Law Commons^™

Reframing Hate, Lu-In Wang

Articles

The concept and naming of “hate crime,” and the adoption of special laws to address it, provoked controversy and raised fundamental questions when they were introduced in the 1980s. In the decades since, neither hate crime itself nor those hotly debated questions have abated. To the contrary, hate crime has increased in recent years—although the prominent target groups have shifted over time—and the debate over hate crime laws has reignited as well. The still-open questions range from the philosophical to the doctrinal to the pragmatic: What justifies the enhanced punishment that hate crime laws impose based on the perpetrator’s motivation? …

White Vigilantism And The Racism Of Race-Neutrality, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Race-neutrality has long been touted in American law as central to promoting racial equality while guarding against race-based discrimination. And yet the legal doctrine of race-neutrality has perversely operated to shield claims of racial discrimination from judicial review while protecting discriminators from liability and punishment. This Article critiques the doctrine of race-neutrality by examining the law’s response to white vigilantism in the much-publicized criminal trials of Kyle Rittenhouse and that of Ahmaud Arbery’s assailants.

Negotiating The Situation: The Reasonable Person In Context, Lu-In Wang

Articles

This Essay argues that our understanding of the reasonable person in economic transactions should take into account an individual’s race, gender, or other group-based identity characteristics - not necessarily because persons differ on account of those characteristics, but because of how those characteristics influence the situations a person must negotiate. That is, individuals’ social identities constitute features not just of themselves, but also of the situations they inhabit. In economic transactions that involve social interaction, such as face-to-face negotiations, the actor’s race, gender, or other social identity can affect both an individual actor and those who interact with him or …

Race, Religion And Law: The Tension Between Spirit And Its Institutionalization, George H. Taylor

Articles

My reflections flow from some recent writings by the critical race scholar Derrick Bell. Bell acknowledges that in prior work he has focused on the "the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of racism" but now suggests the possibility of a "deeper foundation" arising from the conjunction that "[m]ost racists are also Christians." This statement is Bell at his best: at once both extremely provocative and extremely unsettling. I want to explore and develop two aspects of Bell's argument.

First, if we want to examine and understand the many dimensions of racism, it is not enough to employ economic, political, or …

Recognizing Opportunistic Bias Crimes, Lu-In Wang

Articles

The federal approach to punishing bias-motivated crimes is more limited than the state approach. Though the federal and state methods overlap in some respects, two features of the federal approach restrict its range of application. First, federal law prohibits a narrower range of conduct than do most state bias crimes laws. In order to be punishable under federal law, bias-motivated conduct must either constitute a federal crime or interfere with a federally protected right or activity-requirements that exclude racially motivated assault, property damage and many other common violent or destructive bias offenses. In most states, however, hate crimes encompass a …

Car Wars: The Fourth Amendment's Death On The Highway, David A. Harris

Articles

In just the past few terms, the Supreme Court has issued several decisions that have increased police discretion to stop and question drivers and passengers and search both these persons and their vehicles. These cases are only the latest in a line that has slowly but surely made it ever easier for police to do these things without being concerned with procedural or constitutional obstacles.

This article traces the history of those cases, and argues that, however much protection the Fourth Amendment might accord to an ordinary citizen in his or her home or even walking down the street, it …