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Full-Text Articles in Law

Still Drowning In Segregation: Limits Of Law In Post-Civil Rights America, Taunya L. Banks Oct 2013

Still Drowning In Segregation: Limits Of Law In Post-Civil Rights America, Taunya L. Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Approximately 40% of the deaths attributed to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were caused by drowning. Blacks in the New Orleans area accounted for slightly more than one half of all deaths. Some of the drowning deaths were preventable. Too many black Americans do not know how to swim. Up to seventy percent of all black children in the United States have no or low ability to swim. Thus it is unsurprising that black youth between 5 and 19 are more likely to drown than white youths of the same age. The Centers for Disease Control concludes that a major factor …


The Unfinished Journey - Education, Equality And Martin Luther King, Jr., Revisited, Taunya Lovell Banks May 2013

The Unfinished Journey - Education, Equality And Martin Luther King, Jr., Revisited, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

An educated society is important to the survival of a democracy, a sentiment echoed by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. Today most commentators concede that the implementation of Brown was a failure and that over the years there has been retrenchment. Although America’s schools are no longer racially segregated by law, a substantial percentage of school children are consigned to racially isolated schools. While commentators continue to argue for racially integrated schools, this article argues that racial integration alone is insufficient--schools must receive adequate financial resources and be even more diverse socio-economically to adequately prepare America’s …


Race Talk: Patricia J. Williams' Seeing A Color-Blind Future: The Paradox Of Race, Taunya Lovell Banks Sep 2012

Race Talk: Patricia J. Williams' Seeing A Color-Blind Future: The Paradox Of Race, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Dark Justice: Women Legal Actors On Basic Cable, Taunya Banks Sep 2012

Dark Justice: Women Legal Actors On Basic Cable, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Screening Justice - The Cinema Of Law: Significant Films Of Law, Order And Social Justice, Rennard Strickland, Teree Foster, Taunya Banks Nov 2011

Screening Justice - The Cinema Of Law: Significant Films Of Law, Order And Social Justice, Rennard Strickland, Teree Foster, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Screening Justice is designed to tell the complex story of law through an exploration of forty films focusing upon courtroom dramas, social issues and questions of justice. These motion pictures are evaluated by distinguished scholars who, using a range of narrative styles, compare the law on the screen and the law in action. The work serves as a guide to understanding law, the rhetoric of law and images of justice. The book will introduce readers to new films as well as help create new perspectives on familiar classic movies.


Funding Race As Biology: The Relevance Of "Race" In Medical Research, Taunya L. Banks Feb 2011

Funding Race As Biology: The Relevance Of "Race" In Medical Research, Taunya L. Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Most scientists agree that race and ethnicity (ethno-race) classifications are the result of social and political conditions, as opposed to biological differences. But there is disagreement about the scientific validity of these categories. A number of scientists use ethno-race as a surrogate for various socioeconomic and environmental factors. Using race as a biological category can reflect and reinforce racial stratification as well as racist notions of inherent human difference. Questions surrounding the appropriateness of ethno-race classifications in medical research have been heightened by two decades of federal legislation that contains initiatives on minority health. This article proceeds from the assumption …


Thurgood Marshall, The Race Man, And Gender Equality In The Courts, Taunya Banks Dec 2010

Thurgood Marshall, The Race Man, And Gender Equality In The Courts, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Renowned civil rights advocate and race man Thurgood Marshall came of age as a lawyer during the black protest movement in the 1930s. He represented civil rights protesters, albeit reluctantly, but was ambivalent about post-Brown mass protests. Although Marshall recognized law's limitations, he felt more comfortable using litigation as a tool for social change. His experiences as a legal advocate for racial equality influenced his thinking as a judge. Marshall joined the United States Supreme Court in 1967, as dramatic advancement of black civil rights through litigation waned. Other social movements, notably the women's rights movement, took its place. The …


Black Pluralism In Post Loving America, Taunya Lovell Banks Nov 2010

Black Pluralism In Post Loving America, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

The face of late twentieth and early twenty-first century America has changed, as have attitudes about race, especially about persons with some African ancestry. Since 1967, the number of multi-racial individuals with some African ancestry living in the United States has increased dramatically as a result of increased out-marriage by black Americans and the immigration of large numbers of multiracial individuals from Mexico, the Caribbean, as well as Central and Latin America. Many members of the post-Loving generation came of age in the 1990s with no memories of de jure racial segregation laws or the need for the 1960s civil …


Book Review: What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law And The Making Of Race In America, Taunya Banks Dec 2009

Book Review: What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law And The Making Of Race In America, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


What Documentary Films Teach Us About The Criminal Justice System - Introduction, Taunya Lovell Banks Dec 2009

What Documentary Films Teach Us About The Criminal Justice System - Introduction, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Film . . . has been used effectively to shape public perceptions about the criminal justice system. . . . [and] the documentary form has power to convict or release a defendant, as well as to disclose the positive and negative aspects of the criminal justice system. . . . Three articles on this subject appear in this issue of the UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND LAW JOURNAL OF RACE, RELIGION, GENDER AND CLASS and add to this body of scholarship. . . .Our goal was to foster a series of dialogues among and between a number of individuals: filmmakers....


The Black Side Of The Mirror: The Black Body In The Workplace, Taunya Banks Dec 2009

The Black Side Of The Mirror: The Black Body In The Workplace, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Troubled Waters: Mid-Twentieth Century American Society On "Trial" In The Films Of John Waters, Taunya Lovell Banks Nov 2009

Troubled Waters: Mid-Twentieth Century American Society On "Trial" In The Films Of John Waters, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

In this Article Professor Banks argues that what makes many of filmmaker John Waters early films so subversive is his use of the “white-trash” body—people marginalized by and excluded from conventional white America—as countercultural heroes. He uses the white trash body as a surrogate for talk about race and sexuality in the early 1960s. I argue that in many ways Waters’ critiques of mid-twentieth century American society reflect the societal changes that occurred in the last forty years of that century. These societal changes resulted from the civil rights, gay pride, student, anti-war and women’s movements, all of which used …


Here Comes The Judge! Gender Distortion On Tv Reality Court Shows, Taunya Lovell Banks Sep 2009

Here Comes The Judge! Gender Distortion On Tv Reality Court Shows, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

In the judicial world of television court shows women constitute a majority of the judges and where non-white women and men dominate. In real life most judges are white and male. This essay looks at the gender and racial composition and demeanor of these television reality judges. It asks whether women TV reality judges behave differently from their male counterparts and whether women’s increased visibility as judges on daytime reality court shows reinforces or diminishes traditional negative stereotypes about women, especially non-white women.


Teaching Laws With Flaws: Adopting A Pluralistic Approach To Torts, Taunya Lovell Banks Aug 2009

Teaching Laws With Flaws: Adopting A Pluralistic Approach To Torts, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Torts - Conspiracy - Respondeat Superior - National Political Organization Held Liable For Tort Of Conspiracy Committed By Local Chapter, Taunya Lovell Banks Aug 2009

Torts - Conspiracy - Respondeat Superior - National Political Organization Held Liable For Tort Of Conspiracy Committed By Local Chapter, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Multilayered Racism: Courts' Continued Resistance To Colorism Claims, Taunya Lovell Banks Aug 2009

Multilayered Racism: Courts' Continued Resistance To Colorism Claims, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Equality And Sorority During The Decade After Brown, Taunya Lovell Banks Jul 2009

Equality And Sorority During The Decade After Brown, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


What Documentary Films Teach Us About The Criminal Justice System - Introduction, Taunya Lovell Banks Jun 2009

What Documentary Films Teach Us About The Criminal Justice System - Introduction, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Film . . . has been used effectively to shape public perceptions about the criminal justice system. . . . [and] the documentary form has power to convict or release a defendant, as well as to disclose the positive and negative aspects of the criminal justice system. . . . Three articles on this subject appear in this issue of the UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND LAW JOURNAL OF RACE, RELIGION, GENDER AND CLASS and add to this body of scholarship. . . .Our goal was to foster a series of dialogues among and between a number of individuals: filmmakers....


A Few Random Thoughts About Socio-Economic "Rights" In The United States In Light Of The 2008 Financial Meltdown, Taunya Lovell Banks Jun 2009

A Few Random Thoughts About Socio-Economic "Rights" In The United States In Light Of The 2008 Financial Meltdown, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Socio-economic rights, first articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) sixty years ago, are regaining currency. Legal practitioners around the world, emboldened by emerging constitutional democracies in Eastern Europe and South Africa that constitutionalized socio-economic rights, are actively seeking to enforce these rights. The UDHR “reaffirim[ed] faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person,” and served as the basis for the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Among those rights included in the Covenant are housing, food, and healthcare.


Outsider Citizens: Film Narratives About The Internment Of Japanese Americans, Taunya Banks Jun 2009

Outsider Citizens: Film Narratives About The Internment Of Japanese Americans, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

This article examines the conflicting film narratives about the internment from 1942 through 2007. It argues that while later film narratives, especially documentaries, counter early government film narratives justifying the internment, these counter-narratives have their own damaging hegemony. Whereas earlier commercial films tell the internment story through the eyes of sympathetic whites, using a conventional civil rights template … Japanese and other Asian American documentary filmmakers construct their Japanese characters as model minorities — hyper-citizens, super patriots. Further, the internment experience remains largely a male story. With the exception of Emiko Omori’s documentary film memoir, Rabbit in the Moon (2004), …


Outsider Citizens: Film Narratives About The Internment Of Japanese Americans, Taunya Lovell Banks Feb 2009

Outsider Citizens: Film Narratives About The Internment Of Japanese Americans, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

This article examines the conflicting film narratives about the internment from 1942 through 2007. It argues that while later film narratives, especially documentaries, counter early government film narratives justifying the internment, these counter-narratives have their own damaging hegemony. Whereas earlier commercial films tell the internment story through the eyes of sympathetic whites, using a conventional civil rights template … Japanese and other Asian American documentary filmmakers construct their Japanese characters as model minorities — hyper-citizens, super patriots. Further, the internment experience remains largely a male story. With the exception of Emiko Omori’s documentary film memoir, Rabbit in the Moon (2004), …


Balancing Competing Individual Constitutional Rights: Raising Some Questions, Taunya Banks Oct 2008

Balancing Competing Individual Constitutional Rights: Raising Some Questions, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Despite increasing support for global human rights ..., some scholars and constitutional democracies, like the United States, continue to resist constitutionalizing socio-economic rights. Socio-economic rights, unlike political and civil constitutional rights that usually prohibit government actions, are thought to impose positive obligations on government. As a result, constitutionalizing socio-economic rights raises questions about separation of powers and the competence of courts to decide traditionally legislative and executive matters. ... [W]hen transitional democracies, like South Africa, choose to constitutionalize socio-economic rights, courts inevitably must grapple with their role in the realization of those rights.... Two questions immediately come to mind: (1) …


Rethinking Novotny In Light Of United Brotherhood Of Carpenters & Joiners V. Scott: The Scope And Constitutionally Permissible Periphery Of Section 1985 (3), Taunya Lovell Banks Jun 2008

Rethinking Novotny In Light Of United Brotherhood Of Carpenters & Joiners V. Scott: The Scope And Constitutionally Permissible Periphery Of Section 1985 (3), Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Aids And Government: A Plan Of Action, Taunya L. Banks Jun 2008

Aids And Government: A Plan Of Action, Taunya L. Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


The Right To Medical Treatment, Taunya Lovell Banks Jun 2008

The Right To Medical Treatment, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


To Kill A Mockingbird (1962): Lawyering In An Unjust Society, Taunya Lovell Banks Jun 2008

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962): Lawyering In An Unjust Society, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Teaching Laws With Flaws: Adopting A Pluralistic Approach To Torts, Taunya Lovell Banks Jun 2008

Teaching Laws With Flaws: Adopting A Pluralistic Approach To Torts, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Reproduction And Parenting, Taunya Lovell Banks Jun 2008

Reproduction And Parenting, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.


Mestizaje And The Mexican Mestizo Self: No Hay Sangre Negra, So There Is No Blackness, Taunya Lovell Banks Jun 2008

Mestizaje And The Mexican Mestizo Self: No Hay Sangre Negra, So There Is No Blackness, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Many legal scholars who write about Mexican mestizaje omit references to Afromexicans, Mexico’s African roots, and contemporary anti-black sentiments in the Mexican and Mexican American communities. The reasons for the erasure or invisibility of Mexico’s African roots are complex. It argues that post-colonial officials and theorists in shaping Mexico’s national image were influenced two factors: the Spanish colonial legacy and the complex set of rules creating a race-like caste system with a distinct anti-black bias reinforced through art; and the negative images of Mexico and Mexicans articulated in the United States during the early nineteenth century. The post-colonial Mexican becomes …


Trampling Whose Rights? Democratic Majority Rule And Racial Minorities: A Response To Chin And Wagner, Taunya Lovell Banks Jun 2008

Trampling Whose Rights? Democratic Majority Rule And Racial Minorities: A Response To Chin And Wagner, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Gabriel Chin and Randy Wagner argue us that there were black majorities and pluralities in Deep South states during the Reconstruction era who were consciously disenfranchised by private and public entities, including the U.S. Supreme Court because of fears of black majority rule and the Court should take this history into account and recognize the lingering effects of this historic disenfranchisement on black Americans. This essay responds to their argument, contending that fear of black majority rule never was the sole reason for the disenfranchisement of black majorities and pluralities in the Deep South, rather the problem has always been …