Law Commons^™

A Theory Of Racialized Judicial Decision-Making, Raquel Muñiz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In this Article, I introduce a theory of racialized judicial decision-making as a framework to explain how judicial decision-making as a system contributes to creating and maintaining the racial hierarchy in the United States. Judicial decision-making, I argue, is itself a racialized systemic process in which judges transpose racially-bounded cognitive schemas as they make decisions. In the process, they assign legal burdens differentially across ethnoracial groups, to the disproportionate detriment of ethnoracial minorities. After presenting this argument, I turn to three mechanisms at play in racialized judicial decision-making: (1) whiteness as capital that increases epistemic advantages in the judicial process, …

Robert Cover And Critical Race Theory, Gabriel J. Chin

Touro Law Review

Professor Robert Cover is recognized as a leading scholar of law and literature; decades after his untimely passing, his works continue to be widely cited. Because of his interest in narrative, he is credited as a contributor to the development of Critical Race Theory. This essay proposes that in addition to narrative, some of his other, substantive works about race were also important precursors to a more sophisticated appreciation of U.S. race relations. Professor Cover is also entitled to credit for understanding racism as a pervasive system, and one which went beyond Black and White.

Batson Ethics For Prosecutors And Trial Court Judges, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Sheri Lynn Johnson

No abstract provided.

The Color Of Truth: Race And The Assessment Of Credibility, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Sheri Lynn Johnson

No abstract provided.

The Thirteenth Amendment And Constitutional Change, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

This article builds upon remarks the author originally delivered at the Nineteenth Annual Derrick Bell Lecture on Race in American Society at NYU Law in November of 2014. The Article describes the history and purpose of the Thirteenth Amendment’s proscription of the badges and incidents of slavery and argues that an understanding of the Amendment's context and its Framers' intent can provide the basis for a more progressive vision for advancing civil rights. The Article discusses how the Thirteenth Amendment could prove to be more effective in addressing persisting forms of inequality that have escaped the reach of the Equal …

Do Judges Vary In Their Treatment Of Race?, David S. Abrams, Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan

All Faculty Scholarship

Are minorities treated differently by the legal system? Systematic racial differences in case characteristics, many unobservable, make this a difficult question to answer directly. In this paper, we estimate whether judges differ from each other in how they sentence minorities, avoiding potential bias from unobservable case characteristics by exploiting the random assignment of cases to judges. We measure the between-judge variation in the difference in incarceration rates and sentence lengths between African-American and White defendants. We perform a Monte Carlo simulation in order to explicitly construct the appropriate counterfactual, where race does not influence judicial sentencing. In our data set, …

The Missing Minority Judges, Pat K. Chew, Luke T. Kelley-Chew

Articles

This essay documents the lack of Asian-American judges and considers the consequences.

From Laredo To Fort Worth: Race, Politics And The Texas Redistricting Case, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

LULAC v. Perry held that Texas violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when it displaced nearly 100,000 Latino residents from a congressional district in Laredo to protect the Republican incumbent they refused to support. At the same time, the Justices let stand the dismantling of a so-called “coalition” district in Fort Worth where African-American voters comprising a minority of the district’s population allegedly enjoyed effective control in deciding the district’s representative. Only Justice Kennedy supported the outcome in both Laredo and Fort Worth. His opinion marks the first time that he, or indeed a majority of the Justices, …

Unexplainable On Grounds Other Than Race: The Inversion Of Privilege And Subordination In Equal Protection Jurisprudence, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

In this article, Professor Darren Hutchinson contributes to the debate over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by arguing that the Supreme Court has inverted its purpose and effect. Professor Hutchinson contends that the Court, in its judicial capacity, provides protection and judicial solicitude for privileged and powerful groups in our country, while at the same time requires traditionally subordinated and oppressed groups to utilize the political process to seek redress for acts of oppression. According to Professor Hutchinson, this process allows social structures of oppression and subordination to remain intact.

First, Professor Hutchinson examines the various …

Batson Ethics For Prosecutors And Trial Court Judges, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Utilitarianism Left And Right: A Response To Professor Armour, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Color Of Truth: Race And The Assessment Of Credibility, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Employment Discrimination, Charles Stephen Ralston, Paul Kamenar, William Bradford Reynolds, Gail Wright-Sirmans

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights In Transition: Sections 1981 And 1982 Cover Discrimination On The Basis Of Ancestry And Ethnicity, Eileen Kaufman, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Addendum: Civil Rights In Jeopardy, Eileen R. Kaufman, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.