Law Commons^™

Driving Diverse Representation Of Diverse Classes, Alissa Del Riego

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Why have federal courts overwhelmingly appointed white men to represent diverse consumer classes? Rule 23(g) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires courts to appoint the attorneys “best able to represent the interests of class members” to serve as class counsel. But courts’ recurrent conclusion that white men best fit the federally mandated job description not only gives the appearance of discrimination, but harms class members that suffer from outcomes plagued by groupthink and cognitive biases. This Article sets out to uncover why white male repeat players continue to dominate class counsel appointments and proposes a practical and immediately …

Affirmative Inaction: A Quantitative Analysis Of Progress Toward “Critical Mass” In U.S. Legal Education, Loren M. Lee

Michigan Law Review

Since 1978, the Supreme Court has recognized diversity as a compelling government interest to uphold the use of affirmative action in higher education. Yet the constitutionality of the practice has been challenged many times. In Grutter v. Bollinger, for example, the Court denied its use in perpetuity and suggested a twenty-five-year time limit for its application in law school admissions. Almost two decades have passed, so where do we stand? This Note’s quantitative analysis of the matriculation of and degrees awarded to Black and Latinx students at twenty-nine accredited law schools across the United States illuminates a stark lack of …

#Fortheculture: Generation Z And The Future Of Legal Education, Tiffany D. Atkins

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Generation Z, with a birth year between 1995 and 2010, is the most diverse generational cohort in U.S. history and is the largest segment of our population. Gen Zers hold progressive views on social issues and expect diversity and minority representation where they live, work, and learn. American law schools, however, are not known for their diversity, or for being inclusive environments representative of the world around us. This culture of exclusion has led to an unequal legal profession and academy, where less than 10 percent of the population is non-white. As Gen Zers bring their demands for inclusion, and …

A Podcast Of One’S Own, Leah M. Litman, Melissa Murray, Katherine Shaw

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In this short Essay, we discuss the lack of racial and gender diversity on and around the Supreme Court. As we note, the ranks of the Court’s Justices and its clerks historically have been dominated by white men. But this homogeneity is not limited to the Court’s members or its clerks. As we explain, much of the Court’s broader ecosystem suffers from this same lack of diversity. The advocates who argue before the Court are primarily white men; the experts cited in the Court’s opinions, as well as the experts on whom Court commentators rely in interpreting those opinions, are …

Politics, Identity, And Class Certification On The U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Michigan Law Review

This Article draws on novel data and presents the results of the first empirical analysis of how potentially salient characteristics of Court of Appeals judges influence class certification under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. We find that the ideological composition of the panel (measured by the party of the appointing president) has a very strong association with certification outcomes, with all-Democratic panels having dramatically higher rates of procertification outcomes than all-Republican panels—nearly triple in about the past twenty years. We also find that the presence of one African American on a panel, and the presence of …

Return Of The Campus Speech Wars, Thomas Healy

Michigan Law Review

Review of Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman's Free Speech on Campus.

Batson For Judges, Police Officers & Teachers: Lessons In Democracy From The Jury Box, Stacy L. Hawkins

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In our representative democracy we guarantee equal participation for all, but we fall short of this promise in so many domains of our civic life. From the schoolhouse, to the jailhouse, to the courthouse, racial minorities are underrepresented among key public decision-makers, such as judges, police officers, and teachers. This gap between our aspirations for representative democracy and the reality that our judges, police officers, and teachers are often woefully under-representative of the racially diverse communities they serve leaves many citizens of color wanting for the democratic guarantee of equal participation. This critical failure of our democracy threatens to undermine …

Equality Adds Quality: On Upgrading Higher Education And Research In The Field Of Law, Susanne Baer

Articles

Much has been attempted, and many pro1ects are still underway aimed at achieving equality in higher education and research. Today, the key argument to demand and support the integration of gender in academia is that equality is indeed about the quality on which academic work is supposed to be based. Although more or less national political, social and cultural contexts matter as much as academic environments, regarding higher education and research, the integration of gender into the field of law seems particularly interesting. Faculties of law enjoy a certain standing and status, are closely connected to power and politics, and …

Trajectory Of A Law Professor, Meera E. Deo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Women of color are already severely underrepresented in legal academia; as enrollment drops and legal institutions constrict further, race and gender disparities will likely continue to grow. Yet, as many deans and associate deans, most of whom are white, step down from leadership positions during these tumultuous times in legal education, opportunities have arisen for women of color to fill those roles in record numbers. However, there are individual and structural barriers preventing access to the leadership level. Significant hurdles have long prevented women of color from entering law teaching. Thus, this Article provides evidence to support the thesis that …

A Nation Of Widening Opportunities: The Civil Rights Act At 50, Ellen D. Katz, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Books

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an extraordinary achievement of law, politics, and human rights. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Act's passage, it is appropriate to reflect on the successes and failures of the civil rights project reflected in the statute, as well as on its future directions. This volume represents an attempt to assess the Civil Rights Act's legacy.

On October 11, 2013, a diverse group of civil rights scholars met at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor to assess the interpretation, development, and administration of civil rights law in the five decades since …

Judicial Diversity After Shelby County V. Holder, William Roth

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In 2014, voters in ten of the fifteen states previously covered by the Voting Rights Act ("VRA") preclearance formula-including six of the nine states covered in their entirety-will go to the polls to elect or retain state supreme court justices. Yet despite the endemic underrepresentation of minorities on state benches and the judiciary's traditional role in fighting discrimination, scholars have seemingly paid little attention to how Shelby County v. Holder's suspension of the coverage formula in section 4(b) has left racial minorities vulnerable to retrogressive changes to judicial-election laws. The first election year following Shelby County thus provides a compelling …

Retaining Color, Veronica Root

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

It is no secret that large law firms are struggling in their efforts to retain attorneys of color. This is despite two decades of aggressive tracking of demographic rates, mandates from clients to improve demographic diversity, and the implementation of a variety of diversity efforts within large law firms. In part, law firm retention efforts are stymied by the reality that elite, large law firms require some level of attrition to function properly under the predominant business model. This reality, however, does not explain why firms have so much difficulty retaining attorneys of color — in particular black and Hispanic …

Cultivating Inclusion, Patrick S. Shin, Mitu Gulati

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Twenty-five years ago, law schools were in the developing stages of a pitched battle for the future of legal education and academia. Faculties fought over the tenure cases of minority candidates, revealing deep divisions within legal academia on questions about the urgency of racial diversification and the merits of critical race scholarship. The students in charge of the law reviews where this scholarship was emerging engaged in their own battles, arguing over the use of affirmative action in the selection of law review editors and then, as neophyte editors, staking their own positions in the "What is legal scholarship?" debates. …

The 'Compelling Government Interest' In School Diversity: Rebuilding The Case For An Affirmative Government Role, Philip Tegeler

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

How far does Justice Kennedy’s “moral and ethical obligation” to avoid racial isolation extend? Does the obligation flow primarily from Supreme Court case law, does it derive from an evolving consensus in the social sciences, or does it also have a statutory basis in Title VI and other federal law? In addition to its value as a justification for non-individualized, race-conscious remedial efforts by state and local governments, does the compelling interest identified in Parents Involved also suggest an affirmative duty on the part of the federal government? And if so, how far does this affirmative duty extend, and how …

Grutter's Denouement: Three Templates From The Roberts Court, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Precedent from the Roberts Court shows the Justices taking three distinct approaches to precedent they dislike. Each provides a template for the Court to criticize race-based affirmative action in higher education, as Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is widely expected to do. Most narrowly, the Court might use Fisher to issue a warning, much like it did in 2009 when it sidestepped a constitutional challenge to the Voting Rights Act; under this approach, the opinion would spell out why the Justices think the diversity celebrated in Grutter v. Bollinger no longer provides sufficient justification for the use of …

The Future Of School Integration: Socioeconomic Diversity As An Education Reform Strategy, Edited By Richard D. Kahlenberg (Century Foundation 2012), 397 Pages, Eloise Pasachoff

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

The last decade has seen a quiet but steady expansion of interest in using socioeconomic diversity in schools to improve educational outcomes. Ten years ago, only a few school districts around the country used formal strategies to integrate their schools along class lines. Today, over eighty school districts around the United States, together educating around four million students, ensure that poor children are taught alongside middle-class and wealthier children through a variety of voluntary integration programs. The message of The Future of School Integration: Socioeconomic Diversity as an Education Reform Strategy, the important new book edited by Richard Kahlenberg, is …

The Promise Of Grutter: Diverse Interactions At The University Of Michigan Law School, Meera E. Deo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School on the grounds of educational diversity. Yet the Court's assumption that admitting diverse students into law school would result in improved race relations, livelier classroom conversations, and better professional outcomes for students has never been empirically tested. This Article relies on survey and focus group data collected at the University of Michigan Lav School campus itself in March 2010 to examine not only whether, but how diversity affects learning. The data indicate both that there are sufficient numbers of students of color …

Against Practice, Anthony V. Alfieri

Michigan Law Review

This Review examines the theory/practice dichotomy in legal education through the prism of the Carnegie Foundation's Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law. Descriptively, it argues that the Foundation's investigation of law school curricular deficiencies in the areas of clinical-lawyer skills, professionalism, and public service overlooks the relevance of critical pedagogies in teaching students how to deal with difference-based identity and how to build cross-cultural community in diverse, multicultural practice settings differentiated by mutable and immutable characteristics such as class, gender, and race. Prescriptively, it argues that the Foundation's remedial call for the curricular integration of clinical lawyer …

Subordination And The Fortuity Of Our Circumstances, Sergio J. Campos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The antisubordination principle exists at the margins of equality law. This Article seeks to revive the antisubordination principle by taking a fresh look at its structure and underlying justification. First, the Article provides an account of the harm of subordination that focuses on one's position in society, rejecting the focus on groups popular in the existing antisubordination literature. Second, it argues for a theory of state obligation that goes beyond both the existing state action doctrine of the Equal Protection Clause and the failure to protect doctrine associated with Charles Black. The Article argues instead that the antisubordination principle mandates …

A Call For The End Of The Doctrine Of Realignment, Jacob S. Sherkow

Michigan Law Review

In Indianapolis v. Chase National Bank, 1941, the Supreme Court established the doctrine of realignment, requiring federal courts to examine the issues in dispute and realign each party as plaintiff or defendant if necessary. Due to the complete diversity requirement, realignment gave the federal courts the ability to both create and destroy diversity jurisdiction. Since 1941, the federal courts have struggled to interpret the central holding in Indianapolis, and have created several competing "tests" for realignment. This confusion has made the doctrine of realignment unworkable. Realignment along with each of the present tests-encourages jurisdictional abuses by forcing the federal …

Choosing Between The Necessity And Public Interest Standards In Fcc Review Of Media Ownership Rules, Peter Dicola

Michigan Law Review

Section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as amended, directs the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") to review its media ownership rules every four years. But the statute contains an ambiguity regarding the standard of review that the FCC must apply during such proceedings. To retain a particular media ownership regulation, must the FCC merely show that the regulation advances one of the FCC's three public-interest goals for media: competition, diversity, and localism-applying a "public interest" standard? Or must the FCC meet the higher burden of demonstrating that the regulation is also indispensable for maintaining competition, diversity, or localism at …

Patents And Diversity In Innovation, Brian Kahin

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Over the past quarter-century, the patent system has expanded in scope and significance, claiming a central position in a U.S. economy increasingly based on knowledge and intangible assets. This historic expansion has come at the cost of controversy and, within the past five years, growing public scrutiny from outside the system--from the press, business, Congress, and finally the Supreme Court. However, proposed reforms are marked by deepening divisions between sectors of the economy. The information technology (IT) and services industries favor strong reforms while pharmaceutical and biotech industries, as well as the patent bar, favor modest, incremental reforms. This yawning …

The Myth Of Inherent And Inevitable Industry Differences: Diversity As Artifact In The Quest For Patent Reforms, Robert A. Armitage

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The University of Michigan Law School hosted a two-day conference entitled "Patents and Diversity in Innovation." The morning of the first day featured a panel devoted to "industry differences." This panel took up the task of dealing with the following questions: How has diversification of innovation and the expansion of patentable subject matter affected patent practice? How do markets for technology vary from sector to sector? And how do they reflect or influence patent practice? To what extent are business practices and competitive markets shaped by the nature of the technology, product, or service?[...] A conference titled "Patents and Diversity" …

(Still) Constitutional School De-Segregation Strategies: Teaching Racial Literacy To Secondary School Students And Preferencing Racially-Literate Applicants To Higher Education, Michael J. Kaufman

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, the Supreme Court declared that it will continue to scrutinize race-conscious educational decisions to insure that they are narrowly-tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. This Article develops a strategy for enhancing racial diversity at all levels of American public education that can survive that rigorous constitutional scrutiny. The Article shows that school districts may prove that assigning a meaningful number of racially diverse students to their secondary schools is narrowly-tailored to achieve their compelling educational interest in teaching racial literacy. The constitutionality of this race-conscious educational …

Can Michigan Universities Use Proxies For Race After The Ban On Racial Preferences?, Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States held that public universities—and the University of Michigan in particular--had a compelling reason to use race as one of many factors in their admissions processes: to reap the educational benefits of a racially diverse student body. In 2006, in response to the Supreme Court's decision, the people of Michigan approved a ballot proposal--called the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative ("MCRI")-that prohibits public universities in the state from discriminating or granting preferential treatment on the basis of race. Shortly after the MCRI was approved, a number of Michigan universities suggested that they were …

The Diversity Rationale: Unprovable, Uncompelling, Brian N. Lizotte

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Student body diversity-and the purported educational benefits diversity bestows- is the final Supreme Court-endorsed justification for affirmative action by public universities. Are the benefits of diversity indeed "substantial," as the Grutter majority claimed? The author analyzes the social scientific research upon which the Court relied in articulating the diversity interest. By critiquing its theory and methodology, the author shows how the research fails to prove educational benefits; and by considering the logic underlying social science generally, he shows how the causal relationship is, technically, not provable. The author questions, then, how the diversity interest can possibly be compelling.

Post-Admissions Educational Programming In A Post-Grutter World: A Response To Professor Brown, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

When asked to provide commentary on another scholar's reflections on Grutterl and Gratz and affirmative action, I am usually struck by two fears. First, because so much ink has been spilled on this topic, I worry the main presenter will have nothing new and interesting to say. Today this worry has been put to rest; I am so pleased that Professor Dorothy Brown offers a number of novel and intriguing observations and, in the end, advances a novel and intriguing proposal about the role Critical Race Theory ought to play in our nation's law school classrooms. Second, for the same …

Bilingualism And Equality: Title Vii Claims For Language Discrimination In The Workplace, James Leonard

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Linguistic diversity is a fact of contemporary American life. Nearly one in five Americans speak a language other than English in the home, and influxes of immigrants have been a constant feature of American history. The multiplicity of languages in American society has touched nearly all aspects of American culture, and specifically has added new and important challenges to the American workplace. Chief among these new concerns are the growing number of legal claims centered around language discrimination in the workplace. The common vehicle for these claims has been Title VII, and there is considerable support in the academic literature …

Fair And Facially Neutral Higher Educational Admissions Through Disparate Impact Analysis, Michael G. Perez

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Part I of this Note proposes both remedial and instrumental justifications for applying disparate impact scrutiny to admissions policies. This Part argues that disparate impact analysis should be applied to higher education as a remedy for the disadvantage minority applicants face as a result of historic and ongoing intentional discrimination and that schools are culpable for unnecessarily utilizing admissions criteria that have this discriminatory effect. The result of applying disparate impact analysis will be admissions policies that produce diverse student bodies while remaining facially neutral with regard to race. Part II proposes that a necessity standard, unique to the higher …

Brennan Center For Justice Symposium Introduction: Diversity, Impartiality, And Representation On The Bench, Kele Williams

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

As is evident from these articles, the question of judicial diversity is far more complex and nuanced than the current debate suggests. Many unanswered questions remain. The scholars in this issue and the others who presented their work at our convening have begun to reframe the debate and identify the hardest questions. We hope that this symposium issue will provoke further thought and provide a context for additional scholarship that will help us to answer those questions.