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Civil rights

Law and Race

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Reimagining Public Safety, Brandon Hasbrouck Nov 2022

Reimagining Public Safety, Brandon Hasbrouck

Northwestern University Law Review

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, abolitionists were repeatedly asked to explain what they meant by “abolish the police”—the idea so seemingly foreign that its literal meaning evaded interviewers. The narrative rapidly turned to the abolitionists’ secondary proposals, as interviewers quickly jettisoned the idea of literally abolishing the police. What the incredulous journalists failed to see was that abolishing police and prisons is not aimed merely at eliminating the collateral consequences of other social ills. Abolitionists seek to build a society in which policing and incarceration are unnecessary. Rather than a society without a means of protecting public safety, …


New Federalism And Civil Rights Enforcement, Alexander Reinert, Joanna C. Schwartz, James E. Pfander Nov 2021

New Federalism And Civil Rights Enforcement, Alexander Reinert, Joanna C. Schwartz, James E. Pfander

Northwestern University Law Review

Calls for change to the infrastructure of civil rights enforcement have grown more insistent in the past several years, attracting support from a wide range of advocates, scholars, and federal, state, and local officials. Much of the attention has focused on federal-level reforms, including proposals to overrule Supreme Court doctrines that stop many civil rights lawsuits in their tracks. But state and local officials share responsibility for the enforcement of civil rights and have underappreciated powers to adopt reforms of their own. This Article evaluates a range of state and local interventions, including the adoption of state law causes of …


Section 5'S Forgotten Years: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment Before Katzenbach V. Morgan, Christopher W. Schmidt Sep 2018

Section 5'S Forgotten Years: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment Before Katzenbach V. Morgan, Christopher W. Schmidt

Northwestern University Law Review

Few decisions in American constitutional law have frustrated, inspired, and puzzled more than Katzenbach v. Morgan. Justice Brennan’s 1966 opinion put forth the seemingly radical claim that Congress—through its power, based in Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, to “enforce, by appropriate legislation,” the rights enumerated in that Amendment—shared responsibility with the Court to define the meaning of Fourteenth Amendment rights. Although it spawned a cottage industry of scholarship, this claim has never been fully embraced by a subsequent Supreme Court majority, and in City of Boerne v. Flores, the Supreme Court rejected the heart of the Morgan …


What Can Brown Do For You?: Addressing Mccleskey V. Kemp As A Flawed Standard For Measuring The Constitutionally Significant Risk Of Race Bias, Mario L. Barnes, Erwin Chemerinsky Jun 2018

What Can Brown Do For You?: Addressing Mccleskey V. Kemp As A Flawed Standard For Measuring The Constitutionally Significant Risk Of Race Bias, Mario L. Barnes, Erwin Chemerinsky

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay asserts that in McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court created a problematic standard for the evidence of race bias necessary to uphold an equal protection claim under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. First, the Court’s opinion reinforced the cramped understanding that constitutional claims require evidence of not only disparate impact but also discriminatory purpose, producing significant negative consequences for the operation of the U.S. criminal justice system. Second, the Court rejected the Baldus study’s findings of statistically significant correlations between the races of the perpetrators and victims and the imposition of the death …


Mccleskey V. Kemp: Field Notes From 1977-1991, John Charles Boger Jun 2018

Mccleskey V. Kemp: Field Notes From 1977-1991, John Charles Boger

Northwestern University Law Review

The litigation campaign that led to McCleskey v. Kemp did not begin as an anti-death-penalty effort. It grew in soil long washed in the blood of African-Americans, lynched or executed following rude semblances of trials and hasty appeals, which had prompted the NAACP from its very founding to demand “simple justice” in individual criminal cases. When the Warren Court signaled, in the early 1960s, that it might be open to reflection on broader patterns of racial discrimination in capital sentencing, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) began to gather empirical evidence and craft appropriate constitutional responses. As …


Police In America: Ensuring Accountability And Mitigating Racial Bias Feat. Professor Destiny Peery Oct 2017

Police In America: Ensuring Accountability And Mitigating Racial Bias Feat. Professor Destiny Peery

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.


Litigating Police Misconduct: Does The Litigation Process Matter? Does It Work? Oct 2017

Litigating Police Misconduct: Does The Litigation Process Matter? Does It Work?

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.


Police In America: Ensuring Accountability And Mitigating Racial Bias Feat. Paul Butler Oct 2017

Police In America: Ensuring Accountability And Mitigating Racial Bias Feat. Paul Butler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.


Reforming The Ranks: Policy Initiatives To Ensure Police Accountability & Improve Police And Community Relations Oct 2017

Reforming The Ranks: Policy Initiatives To Ensure Police Accountability & Improve Police And Community Relations

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.


Building Movement: Racial Injustice, Transformative Justice And Reimagined Policing Oct 2017

Building Movement: Racial Injustice, Transformative Justice And Reimagined Policing

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.