Law Commons^™

Birthright Citizenship Under Attack: How Dominican Nationality Laws May Be The Future Of U.S. Exclusion, Ediberto Román, Ernesto Sagas

Faculty Publications

Attacks on birthright citizenship periodically emerge in the United States, particularly during presidential election cycles. Indeed, blaming immigrants for the country’s woes is a common strategy for conservative politicians, and the campaign leading up to the 2016 presidential election was not an exception. Several of the Republican presidential candidates raised the issue, with President Donald Trump making it the hallmark of his immigration reform platform. Trump promised that, if elected, his administration would “end birthright citizenship.” In the Dominican Republic, ending birthright citizenship and curbing immigration are now enshrined into law, resulting from a significant constitutional redefinition of Dominican citizenship …

Pushing An End To Sanctuary Cities: Will It Happen?, Raina Bhatt

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Sanctuary jurisdictions refer to city, town, and state governments (collectively, localities or local governments) that have passed provisions to limit their enforcement of federal immigration laws. Such local governments execute limiting provisions in order to bolster community cooperation, prevent racial discrimination, focus on local priorities for enforcement, or even to a show a local policy that differs from federal policy. The provisions are in the forms of executive orders, municipal ordinances, and state resolutions. Additionally, the scope of the provisions vary by locality: some prohibit law enforcement from asking about immigration status, while others prohibit the use of state resources …

Unseen Exclusions In Voting And Immigration Law, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Post-Racial Proxy Battles Over Immigration, Mary D. Fan

Chapters in Books

Amid economic and political turmoil, anti-immigrant legislation has flared again among a handful of fiercely determined states. To justify the intrusion into national immigration enforcement, the dissident states invoke imagery of invading hordes of “illegals”—though the unauthorized population actually fell by nearly two-thirds, decreasing by about a million people, between 2007 and 2009 as the recession reduced the lure of jobs.

Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070—recently invalidated in part by the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizona v. United States—led the charge. By preelection-year summer 2011, several states enacted laws patterned after Arizona’s controversial Senate Bill 1070, including Alabama’s even more aggressive …

Post-Racial Proxies: Resurgent State And Local Anti-"Alien" Laws And Unity-Rebuilding Frames For Antidiscrimination Values, Mary D. Fan

Articles

Though unauthorized migration into the United States has diminished substantially since 2007, anti-“illegal alien” state and local laws and furor are flaring again. While one of the biggest worries regarding such “anti-alien” laws is the risk of racialized harm, courts invalidating overreaching statutes are relying on structural or procedural grounds, such as preemption and due process doctrines. [PARA] This Article examines how these political and legal trends point to how proxies are used in a post-racial era to dance around race, in constructive, national unity-rebuilding as well as divisive, inflammatory ways. Anti-alien legislation is a proxy way to vent resurgent …

A Primer On Batson, Including Discussion Of Johnson V. California, Miller-El V. Dretke, Rice V. Collins, & Synder V. Louisiana., Mikal C. Watts, Emily C. Jeffcott

St. Mary's Law Journal

Fundamental to the existence of the rights guaranteed to every citizen is the assurance that the right to equal protection under the law will be defended at all costs. Key to the United States’ system of adjudication is the right to a trial by jury, which is embodied in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments to the Constitution. These rights are also incorporated into all state constitutions through the Fourteenth Amendment. During jury selection, the judicial system permits the elimination of a certain number of jurors without cause. This form of elimination is known as a peremptory challenge. Over time, however, …

Rhetoric To Reality: Citizenship Delays And U.S. International Obligations In The Post-9/11 Landscape, Clifford Ashcroft-Smith

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Speaking The Language Of Exclusion: How Equal Protection And Fundamental Rights Analyses Permit Language Discrimination Comment., Donna F. Coltharp

St. Mary's Law Journal

In the summer of 1995, the en banc Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Flores v. State upheld a lower court’s ruling to give a drunk-driving (DWI) offender a year in prison as opposed to probation. The trial judge denied the defendant probation due to his inability to speak English. The county in which the defendant was arrested and convicted did not provide a DWI rehabilitation program in Spanish, leading the judge to determine the defendant would not benefit from probation. In his appeal, Mr. Flores claimed the lower court violated his equal protection and due process rights under the …

Adarand Constructors, Inc. V. Pena: The Lochnerization Of Affirmative Action Recent Development., Patricia A. Carlson

St. Mary's Law Journal

The Supreme Court’s decision in Adarand will lead to the invalidation of many federal programs because the decision requires strict scrutiny for all affirmative action programs, including federal programs. The Court ignores both constitutional strictures and American history by resorting to Lochner era rulings of striking down federal socio-economic regulations. Overturning the clear precedent of Fullilove undermines stare decisis by valuing the language of the Court’s decision over its meaning.   The Court in Adarand presumes that the Constitution is color-blind. This presumption ignores the history leading up to the Reconstruction Amendments, the purpose of the Reconstruction Amendments, and the intentions …

Enhanced Punishment Under The Texas Hate Crimes Act: Politics, Panacea, Or Pathway To Hell., David Todd Smith

St. Mary's Law Journal

Nearly without exception, modern legislatures have responded to the reprehensible nature and detrimental social effects of hate crime by enacting laws specifically designed to punish the offender’s discriminatory animus. The term “hate crime” describes criminal conduct which is motivated by the offender’s bias or prejudice against another cognizable group. Although the reprehensible nature of a hate crime is often apparent from the facts of any given case, the repercussions of these offenses exceed the ignoble character of any one specific act. Texas has now joined the ranks of these jurisdictions by adopting legal provisions which authorize heightened penalties upon a …

42 U.S.C. 1981 Does Not Provide A Remedy For Racial Harassment During Employment., Jeffrey A. Lacy

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, the United States Supreme Court held 42 U.S.C. § 1981 does not provide a remedy for racial harassment during employment. In 1976, in Runyon v. McCrary, the Court expanded the scope of § 1981 to cover private discrimination in contractual settings, including racial discrimination in private schools, when previously unavailable. More than a decade after the Runyon decision, the Supreme Court in Patterson, established that there were limits to § 1981’s applicability in private racial discrimination claims. Specifically, the Court held while § 1981 prohibits discriminatory conduct while entering into or enforcing a contract, …