Law Commons^™

Identifying The Plessy Remainder: State Exploitation Of Private Discriminatory-Impact Actions, Matthew P. Shaw

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Public education in the U.S. is arguably more racially segregated now than it was in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education "that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal' has no place." Although scholars may differ in the extent they believe that racial integration might be necessary for educational equality, most agree that educational segregation, whether imposed by law, socioeconomics, or happenstance, is not likely to reverse in any meaningful way in the near future.

In the absence of a recognized federal right to education, federal-court- supervised school …

Aals Constitutional Law Panel On Brown, Another Council Of Nicaea?, Kelly A. Macgrady, John W. Van Doren

Akron Law Review

When considering the product of the AALS Constitutional Law Panel, entitled "What Brown Should Have Said," held in January 2000, in Washington, D.C., we have experienced considerable disorientation. We therefore ask the question asked by Lucretia in Machievelli's play, The Mandragola, "Do you mean it or are you laughing at me?" We fear that the Panelists may be laughing at us. Because, in short, their writings criticize the formalism that they use in the panel court opinions. In this article, we pick four of the Panelists, more or less at random, and confront the question of whether their writings before …

Atoning For Dred Scott And Plessy While Substantially Abolishing The Death Penalty, Scott W. Howe

Washington Law Review

Has the Supreme Court adequately atoned for Dred Scott and Plessy? A Court majority has never confessed and apologized for the horrors associated with those decisions. And the horrors are so great that Dred Scott and Plessy have become the anti-canon of constitutional law. Given the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the Court’s historical complicity in the brutal campaign against African Americans, this Article contends that the Court could appropriately do more to atone.

The Article asserts that the Court could profitably pursue atonement while abolishing capital punishment for aggravated murder. The Article shows why substantial abolition of the capital sanction would …

From Common Law To Constitution, Sanctioned Dispossession And Subjugation Through Otherization And Discriminatory Classification, Mobolaji Oladeji

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Separate But (Un)Equal: Why Institutionalized Anti-Racism Is The Answer To The Never-Ending Cycle Of Plessy V. Ferguson, Maureen Johnson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judging In A Vacuum, Or, Once More, Without Feeling: How Justice Scalia's Jurisprudential Approach Repeats Errors Made In Plessy V. Ferguson, Chris Edelson

Akron Law Review

James Fleming argues that “[Justice Clarence] Thomas’s concurrence in Adarand and dissent in Grutter reflect the Plessy worldview.” I argue in Part V of this article that Justice Antonin Scalia follows the Plessy approach in several of his dissenting opinions. One of this article’s goals is to explain these incongruencies—how can it be that each of these Justices believes he is true to the legacy of Brown, but is inadvertently adopting the reasoning used by the majority in Plessy? The key to resolving this paradox depends on identifying precisely how Plessy went wrong in its reasoning and how Brown corrected …

The Past As Prologue: Shelby County V. Holder And The Risks Ahead, J. Corey Harris

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Radicalism, Racism, And Affirmative Action: In Defense Of A Historical Approach, Deseriee Kennedy

Deseriee A. Kennedy

No abstract provided.

The Anticanon, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Argument from the "anticanon," the set of cases whose central propositions all legitimate decisions must refute, has become a persistent but curious feature of American constitutional law. These cases, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Lochner v. New York, and Korematsu v. United States, are consistently cited in Supreme Court opinions, in constitutional law casebooks, and at confirmation hearings as prime examples of weak constitutional analysis. Upon reflection, however, anticanonical cases do not involve unusually bad reasoning, nor are they uniquely morally repugnant. Rather, these cases are held out as examples for reasons external to …

Rewriting Brown, Resurrecting Plessy, James E. Fleming

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Race Question In Latcrit Theory And Asian American Jurisprudence, Robert S. Chang, Neil Gotanda

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Conception Of Brown, Robert L. Carter

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article discusses the pervasive racism that continues to exist in the United States and examines the critical role that the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education played in transforming race relations. The Article stresses the need to find a way to rid the country of race and color differentiation and emphasizes the deleterious effect that segregated school systems have on black school childrens ability to learn. The Article examines how Brown came about and states that the Court's rejection of Plessy v. Ferguson is what makes the case so significant. The Article discusses some of the important …

The Judicial Betrayal Of Blacks - Again: The Supreme Court's Destruction Of The Hopes Raised By Brown V. Board Of Education, Nathaniel R. Jones

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article discusses the history of school desegregation beginning with the pivotal decision in Brown v. Board of Education and noting the hopes that the case raised for black americans. The Article notes the resistance that Brown faced, especially from political forces who began to subvert the desegregation process, and examines the Supreme Court's subsequent decisions which aimed to secure Brown's objectives. The Article also examines the desegregation attempts in the North and discusses the difficulties plaintiffs faced in proving racial discrimination in school districts. The Article concludes by stating that the commitment to desegregation is waring and that segregation …

Case Study Of A Justice: "Courageous" Plessy Dissenter John Marshall Harlan And His African-American "Half Brother," Robert James Harlan Of Ohio, Arthur R. Landever

Law Faculty Presentations and Testimony

Justice Harlan had been a slave-owner; he had opposed the Emancipation Proclamation; he had initially opposed the passage of the 13th Amendment and apparently the 14th; as an Associate Justice, he remained a racist, taking pride in being a member of the white race. Nonetheless, he was the most committed civil rights justice until the period of the 1940s or 1950s. What explains his votes and opinions? Can we know? Does it matter whether we know or not?

Radicalism, Racism, And Affirmative Action: In Defense Of A Historical Approach, Deseriee Kennedy

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.