Law Commons^™

Colonizing Queerness, Jeremiah A. Ho

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article investigates how and why the cultural script of inequality persists for queer identities despite major legal advancements such as marriage, anti-discrimination, and employment protections. By regarding LGBTQ legal advancements as part of the American settler colonial project, I conclude that such victories are not liberatory or empowering but are attempts at colonizing queer identities. American settler colonialism’s structural promotion of a normative sexuality illustrates how our settler colonialist legacy is not just a race project (as settler colonialism is most widely studied) but also a race-gender-sexuality project. Even in apparent strokes of progress, American settler colonialism’s eliminationist motives …

Checking Our Attachment To The Charter And Respecting Indigenous Legal Orders: A Framework For Charter Application To Indigenous Governments, Naiomi Metallic

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom looms large in our national identity. As a constitutional law professor at a Canadian law school, my experience is that most students and lawyers see the Charter as intrinsically tied to fundamental notions of justice and fairness in our country. Because of this, Canadian lawyers and judges, who believe the Charter to be inherently good, may find it hard to understand why Indigenous peoples resist application of the Charter to their own institutions. But Canadian jurists’ attachment to the Charter, if not kept in check, can easily lead to dismissing important objections …

Untold Stories Of The African Diaspora: The Lived Experiences Of Black Caribbean Immigrants In The Greater Hartford Area, Shanelle A. Jones

University Scholar Projects

The African Diaspora represents vastly complex migratory patterns. This project studies the journeys of English-speaking Afro-Caribbeans who immigrated to the US for economic reasons between the 1980s-present day. While some researchers emphasize the success of West Indian immigrants, others highlight the issue of downward assimilation many face upon arrival in the US. This paper explores the prospect of economic incorporation into American society for West Indian immigrants. I conducted and analyzed data from an online survey and 10 oral histories of West Indian economic migrants residing in the Greater Hartford Area to gain a broader perspective on the economic attainment …

Queer Sacrifice In Masterpiece Cakeshop, Jeremiah A. Ho

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article interprets the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, as a critical extension of Derrick Bell’s interest convergence thesis into the LGBTQ movement. Chiefly, Masterpiece reveals how the Court has been more willing to accommodate gay individuals who appear more assimilated and respectable—such as those who participated in the marriage equality decisions—than LGBTQ individuals who are less “mainstream” and whose exhibited queerness appear threatening to the heteronormative status quo. When assimilated same-sex couples sought marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, their respectable personas facilitated the alignment between their interests to marry and the Court’s …

Coercing Assimilation: The Case Of Muslim Women Of Color, Sahar F. Aziz

Faculty Scholarship

Today, I have been asked to address the domestic context of civil rights issues facing Muslim women in the United States. Admittedly, examining the experiences of Muslim American women is a risky endeavor because they are such a diverse group of women ethnically, racially, socio-economically, and religiously in terms of their levels of religiosity. Hence, I acknowledge the risk of essentializing, despite my best efforts to recognize the individual agency of each Muslim woman.

This lecture is based on a larger project that examines the myriad ways Muslim women are adversely affected by their intersectional identities, and how it impacts …

The Korean “Cinema Of Assimilation” And The Construction Of Cultural Hegemony In The Final Years Of Japanese Rule, Brian Yecies, Richard Howson

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

During the late 1930s, as Japan escalated war preparations with China, and after Governor-General Minami formalized the assimilationist ideology of “Japan and Korea as One Body”, cinema in Korea experienced a fundamental transformation. Korean filmmakers had little choice but to make co-productions that aimed to draw Koreans toward Japanese ways of thinking and living, while promoting a sense of loyalty to the Japanese Empire. Within this colonial context, and especially after the 1940 Korean Film Law facilitated the absorption of the Korean film industry into the Japanese film industry, a particular type of masculine hegemony was encouraged by a comprehensive …

Arizona, Immigration, And Latinos: The Epistemology Of Whiteness, The Geography Of Race, Interest Convergence, And The View From The Perspective Of Critical Theory, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In this article, the author analyzes a scheme of laws in Arizona regarding immigration and Latinos by using the powerful tools of contemporary critical theory, which have been especially developed to analyze issues of race such as those presented in the laws at issue. As discussed below, critical theory, as applied to Arizona, reveals (1) that the newly enacted scheme of laws reflects an epistemology of whiteness and operates to transform Arizona into a white geographical landscape; (2) that the outlawing of ethnic studies in Arizona is a corollary to the establishment of a white geographical space in Arizona; (3) …

A History Of Professionalism: Julius Henry Cohen And The Professions As A Route To Citizenship, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

This paper revives the notion that professionalism and the legal profession can serve as a mechanism for immigrants and those who are not born into wealth or privilege to achieve status. I draw on the example of Cohen, a Jewish lawyer who achieved a great deal of success within the profession in the early 20th Century, to argue that the rhetoric surrounding the professions allows immigrants and others to use professional success to find their way to full inclusion and citizenship. While acknowledging the merits of the critiques of the professions as rent-seeking cartels, I argue that professionalism is an …

Immigration And The Meaning Of United States Citizenship: Whiteness And Assimilation, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

At the outset of the twenty-first century, United States immigration policy has become one of the most pressing issues of our time. In recent years, we have witnessed, among other things, calls for dramatically restricting immigration in light of an alleged threat to American national identity, increased border enforcement associated with thousands of deaths on the United States/Mexico border, vigilante activity, special immigration procedures enacted for the "War on Terror," and mass marches protesting draconian immigration reform in cities across the United States. Against this background, this essay seeks to explore what immigration and the various issues it raises have …

The Chiricahua Apaches And The Assimilation Movement, 1865-1886: Historical Examination, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

Prior to the assimilation movement, the Chiricahua Apache Indians had built no stone temples, no multi-story apartments, no irrigation systems and no ceremonial highways. They traveled light and migrated with the game and the seasons. They lived in wickiups, quickly built and easily left behind. As Geronimo stated, "once [we] moved about like the wind."

This lightness of touch on the land spoke of ability, grace, and imagination. Their traditional way of life emphasized the people's intelligence, knowledge in the arts of fighting and survival, resourcefulness and striking fitness. Contemporary white observers described the Chiricahua with awe and admiration, transcendent …

National Identity And Liberalism In International Law: Three Models, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

No abstract provided.

Lessons From La Morenita Del Tepeyac, Ana M. Novoa

Faculty Articles

The concept that the powerful and wealthy have the absolute obligation to offer political, financial, and social liberation to those at the margins of society should have special importance to those who are lawyers and professionals of color. People spend considerable time working through, working in, and centered in the dominant, or caucasian European culture. The legal system regularly fails to see, accept, realize, or believe when truth is presented at the margins. Nonetheless, it is at the margins that true legal and personal reform take place. Even in a friendly environment, where people are encouraged to step outside the …

A Different Kind Of Sameness: Beyond Formal Equality And Antisubordination Strategies In Gay Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

Gay legal theory is at a crossroads reminiscent of the sameness/difference debate in feminist circles and the integrationist debate in critical race theory. Formal equality theorists take the heterosexual model as the norm and then seek to show that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals - except for their choice of partners - are just like heterosexuals. Antisubordination theorists attack the heterosexual model itself and seek to show that a society that insists on such a model is unjust. Neither of these strategies is wholly satisfactory. The formal equality model will fail to bring about fundamental reforms as long as sexual …

Deconstructing Homo[Genous] Americanus: The White Ethnic Immigrant Narrative And Its Exclusionary Effect, Sylvia R. Lazos

Scholarly Works

This Article examines why the assumption of sameness is so pervasive in our society, and why the very idea of diversity is so resisted. The assumption and the corollary mandate to be the same are embedded in American cultural ideology, in how Americans think of themselves, in the stories that we tell regarding who we are and where we come from, in how we construct our values and norms, and in how Americans make sense of our chaotic social world. The assumption and mandate of sameness not only influence American culture, they also guide judges' thinking and decision-making in key …

Private Dollars On The Reservation: Will Recent Native American Economic Development Amount To Cultural Assimilation?, Karin M. Mika, Bonnie Hurst

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article exams commercial enterprises and its gaining popularity among Native American tribes. The cooperative economic ventures that are not considered indigenous to Native American culture may yield the unintended yet inevitable result of assimilating Native Americans into mainstream American society. In an ironic twist, the resulting assimilation has, in many respects, fulfilled the misguided aspirations of the earliest European colonists.

From Conflict To Cooperative Water Resource Management: The Chelan Agreement And Water Resources Forum [Outline], Bill Frank, Jr.

Water Organizations in a Changing West (Summer Conference, June 14-16)

8 pages.