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Full-Text Articles in Law

What Can Brown Do For You?: Addressing Mccleskey V. Kemp As A Flawed Standard For Measuring The Constitutionally Significant Risk Of Race Bias Aug 2019

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

Erwin Chemerinsky

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 …


Excavating Race-Based Disadvantage Among Class-Privileged People Of Color, Khiara Bridges Jul 2019

Excavating Race-Based Disadvantage Among Class-Privileged People Of Color, Khiara Bridges

Khiara M Bridges

The aim of this article is to begin to theorize the fraught space within which class-privileged racial minorities exist — the disadvantage within their privilege. The article posits that the invisibility of the racial subordination of wealthier people of color (that is, their marginalization on account of their race) is fertile soil for the germination of post-racialism — the sense that we, as a nation, have overcome our racial problems. The dramatic visibility of the minority poor’s suffering, combined with the relative invisibility of the suffering of those minorities who are not poor, breeds the belief that class is now …


More Than Just The Numbers: Fisher V. Texas And The Practical Impact Of Texas’S Top Ten Percent Law, Shakira D. Pleasant Jun 2019

More Than Just The Numbers: Fisher V. Texas And The Practical Impact Of Texas’S Top Ten Percent Law, Shakira D. Pleasant

Shakira D. Pleasant

No abstract provided.


Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol Jul 2018

Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol

Neil L Sobol

Debtors’ prisons should no longer exist. While imprisonment for debt was common in colonial times in the United States, subsequent constitutional provisions, legislation, and court rulings all called for the abolition of incarcerating individuals to collect debt. Despite these prohibitions, individuals who are unable to pay debts are now regularly incarcerated, and the vast majority of them are indigent. In 2015, at least ten lawsuits were filed against municipalities for incarcerating individuals in modern-day debtors’ prisons. Criminal justice debt is the primary source for this imprisonment.

Criminal justice debt includes fines, restitution charges, court costs, and fees. Monetary charges exist …


Review Of The Fight For Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences And Future Implications Of The 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act, Tim Iglesias Dec 2017

Review Of The Fight For Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences And Future Implications Of The 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

This is a book review of The Fight for Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences and Future Implications of the 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act  ed. Gregory D. Squires (Routledge 2018).
In addition to summarizing and evaluating all 15 chapters this review highlights the two major contributions of the volume: (1) Some chapters (especially chapters 10, 11, 13, and 15) begin to articulate an argument that effective implementation of fair housing law is not just good for members of protected classes but valuable for everyone because it can help markets work better, promote democracy, and expand opportunity for all; (2) the chapters addressing …


Threading The Needle Of Fair Housing Law In A Gentrifying City With A Legacy Of Discrimination, Tim Iglesias Dec 2017

Threading The Needle Of Fair Housing Law In A Gentrifying City With A Legacy Of Discrimination, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

This essay tells the story of an extended and complex conflict between San Francisco and HUD and the creative solution that emerged from their negotiations. The conflict concerned the application of a community preference to a proposed senior housing development that would be located in a traditional African American neighborhood in San Francisco and its potential violation of federal fair housing law. After a brief background discussion of some of the policy and legal issues raised by community preferences, the essay tells the story of the conflict and its resolution. The essay concludes with reflections on the potential value of …


Destabilizing The Normalization Of Rural Black Land Loss: A Critical Role For Legal Empiricism, Thomas W. Mitchell Sep 2016

Destabilizing The Normalization Of Rural Black Land Loss: A Critical Role For Legal Empiricism, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

Mitchell's study exemplifies the New Legal Realist goal of combining qualitative and quantitative empirical research to shed light on important legal and policy issues. He also demonstrates the utility of a ground-level contextual analysis that examines legal problems from the bottom up. The study tracks processes by which black rural landowners have gradually been dispossessed of more than 90% of the land held by their predecessors in 1910. Mitchell points out that despite the continuing practices that contribute to this problem, there has been very little research on the issue, and what little attention legal scholars have paid to it …


An Essay Challenging The Racially Biased Selection Of Arbitrators For Employment Discrimination Suits, Michael Z. Green Aug 2015

An Essay Challenging The Racially Biased Selection Of Arbitrators For Employment Discrimination Suits, Michael Z. Green

Michael Z. Green

Since 1991, employers have increasingly decided to require that employees agree to arbitrate statutory employment discrimination claims as a condition of employment. This Essay seeks to expose some of the potential discriminatory components that may arise in the arbitrator selection process while highlighting the lack of legal remedy for those who believe that employers, in conjunction with neutral service provders, have stacked the pool in favor of having arbitrators who tend to be older, white and male. The Essay suggests the use of 42 U.S.C. Section 1981 as a potential remedy and challenge to the dearth of arbitrators of color …


The Blinding Color Of Race: Elections And Democracy In The Post-Shelby County Era, Sahar F. Aziz Aug 2015

The Blinding Color Of Race: Elections And Democracy In The Post-Shelby County Era, Sahar F. Aziz

Sahar F. Aziz

No abstract provided.


An Essay Challenging The Racially Biased Selection Of Arbitrators For Employment Discrimination Suits, Michael Z. Green Jul 2015

An Essay Challenging The Racially Biased Selection Of Arbitrators For Employment Discrimination Suits, Michael Z. Green

Michael Z. Green

Since 1991, employers have increasingly decided to require that employees agree to arbitrate statutory employment discrimination claims as a condition of employment. This Essay seeks to expose some of the potential discriminatory components that may arise in the arbitrator selection process while highlighting the lack of legal remedy for those who believe that employers, in conjunction with neutral service provders, have stacked the pool in favor of having arbitrators who tend to be older, white and male. The Essay suggests the use of 42 U.S.C. Section 1981 as a potential remedy and challenge to the dearth of arbitrators of color …


Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections Of Race And Class For Women In Academia, Carmen G. Gonzalez Sep 2012

Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections Of Race And Class For Women In Academia, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

Presumed Incompetent is a pathbreaking account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and concrete recommendations, and provide a window into the struggles of professional women in a racially stratified but increasingly multicultural America. The downloadable document contains the Introduction …