarantee of equal protection under the law. This Article will start with a description of the program and how it operates-the limited application to street-level criminal activity in predominately African American communities. Based on preliminary data showing that Project Safe Neighborhoods disproportionately impacts African Americans, the Article turns to an analysis of the applicable law. Most courts have analyzed Project Safe Neighborhoods' race-based challenges under selective prosecution case law, which requires a showing by the …


The Current Landscape Of Race: Old Targets, New Opportunities, Richard Delgado May 2006

The Current Landscape Of Race: Old Targets, New Opportunities, Richard Delgado

Michigan Law Review

It is difficult enough identifying areas within a current field of scholarship that are underdeveloped and in need of further attention. In science, one thinks of missing elements in the periodic table or planets in a solar system that our calculations tell us must be there but that our telescopes have not yet spotted. In civil-rights law, one thinks of such areas as women's sports or the problems of intersectional groups, such as women of color or gay black men. One also thinks of issues that current events are constantly thrusting forward, such as discrimination against Arabs or execution of …


The Evolution Of Race In The Law: The Supreme Court Moves From Approving Internment Of Japanese Americans To Disapproving Affirmative Ation For African Americans, Reggie Oh, Frank Wu Jan 1996

The Evolution Of Race In The Law: The Supreme Court Moves From Approving Internment Of Japanese Americans To Disapproving Affirmative Ation For African Americans, Reggie Oh, Frank Wu

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

As the Court suggests, the Korematsu precedent is crucial to the Adarand decision. In Adarand, the Court analyzes Korematsu in depth, acknowledging that its own judgment had been mistaken in the internment cases, instead of simply citing the decisions as it formally had done until the very recent past. The Court nevertheless fails to appreciate the differences between Korematsu and Adarand, and in particular the consequences of using "strict scrutiny" for all racial classifications. This essay explores the complex relation-ship between Korematsu and Adarand, and offers a critique of the reasoning used in both cases. The essay …


History's Stories, Stephan Landsman May 1995

History's Stories, Stephan Landsman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman


The Unhappy History Of Civil Rights Legislation, Eugene Gressman Jun 1952

The Unhappy History Of Civil Rights Legislation, Eugene Gressman

Michigan Law Review

The enforcement by federal legislation of the constitutional right of individuals is a story written largely in terms of confusion, distortion and frustration. Seldom, if ever, have the power and the purposes of legislation been rendered so impotent. Indeed, this story constitutes one of the saddest chapters in the historic struggle to effectuate the American ideal of freedom and equality for all.


Constitutional Law-Freedom Of Speech, Alan C. Boyd S. Ed. Apr 1951

Constitutional Law-Freedom Of Speech, Alan C. Boyd S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant addressed a crowd of people, white and Negro, on a public sidewalk for the purpose of urging them to attend a certain meeting. During the course of his speech he "'called Mayor Costello [of Syracuse] a champaign [sic] sipping bum and President Truman a bum. He referred to the American Legion as Nazi Gestapo agents-he also said the fifteenth Ward was run by corrupt politicians and that horse rooms were operating.'" He also appealed to the Negroes to rise up and fight for equal rights. The police were called but at first merely observed the gathering. Angry …


Constitutional Law-Freedom Of Speech, Alan C. Boyd S. Ed. Apr 1951

Constitutional Law-Freedom Of Speech, Alan C. Boyd S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant addressed a crowd of people, white and Negro, on a public sidewalk for the purpose of urging them to attend a certain meeting. During the course of his speech he "'called Mayor Costello [of Syracuse] a champaign [sic] sipping bum and President Truman a bum. He referred to the American Legion as Nazi Gestapo agents-he also said the fifteenth Ward was run by corrupt politicians and that horse rooms were operating.'" He also appealed to the Negroes to rise up and fight for equal rights. The police were called but at first merely observed the gathering. Angry …


Constitutional Law--White Primaries--Rice V. Elmore, Irving Slifkin S.Ed. Apr 1948

Constitutional Law--White Primaries--Rice V. Elmore, Irving Slifkin S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The right of the negro to vote has constantly been challenged in attempts to destroy or at least to control the exercise of that right. The Fifteenth Amendment secures the right to vote free from interference on a racial basis by the states or the national government. In the states where there is a large negro population varied efforts have been attempted in order to control and nullify the negro vote. These efforts have been manifested in various forms-the grandfather clause, property ownership requirements, the poll tax, character tests, and literacy tests.


Constitutional Law-Interstate Commerce-Carriers-Validity Of State Statute Requiring Racial Segregation Of Passengers, George Brody S.Ed. Dec 1946

Constitutional Law-Interstate Commerce-Carriers-Validity Of State Statute Requiring Racial Segregation Of Passengers, George Brody S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Appellant, a passenger on a motor common carrier, was traveling from Virginia to Baltimore. Pursuant to a Virginia statute requiring all passenger motor carrier vehicles to "separate without discrimination the white and colored passengers in their motor busses so that contiguous seats will not be occupied by persons of different races at the same time" the driver of the carrier upon which appellant was traveling requested her to vacate her seat so that it could be used by a white passenger. She refused and was arrested and convicted under authority of a statute punishing such refusal. The Virginia Supreme Court …


Constitutional Law-Congressional Primaries-Voting Rights Of Negroes, Everett S. Brown Apr 1944

Constitutional Law-Congressional Primaries-Voting Rights Of Negroes, Everett S. Brown

Michigan Law Review

The petitioner, Lonnie E. Smith, a Negro citizen of Harris County, Texas, brought suit for damages against election judges who refused to give him a ballot or to permit him to cast a ballot in the primary election of July 27, 1940, for the nomination of Democratic candidates for federal and state officers. The refusal was alleged to have been solely because of Smith's race and color and consequently violated sections 31 and 43 of title 8 of the United States Code by depriving Smith of rights secured under provisions of the Federal Constitution. The District Court of the United …


Constitutional Law-Equal Protection-Disparity Of Privilege And Discrimination Mar 1929

Constitutional Law-Equal Protection-Disparity Of Privilege And Discrimination

Michigan Law Review

The equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment provides that no person or class of persons shall be denied the same protection of the laws that others in the same place and under like circumstances enjoy. But it has been said that "equality and not identity of privileges and rights is what is guaranteed to the citizen" by the fourteenth amendment. People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438, 45 Am. Rep. 232. Any law which in terms provides for identity of privileges and rights, but which operates in such a manner as to produce political or economic inequality. because of …