Law Commons^™

Gang Policing: The Post Stop-And-Frisk Justification For Profile-Based Policing, K. Babe Howell

University of Denver Criminal Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Cost Of Colorado's Death Penalty, Justin F. Marceau, Hollis A. Whitson

University of Denver Criminal Law Review

No abstract provided.

Centering Race At The Medical-Legal Partnership In Hawai’I, Dina Shek

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

In The Dark – Pushing The Boundaries Of True Crime, Sharon Davis

RadioDoc Review

True crime podcasts are a burgeoning genre. As journalists and storytellers, how do we balance the pursuit of justice and our responsibility to the victims with the demand to tell a gripping tale? As listeners, are we using the pain of others for our own entertainment? In the Dark podcast (Seasons 1 and 2) takes us beyond a vicarious fascination with true crime stories into a forensic and essential look at deep-rooted biases, corruption and systemic failures that prevent justice from being served.

The first season (2016) investigates the 1989 kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling In …

Race And Class: A Randomized Experiment With Prosecutors, Christopher Robertson, Shima Baradaran Baughman, Megan Wright

Faculty Scholarship

Disparities in criminal justice outcomes are well known, and prior observational research has shown correlations between the race of defendants and prosecutors’ decisions about how to charge and resolve cases. Yet causation is questionable: other factors, including unobserved variation in case facts, may account for some of the disparity. Disparities may also be driven by socio-economic class differences, which are highly correlated with race.

This article presents the first blinded, randomized controlled experiment that tests for race and class effects in prosecutors’ charging decisions. Case-vignettes are manipulated between-subjects in five conditions to test effects of defendants’ race and class status. …

A Socio-Demographic Analysis Of Responses To Terrorism, Gabriel Rubin, Christopher Salvatore

Christopher Salvatore

Extensive research has found that there are differences in reported levels of fear of crime and associated protective actions influenced by socio-demographic characteristics such as race and gender. Further studies, the majority of which focused on violent and property crime, have found that specific demographic characteristics influence fear of crime and protective behaviors. However, little research has focused on the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on perceptions, and protective actions in response to the threat of terrorism. Using data from the General Social Survey, this study compared individual-level protective actions and perceptions of the effectiveness of protective responses to the 9/11 …

The Noisy "Silent Witness": The Misperception And Misuse Of Criminal Video Evidence, Aaron M. Williams

Indiana Law Journal

This Note examines recent developments in the research of situational video evidence biases. Part I examines the current and growing body of psychological research into the various situational biases that can affect the reliability of video evidence and the gaps in this research that require further attention from researchers and legal academics. Because these biases do not “operate in a vacuum,” Part I also examines some of the recent and exciting research into the interaction between situational and dispositional biases. Part II examines the development of camera and video processing technology and its limitations as a means of mitigating such …

A Rebuttal To Kinsler's And To Anderson And Muller's Studies On The Purported Relationship Between Bar Passage Rates And Attorney Discipline, William Wesley Patton

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Because of the escalating cost of legal education and the recent decline in bar passage rates among ABA approved law schools, some analysts have reasonably attempted to determine the social costs of legal education. Many have attempted to place the blame on segments of the legal education marketplace. The complicated relationships among the policies of providing more access to justice, increasing minority representation in the bar, and protecting the public from shoddy law practice have recently inflamed academic debate. In the rush for assessing blame, some analysts have published empirically flawed reports that have received a great deal of …

So You Want To Talk About Race By Ijeoma Oluo, Nicole P. Dyszlewski

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Diversity Imperative Revisited: Racial And Gender Inclusion In Clinical Law Faculty, G. S. Hans, D. N. Archer, Et Al.

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The demographics of clinical law faculties matter. As Professor Jon Dubin persuasively argued nearly twenty years ago in his article Faculty Diversity as a Clinical Legal Education Imperative, clinical faculty of color entering the legal academy in the 1980s and 1990s expanded the communities served by law school clinics and the lawyering methods used to serve clients in significant ways that enriched legal education and the profession. They also broadened clinical scholarship to include deconstructions and reconstructions of clinical teaching, offered crucial role modeling and mentorship to students of color, and helped to elevate cross-cultural communication and multiracial collaboration as …

Gender Disparities In Plea Bargaining, Carlos Berdejo

Indiana Law Journal

Across wide-ranging contexts, academic literature and the popular press have identified pervasive gender disparities favoring men over women in society. One area in which gender disparities have conversely favored women is the criminal justice system. Most of the empirical research examining gender disparities in criminal case outcomes has focused on judges’ sentencing decisions. Few studies have assessed disparities in the steps leading up to a defendant’s conviction, where various actors make choices that constrain judges’ ultimate sentencing discretion. This Article addresses this gap by examining gender disparities in the plea-bargaining process. The results presented in this Article reveal significant gender …

Equal In His Sight: An Examination Of The Evolving Opinions On Race In The Life Of Jerry Falwell, Sr., Kathryn Legg

Senior Honors Theses

The late Reverend Jerry Falwell, Sr., founder of Thomas Road Baptist Church and president of the Moral Majority, was a prominent figure in conservative politics beginning in the late 1970s. His opinions regarding preachers and politics changed throughout his life, as did his beliefs about race in America and the church. His views on race affected his preaching and political involvement, and in his later life he retracted from the segregationist beliefs he held at the beginning of his ministry. While Falwell’s prominent roles in the Religious Right and Moral Majority have previously been explored, this paper seeks to present …

The Myth Of Enforcing Border Security Versus The Reality Of Enforcing Dominant Masculinities, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay explores the masculinities underpinnings in modern immigration law, policy, and rhetoric. Existing analysis has captured the ways in which Trump-era immigration laws, policies, and rhetoric are explicitly and implicitly packaged in alarming racism and xenophobia. These critical lenses continue a long and deeply worrisome legacy of “othering” and dehumanizing immigrants and, more broadly, marginalizing communities of color in the United States.

Outside of the immigration law lens, separate strands of scholarship and media coverage have highlighted the toxic masculinities of the Trump era. These discussions have generally focused on President Trump’s treatment of women, the gendered campaign dynamics …

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Bridget J. Crawford, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

Teaching Social Justice Through “Hip Hop And The Law”, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

This article queries whether it is possible to teach law students about social justice through a course on hip hop and its connection to and critique of the law. We argue, in these dedicated pages of the North Carolina Central Law Review, that yes, hip hop and the law offer an excellent opportunity to teach law students about social justice. But, why publish an article advocating that national law schools offer a legal education course on Hip Hop and the Law, or more specifically, Hip Hop & the American Constitution? Of what benefit might a course be that explores hip …

Justice For The 1 Percent: A Corrupt Governor Stays Free, Those Who Should Have Never Been Jailed Die There, Jeffrey Bellin

Jeffrey Bellin

No abstract provided.

The Prison-Televisual Complex, Allison Page, Laurie Ouellette

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

In 2016, the A&E cable network partnered with the Clark County Jail in Jeffersonville, Indiana, to incarcerate seven volunteers as undercover prisoners for two months. This article takes the reality television franchise 60 Days In as a case study for analyzing the convergence of prison and television, and the rise of what we call the prison-televisual complex in the United States, which denotes the imbrication of the prison system with the television industry, not simply television as an ideological apparatus. 60 Days In represents an entanglement between punishment and the culture industries, whereby carceral logics flow into the business and …

“We Are Still Citizens, Despite Our Regrettable Past” Why A Conviction Should Not Impact Your Right To Vote, Jaime Hawk, Breanne Schuster

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Diversity As A Trade Secret, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When we think of trade secrets, we often think of famous examples such as the Coca-Cola formula, Google’s algorithm, or McDonald’s special sauce used on the Big Mac. However, companies have increasingly made the novel argument that diversity data and strategies are protected trade secrets. This may sound like an unusual, even suspicious, legal argument. Many of the industries that dominate the economy in wealth, status, and power continue to struggle with a lack of diversity. Various stakeholders have mobilized to improve access and equity, but there is an information asymmetry that makes this pursuit daunting. When potential plaintiffs and …

Silicon Ceilings: Information Technology Equity, The Digital Divide And The Gender Gap Among Information Technology Professionals, Andrea M. Matwyshyn

Andrea Matwyshyn

No abstract provided.

The Dangerous Law Of Biological Race, Khiara M. Bridges

Khiara M Bridges

The idea of biological race—a conception of race that postulates that racial groups are distinct, genetically homogenous units—has experienced a dramatic resurgence in popularity in recent years. It is commonly understood, however, that the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the idea that races are genetically uniform groupings of individuals. Almost a century ago, the Court famously appeared to recognize the socially constructed nature of race. Moreover, the jurisprudence since then appears to reaffirm this disbelief: within law, race is understood to be a social construction, having no biological truth to it at all. Yet upon closer examination, the Court’s apparent …

Echoes Of Slavery Ii: How Slavery's Legacy Distorts Democracy, Juan F. Perea

Juan F. Perea

No abstract provided.

Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mason

AI-DR Collection

Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.

This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …

Embracing Race-Conscious College Admissions Programs: How Fisher V. University Of Texas At Austin Redefines "Affirmative Action" As A Holistic Approach To Admissions That Ensures Equal, Not Preferential, Treatment, Nancy L. Zisk

Nancy L. Zisk

In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the United States Supreme Court affirmed well-established Supreme Court doctrine that race may be considered when a college or university decides whom to admit and whom to reject, as long as the consideration of race is part of a narrowly tailored holistic consideration of an applicant's many distinguishing features. The Court's latest decision heralds a new way of thinking about holistic race-conscious admissions programs. Rather than considering them as "affirmative action" plans that prefer any one applicant to the disadvantage of another, they should be viewed as the Court has described …

A Comparative Study On Death Penalty Statutes And Their Effects On Certain Minority Groups In Light Of Furman V. Georgia, Analise Nuxoll

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

Part One of this comment will address the recent history of the death penalty in the United States, focusing on Furman v. Georgia, which placed a four-year moratorium on the death penalty in 1972. Part Two examines which states still have death penalty statutes and the reasons for choosing the selected states for further analysis. Part Two also addresses the difference between facial and as-applied attacks on the state statutes and the reason for analyzing the statutes under as applied unconstitutionality. Part Three explains the thought behind choosing to examine the death penalty’s effect on racial minorities, low socio-economic classes, …

Brief Of Brian Wolfman, Aderson B. Francois, And Eric Schnapper As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner In Peterson V. Linear Controls Incorporated, No. 18-1401 (U.S. Supreme Court June 6, 2019), Brian Wolfman, Aderson B. François

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

In Title VII disparate-treatment, employment-discrimination cases, the term “adverse employment action” originally developed as judicial shorthand for the statute’s text, which broadly prohibits any discriminatory conduct by an employer against an employee based on the employee's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. See 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2(a)(1). But what started simply as shorthand has taken on a life of its own and now improperly limits the statute’s reach. The Fifth Circuit’s version of the adverse-employment-action rule stands out as especially improper: Only an “ultimate employment decision”—a refusal to hire, a firing, a demotion, or the like—constitutes impermissible discrimination.

In this …

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.

'Race, Racism, And American Law': A Seminar From The Indigenous, Black, And Immigrant Legal Perspectives, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Flagrant racism has characterized the Trump era from the onset. Beginning with the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has inflamed long-festering racial wounds and unleashed White supremacist reaction to the nation’s first Black President, in the process destabilizing our sense of the nation’s racial progress and upending core principles of legality, equality, and justice. As law professors, we sought to rise to these challenges and prepare the next generation of lawyers to succeed in a different and more polarized future. Our shared commitment resulted in a new course, “Race, Racism, and American Law,” in which we sought to explore the roots …

Bakke’S Lasting Legacy: Redefining The Landscape Of Equality And Liberty In Civil Rights Law, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

The fortieth anniversary of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke is worth commemorating simply because the decision has survived. The United States Supreme Court’s opinion upholding the use of race in admissions has had remarkable staying power, even as other programs of affirmative action, for example, in government contracting, have been struck down as unconstitutional. That longevity might seem surprising because Bakke set forth an exacting standard of strict scrutiny under equal protection law that renders all race-based classifications suspect, whether government officials are motivated by benign or invidious purposes. That standard is one that few programs can …

The Amazing Dorothy Crockett: How An African-American Woman From Providence Became, In 1932, The 7th Woman Ever Admitted To The Rhode Island Bar 05-14-2019, Michael M. Bowden

RWU Law

No abstract provided.