Law Commons^™

Poisoning The Well: Law & Economics And Racial Inequality, Robert Suggs

Robert E. Suggs

The standard Law & Economics analysis of racial discrimination has stunted our thinking about race. Its early conclusion, that laws prohibiting racial discrimination were unnecessary and wasteful, discredited economic analysis of racial phenomena within the civil rights community. As a consequence we know little about the impact of racial discrimination on commercial transactions between business firms. Laws do not prohibit racial discrimination in transactions between business firms, and the disparity in business revenues between racial minorities and the white mainstream dwarf disparities in income by orders of magnitude. This disparity in business revenues is a major factor in the persistence …

Bringing Small Business Development To Urban Neighborhoods, Robert E. Suggs

Robert E. Suggs

This article describes a race-neutral policy proposal designed to increase business formation and success rates for young urban African Americans. The proposal suggests using local governments' taxing authority, in a manner analogous to tax increment financing, to create financial incentives for successful small business owners to employ, and then mentor and train as business owners, young urban entrepreneurs from deteriorating neighborhoods. The amount of financial incentive varies directly with financial success of protégés and requires the transfer of some of the mentor’s social (reputational) capital to the protégé. Business activity has created wealth and economic mobility for other ethnic groups, …

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 …

Integration, Litigation, And Transformation: Using Medicaid To Address Racial Inequities In Health Care, Ruqaiijah A. Yearby

Ruqaiijah A Yearby

Using nursing home care as an example, this article applies a public health policy perspective to the problem. I use empirical data to prove the persistence of racial inequities in health care, analyze the government policies that allow racial inequities to continue, and provide a solution of regulatory integration. Specifically, I propose that civil rights enforcement be integrated with the nursing home enforcement system, which has been aggressively enforced and monitored. There are many strategies that may lead to the adoption of this system. One such strategy is using the Medicaid Act to induce the government to fulfill its non-race …

Recent Decisions, Phoebe A. Haddon

Phoebe A. Haddon

No abstract provided.

Remedies And Damages For Violation Of Constitutional Rights, Frank Mcclellan, Phoebe Haddon

Phoebe A. Haddon

No abstract provided.

Should Race Matter When Rectifying Past Errors?, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

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), …

A Fair And Implicitly Impartial Jury: An Argument For Administering The Implicit Association Test During Voir Dire, Dale Larson

Dale K Larson

While many refer to jury selection as a science, others—perhaps more accurately—liken the process to voodoo. The jury consulting industry has exploded over the last thirty years, with many attorneys paying large amounts for voir dire for erratic and unpredictable results and a general inability to detect bias accurately in potential jurors. One explanation for these poor results, even when using the latest findings in the scientific jury selection field, is that the tools currently available to attorneys and jury consultants give us only a partial picture of the individuals in question. Currently, voir dire consists of oral questioning and …

Keepers Of The New Covenant: The Puritan Legacy In American Constitutional Law, Daniel F. Piar

Daniel F. Piar

No abstract provided.

Intragroup Discrimination: The Case For "Race Plus", Enrique R. Schaerer

Enrique R. Schaerer

The application of Title VII is uneven. The judiciary applies it to employment discrimination across groups, intergroup discrimination, but is reluctant to do so for discrimination within groups, intragroup discrimination. Even where Title VII recognizes intragroup discrimination, it does so unevenly. A “sex plus” doctrine is used to address intragroup sex discrimination, but no corresponding “race plus” doctrine has emerged for intragroup race discrimination. This Article calls attention to issues of intragroup discrimination, and proposes “race plus” as a natural extension of “sex plus” based on the text, legislative history, and statutory purpose of Title VII. This doctrinal tool would …

Keepers Of The New Covenant: The Puritan Legacy In American Constitutional Law, Daniel F. Piar

Daniel F. Piar

The thesis of the article is that the modern Supreme Court has come to use law just as the American Puritans did: as a tool for regulating and safeguarding the internal, spiritual needs of the populace. Through close readings of landmark civil rights cases, and of primary Puritan texts, I demonstrate that just as the Puritans were concerned with using civil authority to safeguard the soul’s progress to salvation, so does the modern Supreme Court use law to ensure what it sees as the proper conditions for spiritual development. I then remark on several implications of this parallel, including the …

Negro Blood In His Veins: The Development And Disappearance Of The Doctrine Of Defamation Per Se By Racial Misidentification In The American South, Samuel L. Brenner

Samuel L Brenner

Between the late eighteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century, a number of states in the American South and West (and at least one in the North) recognized some form of the doctrine of defamation per se by racial misidentification (DPSRM). By making a claim under this doctrine, white plaintiffs could recover from defendants who had falsely or mistakenly identified the plaintiffs as “colored,” “negro,” or the like, even absent proof of damages. By the early twentieth century, the doctrine appeared both powerful and monolithic in the Southern states, with courts routinely applying what appeared to be the …

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), …

Promoting Civil Rights Through Proactive Policing Reform, Rachel A. Harmon

Rachel A. Harmon

Reducing police misconduct requires substantial institutional reform in our nation’s police departments. Yet traditional legal means for deterring misconduct, such as civil suits under § 1983 and the exclusionary rule, have proved inadequate to force departmental change. 42 U.S.C. § 14141 was passed in 1994 to allow the Justice Department to sue police departments to force institutional reform. Scholars initially hailed § 14141 as a powerful tool for reducing unconstitutional police abuse. The Justice Department, however, has sued few police departments. This Article contends that § 14141’s greatest potential has been overlooked. Limited resources will always mean that § 14141 …

A Better Path For Constitutional Tort Law, John M. Greabe

John M Greabe

ABSTRACT

A BETTER PATH FOR CONSTITUTIONAL TORT LAW

The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that 42 U.S.C. section 1983 is not substantive. But at the same time, the Court has avoided difficult immunity problems by construing the statute to permit claims against individuals in their individual capacities -- i.e., as jural entities entirely separate and distinct from the government. The Court has thus created a contradiction. For if we are to take seriously the proposition that ordinarily only the government can violate the Constitution, the reality of individual-capacity claims does not square with characterizing section 1983 as non-substantive. The substantive …

The Idea Eligibility Mess, Mark C. Weber

Mark C. Weber

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) guarantees students with disabilities a free public education appropriate to their needs, but students must meet the definition of “child with a disability” to be eligible for that entitlement. The law governing special education eligibility, however, is charitably characterized as a mess. There are several sources of the current eligibility confusion. First, recent court cases have reached conflicting conclusions about how much adverse educational impact the child’s disabling condition must have, what constitutes a sufficient need for special education, and when children with emotional disabilities are eligible. Second, long-established methods for assessing learning …

The Geography Of Discrimination: The Seattle And Louisville Cases And The Legacy Of Brown V. Board Of Education, Robert Hayman

Robert L. Hayman

No abstract provided.

Haunted By Brown, Robert Lipkin

Robert Justin Lipkin

No abstract provided.

Choosing Equality: Essays And Narratives On The Desegregation Experience, Robert Hayman, Leland Ware

Robert L. Hayman

No abstract provided.

Labor Union Coalition Challenges To Governmental Action: Defending The Civil Rights Of Law-Wage Workers, Maria Ontiveros

Maria L. Ontiveros

(This paper is a working draft, which will be published in final form by the University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vol. 2009.)

The article examines international and domestic legal challenges filed by traditional labor unions, in coalition with others, against the government of the Unites States of America. The article argues that these lawsuits can help protect the civil rights of low-wage workers by creating a coherent legal theory defending the civil rights of low-wage workers and by creating an identifiable change agent to work on that defense. The lawsuits include those challenging governmental action with respect to immigrant workers, …

Introduction, Robert Hayman, Leland Ware

Robert L. Hayman

No abstract provided.