Law Commons^™

An Unfair Cross Section: Federal Jurisdiction For Indian Country Crimes Dismantles Jury Community Conscience, Alana Paris

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, federal jury pools must reflect a fair cross section of the community in which a crime is prosecuted and from which no distinct group in the community is excluded. The community in which a crime is prosecuted varies widely in Indian country based on legislative reforms enacted by Congress to strip indigenous populations of their inherent sovereignty. Under the Major Crimes Act, the federal government has the right to adjudicate all serious crimes committed by one American Indian against another American Indian or non-Indian within Indian country. American Indian defendants under …

Equal Protection Under Algorithms: A New Statistical And Legal Framework, Crystal S. Yang, Will Dobbie

Michigan Law Review

In this Article, we provide a new statistical and legal framework to understand the legality and fairness of predictive algorithms under the Equal Protection Clause. We begin by reviewing the main legal concerns regarding the use of protected characteristics such as race and the correlates of protected characteristics such as criminal history. The use of race and nonrace correlates in predictive algorithms generates direct and proxy effects of race, respectively, that can lead to racial disparities that many view as unwarranted and discriminatory. These effects have led to the mainstream legal consensus that the use of race and nonrace correlates …

First Amendment “Harms”, Stephanie H. Barclay

Indiana Law Journal

What role should harm to third parties play in the government’s ability to protect religious rights? The intuitively appealing “harm” principle has animated new theories advanced by scholars who argue that religious exemptions are indefensible whenever they result in cognizable harm to third parties. This third-party harm theory is gaining traction in some circles, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s pending cases in Little Sisters of the Poor and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. While focusing on harm appears at first to provide an appealing, simple, and neutral principle for avoiding other difficult moral questions, the definition of harm …

Of Moral Outrage In Judicial Opinions, Duane Rudolph

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Moral outrage is a substantive and remedial feature of our laws, and the Article addresses three questions overlooked in the scholarly literature. What do judges mean when they currently express moral outrage in the remedies portion of their opinions? Should judges express such moral outrage at all? If so, when? Relying on a branch of legal philosophy known as hermeneutics that deals with the interpretation and understanding of texts, the Article argues that in interpreting and understanding cases judges should express moral outrage when faced with individuals from communities whose voice has historically been at risk, is currently at risk, …

Women In Law Leadership: Inaugural Lecture: A "Fireside Chat" With Gillian Lester 2-18-2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden, Andrea Hansen

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Challenges And Opportunities: Intersectional Leadership In Law Schools, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In 2019, the Author organized with Maria Isabel Medina and participated as a panelist in the Roundtable on Intersectionality and Strengths and Challenges in Leadership at the Fourth National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference. This Essay is one of four in the cited article. The Essay summarizes the Author’s remarks at the Roundtable on contemplating a leadership role, the value of mentorship, and the profound impact that a woman of color as dean can have, simply by occupying that role.

Police Brutality And State-Sanctioned Violence In 21st Century America, Itohen Ihaza

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Law, Race, And The Epistemology Of Ignorance, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Philosophers and other theorists have developed the field of epistemology which is the study of human knowledge. Critical race theorists have begun to explore how epistemological theory and insights may illuminate the study of race, including the analysis of race and the law. Such use of epistemology is appropriate because theoretical work on knowledge can be used to advance one of the key goals of critical race theory which is to understand how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in America. In this regard, philosophers and other theorists have …

The 'Other' Market, Cody Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

The hiring market for tenure-track non–legal writing positions is a world unto itself with its own lingo (i.e., “meat market” and “FAR form”), its own unwritten rules (i.e., “Do not have two first-year courses in your preferred teaching package.”), and carefully calibrated expectations for candidates and schools with respect to the process and timing of hiring. These norms and expectations are disseminated to the participants in this market through a relatively well-established set of feeder fellowships, visiting assistant professor programs, elite law schools, blogs, and academic literature on the subject.

But there is another market that goes on every year …

Misdemeanors By The Numbers, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan T. Stevenson

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent scholarship has underlined the importance of criminal misdemeanor law enforcement, including the impact of public-order policing on communities of color, the collateral consequences of misdemeanor arrest or conviction, and the use of misdemeanor prosecution to raise municipal revenue. But despite the fact that misdemeanors represent more than three-quarters of all criminal cases filed annually in the United States, our knowledge of misdemeanor case processing is based mostly on anecdote and extremely localized research. This Article represents the most substantial empirical analysis of misdemeanor case processing to date. Using multiple court-record datasets, covering several million cases across eight diverse jurisdictions, …