Law Commons^™

Exploring White Resistance To Racial Reconciliation In The United States, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Race, Civil Rights, And Immigration Law After September 11, 2001, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

This article is part of a symposium on "Migration Regulation Goes Local: The Role of States in U.S. Immigration Policy." Although only time will tell, September 11, 2001 promises to be a watershed in thehistory of the United States. Not long after the tragedy, supporters and critics alike saw the federal government as "pushing the envelope" in restricting civil liberties in the name of national security. This article analyzes the nation's response to the horrific loss of life of September 11 and shows how the centralization ofimmigration power in the hands of the federal government, may exacerbate the civil rights …

The Colored Man Standing By The Punch Bowl, Michael K. Jordan

Faculty Scholarship

This essay will explore racial dissonance and how it affects our thinking about race relations and social policy in America. The first part of this essay will examine the concept of race. Though we often think of race as delineating real characteristics that exist objectively, race is actually a socially created abstraction. In addition, how this abstraction changes over time will also be explored. This is another way of saying that "colored people" has been replaced by the term "black people." The difference between the two terms raises important questions about social policy. Next, this article explores the connection among …

Gendered Shades Of Property: A Status Check On Gender, Race & Property, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the relationship between gender, race and property.Women in the United States continue to be economically disadvantaged, and women of color are even more disadvantaged. This article will open with a review of laws, past and present, which have shaped women's rights to own, manage and transfer property. It will then provide a status check of where women, including women of color, stand in the United States relative to the rest of the population vis-a-vis income and other indicators of economic well-being. The article will then discuss why economic inequality persists, trotting out the usual reasons of discrimination …

The Land Crisis In Zimbabwe: Getting Beyond The Myopic Focus Upon Black & White, Thomas W. Mitchell

Faculty Scholarship

This article deconstructs the role that race played in the land crisis in Zimbabwe that occurred in Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and earls 2000s. The article makes it clear that the government of Zimbabwe did not extend robust property rights to its black majority population for the most part even as it took land from large white landowners. This is revealing given that the government's primary justification for taking land from large white landowners was that the black majority unjustly owned little property in Zimbabwe as a result of colonialist and neocolonialist, discriminatory polices.

Re/Forming And Influencing Public Policy, Law And Religion: Missing From The Table, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

Taking a leap to be at a table from which Mexican American women have always been absent, and are still not invited, takes tremendous courage, knowing that much personal sacrifice will be required. This Essay addresses why Mexican American women have been absent from the tables of influence in the worlds of public policy, religion, and law, and how they can establish their presence as part of an anti-subordination agenda.

"But You're Not A Dirty Mexican": Internalized Oppression, Latinos & Law, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This article will describe internalized oppression and racism and expose the harms they cause. It will also dissect the reasons we engage in internalized oppression and racism and explain that once the reasons are exposed, it will be easier to engage in a conscious effort to reduce and ultimately eradicate internalized oppression and racism. Part II of this article defines internalized oppression and internalized racism and elaborates on ways that they are generally expressed in the Latino community. Part III explains how Latinos' internalized racism is reflected in some areas of the law by detailing both Latinos' support for a …

Global Finance And The International Monetary Fund's Neoliberal Agenda: The Threat To The Employment, Ethnic Identity, And Cultural Pluralism Of Latina/O Communities, Timothy A. Canova

Faculty Scholarship

This Article places recent Lat-Crit scholarship in an institutional and inter-disciplinary context. It serves not just as an indictment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agenda of structural adjustment and liberalization. It also questions the positioning of Lat-Crit scholars to remain silent or complicit with the IMF's agenda. Canova provides a counter-narrative that is rich in historical revisionism, heterodox economics, and sociological conclusions. His recognition of the global unemployment crisis - made largely invisible by orthodox economics and flawed government measurements - is combined with existential insights about the nature of underemployment on the formation of individual identity and cultural …

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

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Different Means The Same: Applying A Different Standard Of Proof To White Plaintiffs Under The Mcdonnell Douglas Prima Facie Case Test, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

The idea that Whites, in particular white males, are the new victims of discrimination is steadily gaining acceptance among white Americans. While only 16 percent of white individuals claim to know someone who has been the victim of reverse discrimination, more than 70 percent of Whites are convinced that reverse discrimination is a rampant problem. Additionally, although reverse discrimination cases generally constitute a small percentage of filed discrimination cases, usually about 1 to 3 percent, that number is beginning to grow. In particular, the percentage of reverse discrimination claims brought by federal workers, the very workers for whom affirmative action …

The Verdict On Roberts V. Texaco, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

When I first heard that Bari-Ellen Roberts had written a book about the race discrimination lawsuit against Texaco, I was ecstatic. I was eager to read about the legal strategies that had resulted in the highest settlement award ever given in a class action race discrimination lawsuit. After reading the first few pages of the book, however, I became somewhat disappointed. The first few chapters made it clear that Roberts's book was not about the actual details of the class action lawsuit against Texaco but about Roberts's personal experiences at home, in school, and in the corporate world. As I …

Social And Legal Repercussions Of Latinos' Colonized Mentality, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This essay begins by defining internalized oppression and racism and exposing the harms they cause. It dissects the reasons we engage in internalized racism and explains how once exposed, it will be easier to engage in a conscious effort to eradicate internalized racism. It will then describe how the intersectionality of internalized oppression and racism is expressed in the Latino community. The essay will then re-imagine Latino identity without internalized oppression and racism. It will include ideas on how to overcome internalized oppression and racism generally, both at the corporate and individual levels. The essay concludes that exposing internalized oppression …

Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court increasingly has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a mandate for the state to treat citizens as if they were equal-as a limitation on the state's ability to draw distinctions on the basis of characteristics such as race and, to a lesser extent, gender. In the context of race, the Court has struck down not only race-specific policies designed to harm the historically oppressed, but race conscious policies designed to foster racial equality. Although in theory the Court has left open the possibility that benign uses of race may be constitutional under some set of facts, in …

Note, Moving Ground, Breaking Traditions: Tasha’S Chronicle, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

This Note uses a fictional dialogue to analyze and engage issues concerning stereotypes, stigmas, and affirmative action. It also highlights the importance of role models for students of color and the disparate hiring practices of law firms and legal employers through the conversations and thoughts of its main character, Tasha Crenshaw.

Latcrit Praxis To Heal Fractured Communities, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores LatCrit praxis as a healing tool. Before turning to LatCrit practice, let me offer a preliminary observation that many Latinos are troubled by leading divided lives in fractured communities. This is exacerbated by social conditioning which encourages Latinos, as well as other outsiders, to fragment their identities. One of the benefits of LatCrit theory is that it encourages the process of working toward wholeness. At a recent conference which looked at the courage of those who have decided to live lives divided no more, Parker Palmer, the plenary speaker, suggested that the spark which causes people to …

An Overview Of The Arkansas Civil Rights Act Of 1993, Theresa M. Beiner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Intersectionality And Positionality: Situating Women Of Color In The Affirmative Action Dialogue, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the position of women of color in the affirmative action dialogue. Affirmative action has come under attack locally, statewide, and federally. During this same period, critical race feminists have brought into sharp relief how women of color are marginalized or erased in discourses over sex and gender, as well as over race and ethnicity. Despite these protests and warnings, the current debate over affirmative action continues this history of invisibility, perpetuating America's spoken and unspoken conceptions about where women of color belong. For example, most discussion of affirmative action focuses on race, more specifically on African-Americans. Some …

Foreword, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

This special section of The Boston University Public Interest Law Journal addresses the issue of transracial adoptions. Few topics within family law generate as much controversy as the placement of Black or other minority and mixed race children for adoption with white families. Although transracial placement could in theory apply to the placement of white children with mixed race and Black families, in practice it has not. The predominant practice of matching adoptive children with adoptive parents of the same race has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as many older and difficult to place minority children wait in …

A Field Trip To Benetton And Beyond: Some Thoughts On Outsider Narrative In A Law School Clinic, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the process of teaching students—and ourselves—to listen to and accept different versions of reality. Such exploration results in a proposition that is easy to state but difficult to accomplish: that in order to achieve this goal, we must challenge the students' "common sense”—their sense that they "know" how people act—by offering examples of behaviors that differ from that knowledge, without triggering the very "common sense" we are trying to combat. Toward this end, the first section of the essay presents a hypothetical initial interview with a client, and the student interviewer's reactions to her, which reflect the …

The Underfederalization Of Crime, A. Kimberley Dayton

Faculty Scholarship

This article contends that judicial and academic complaints about the overfederalization of crime largely have matters backwards. The image of a runaway national government increasingly taking away the enforcement of the criminal law from the States is essentially false. The available evidence indicates that the national government's share in the enforcement of criminal law has been actually diminishing for more than the last half century. The national government does have concurrent authority over a greater range of criminal activity now, including much violent street crime. But, contrary to Lopez and the conventional wisdom it embraces, this expanded authority does not …

Babies, Parents, And Grandparents: A Story In Two Cases, Karen Czapanskiy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Did The First Justice Harlan Have A Black Brother?, James W. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This Article summarizes the careers of James, John, and Robert Harlan. It then examines the evidence of the blood relationship between Robert Harlan and James Harlan, and speculates on the influence that John Harlan's contact with Robert Harlan might have had in shaping John's views on race. Finally, the Article reflects on the implications of the careers of John and Robert Harlan for our understanding of race in late nineteenth century America.

Personal Narratives And Racial Distinctiveness In The Legal Academy, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

A small group of legal academicians is embroiled in yet another debate that, to the uninitiated at least, appears to have little or nothing to do with "the law." ¹ This time the issue is the ideology of legal writing style-that is, does a growing, unique body of legal scholarship that draws on the personal experiences of minority faculty and, arguably, reflects the racial oppression these scholars have suffered, produce "distinct normative insights?" ² Professor Patricia Williams of the University of Wisconsin clearly believes that it does.

In her new book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights,³ which is …

Justice For Rodney King, Scott C. Burrell, Alan R. Dial, Thomas W. Mitchell

Faculty Scholarship

May 1992 letter from three Howard University School of Law students to President George H.W. Bush advocating that the United States Department of Justice invoke the Petite Policy to initiate a criminal action against the Los Angeles Police Department police officers responsible for brutally beating Rodney King despite the fact that these offers had been acquitted in a California state court. The letter, which was read in front of the White House by Thomas Mitchell to hundreds of people who had gathered to urge the federal government to take action, sets forth a clear legal basis to permit the Justice …

The Maryland Context Of Dred Scott: The Decline In The Legal Status Of Maryland Free Blacks 1776-1810, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Racial Reflections: Dialogues In The Direction Of Liberation , Derrick Bell, Tracy Higgins, Sung-Hee Suh

Faculty Scholarship

"New voices" of future lawyers are particularly important in the area of civil rights because racial problems are theirs to confront in the next decades. Teaching techniques developed by Paulo Freire have facilitated the enlistment of students in the racial struggle. By these techniques teachers, as well as students, learn through sharing, and students become active participants, rather than passive observers, in the learning process. The educational process, Freire counsels, ''must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students. In the fall of 1988, two …