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Full-Text Articles in Law
Resurrecting Arbitrariness, Kathryn E. Miller
Resurrecting Arbitrariness, Kathryn E. Miller
Articles
What allows judges to sentence a child to die in prison? For years, they did so without constitutional restriction. That all changed in 2012’s Miller v. Alabama, which banned mandatory sentences of life without parole for children convicted of homicide crimes. Miller held that this extreme sentence was constitutional only for the worst offenders—the “permanently incorrigible.” By embracing individualized sentencing, Miller and its progeny portended a sea change in the way juveniles would be sentenced for serious crimes. But if Miller opened the door to sentencing reform, the Court’s recent decision in Jones v. Mississippi appeared to slam it …
The Eighth Amendment Power To Discriminate, Kathryn E. Miller
The Eighth Amendment Power To Discriminate, Kathryn E. Miller
Articles
For the last half-century, Supreme Court doctrine has required that capital jurors consider facts and characteristics particular to individual defendants when determining their sentences. While liberal justices have long touted this individualized sentencing requirement as a safeguard against unfair death sentences, in practice the results have been disappointing. The expansive discretion that the requirement confers on overwhelmingly White juries has resulted in outcomes that are just as arbitrary and racially discriminatory as those that existed in the years before the temporary abolition of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia.' After decades of attempting to eliminate the requirement, conservative justices …
Radical Integration, Michelle Adams
Radical Integration, Michelle Adams
Articles
"Radical Integration" explores the two primary theoretical frameworks for achieving black liberation: the integration approach (which can be understood as assimilationist) and the identity-based, community-centered approach (which can be understood as isolationist). I argue that neither framework, by itself, is enough to ensure the achievement of true black liberation. I extract key elements of each approach and harmonize them to envision an entirely new framework. This framework, "radical integration," refocuses on the impact of racial segregation on the black community and simultaneously recognizes the need to address concerns about black identity and black authenticity in an integrated environment.
Intergroup Rivalry, Anti-Competitive Conduct And Affirmative Action, Michelle Adams
Intergroup Rivalry, Anti-Competitive Conduct And Affirmative Action, Michelle Adams
Articles
Significant research in social science describes racial inequality as grounded in notions of group identity and group conflict. Sociologists and social psychologists who study discrimination and prejudice have moved away from theories that explain prejudice solely as a problem of individual perception, and toward theories that view individual cognitive processes as related to group membership. While present social science yields no consensus view, there is a striking emphasis in the current literature on group identity theories as "powerful determinants of behavior." These theories, which stress the importance of prejudice as a group-based phenomenon and focus on "social-structural theories of group …