Law Commons^™

The Federal Government's Role In Local Policing, Farhang Heydari, Barry Friedman, Rachel Harmon

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For far too long, the federal government has failed to exercise its constitutional authority to mitigate the harms imposed by local policing. Absent federal intervention, though, some harmful aspects of policing will not be addressed effectively, or at all. States and localities often lack the necessary capacity and expertise to change policing, and many states and localities lack the will. This Article argues for federal intervention and describes what that intervention should look like.

The Article begins by describing three paradigmatic areas of local policing that require federal intervention to create real change: excessive use offorce, racial discrimination, and the …

The Jim Crow Jury, Thomas W. Frampton

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since the end of Reconstruction, the criminal jury box has both reflected and reproduced racial hierarchies in the United States. In the Plessy era, racial exclusion from juries was central to the reassertion of white supremacy. But it also generated pushback: a movement resisting "the Jim Crow jury" actively fought, both inside and outside the courtroom, efforts to deny black citizens equal representation on criminal juries. Recovering this forgotten history-a counterpart to the legal struggles against disenfranchisement and de jure segregationunderscores the centrality of the jury to politics and power in the post- Reconstruction era. It also helps explain Louisiana's …

Can Michigan Universities Use Proxies For Race After The Ban On Racial Preferences?, Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States held that public universities - and the University of Michigan in particular - had a compelling reason to use race as one of many factors in their admissions processes: to reap the educational benefits of a racially diverse student body. In 2006, in response to the Supreme Court's decision, the people of Michigan approved a ballot proposal - called the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) - that prohibits public universities in the state from discriminating or granting preferential treatment on the basis of race. Shortly after the MCRI was approved, a …

Innocence And Affirmative Action, Thomas Ross

Vanderbilt Law Review

When we create arguments, when we act as rhetoricians, we reveal ourselves by the words and ideas we choose to employ. Verbal structures that are used widely and persistently are especially worth examination. Arguments made with repeated, almost formulaic, sets of words suggest a second argument flowing beneath the apparent argument. Beneath the apparently abstract language and the syllogistic form of these arguments, we may discover the deeper currents that explain, at least in part, why we seem so attached to these verbal structures.

Argument about affirmative action in the context of racial discrimination is particularly wrenching and divisive, especially …

From Red Lion Square To Skokie To The Fatal Shore: Racial Defamation And Freedom Of Speech, David Partlett

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article addresses, against the backdrop of possible legislative reforms in Australia, the tension between the desire to eliminate racial defamation and the need to protect freedom of speech. In an historical overview, Mr. Partlett notes an increasing sensitivity to racial issues in Australia in the face of an assumed but nebulously stated value of free speech. Mr. Partlett analyzes theoretical and legal approaches to free speech from Commonwealth and United States perspectives, and analysis of recent legal and social developments in civil rights in the United States makes this Article relevant for both Commonwealth and United States reformers in …

Mr. Justice And Mrs. Black: The Memoirs Of Hugo L. Black And Elizabeth Black, Daniel J. Meador

Vanderbilt Law Review

In addition to foreshadowing Supreme Court decisions that followed his death, some of Justice Black's dissents noted in this book, though not yet adopted by a Supreme Court majority, have played a role in lower court decisions. His dissent in Tinker v. Des Moines Community School District expressed the idea that the disruptive activities of high school students are not protected by the first amendment. This view subsequently was reflected in a Ninth Circuit decision, and his Tinker opinion has been favorably cited in other lower court opinions." Justice Black's comments during oral argument in Swann v. Board of Education …

Book Reviews, Paul L. Murphy, Richard E. Ellis

Vanderbilt Law Review

Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality By Richard Kluger

Reviewed by Paul L. Murphy

Richard Kluger is a novelist and editor who retired to devote his full time to an extensive study of the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education.' Perceiving the Brown decision as a watershed with respect to America's willingness to confront the consequences of centuries of racial discrimination, Kluger set out to tell the entire story of the Brown decision. Kluger approaches the Brown case not as a study of the law and …

California V. Larue: The Twenty-First Amendment As A Preferred Power, Robert D. Kamenshine

Vanderbilt Law Review

While the twenty-first amendment rationale of LaRue appears to pose a threat to certain individual rights, that amendment has been recognized by at least one state supreme court as a legitimate vehicle for combating racial discrimination in private clubs'--an area of discrimination generally regarded as beyond the reach of government and probably involving fundamental rights of association and privacy. Because of the dual potential of the state power found in the twenty-first amendment and the questionable desirability of the use of that power, this article evaluates the LaRue decision, explores its unusual twenty-first amendment rationale, considers alternative approaches the Court …

Recent Developments, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

The fourteenth amendment provides that "[n]o State shall . ..deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."' The amendment thus explicitly forbids the state to engage in certain conduct, but places no express restriction on the acts of private individuals. Although the Supreme Court has consistently held that state action is a necessary element of a fourteenth amendment violation, the concept of state action was expanded to cover activities arguably private in nature to the extent that by 1970 the Court …

Equal Protection, Economic Legislation,And Racial Discrimination, William Silverman

Vanderbilt Law Review

The drive to end racial discrimination now extends beyond blatant racial distinctions to less obvious and less intentional forms of unequal treatment; nonetheless, there still exist laws and governmental programs that are racially neutral on their face but that may have a racially discriminatory impact in practice. Such discrimination can take place when economic and social welfare legislation, lacking a sound economic grounding, attacks symptoms rather than causes and thereby unintentionally compounds the problems facing black people. At the same time, laws that are at the root of unequal treatment seem to go unchallenged. From the point of view of …

Jones V. Alfred H. Mayer Co.: Judicial Activism Run Riot, Sam J. Ervin, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

Those who make it their business to follow closely the work of the Supreme Court have noticed its tendency to save the most controversial decisions of the term for the last days in June, just before the Court recesses for the summer. One sometimes gets the impression that the Justices wish to be far away from the summer storms produced by these decisions, returning to Washington in the quieter days of the fall. Thus it was not surprising that the Court saved its decision in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. until June 17, 1968, and then promptly left town. …

Nlrb - Fepc?, Jeffrey M. Albert

Vanderbilt Law Review

One potential agency in the attack on racial discrimination in employment is the National Labor Relations Board. The President has indicated that substantial reliance will be placed on that agency for the vindication of Negro rights in areas of employment not covered by Executive Order 10925. Less than a year. ago the board's approach in this area was cautious and its proper role ill-defined and speculative.' Within the past year, however, the NLRB has moved rapidly by sharpening four, possibly five, anti-bias remedies. Three have roots in early NLRB decisions. The fourth is new. The fifth, resurrection of which has …

Constitutional Law -- 1961 Tennessee Survey (Ii), James C. Kirby, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

Only three cases are assigned to this field for the abbreviated survey period and in one of these, the court avoided the constitutional question. In the other two cases the constitutional issues were not difficult and the results reached should cause neither surprise nor controversy among survey readers.

Equal Protection -- Racial Discrimination Home Rule--Self Executing Constitutional Provisions Miscellanous

The Supreme Court And Racial Discrimination, George W. Spicer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The purpose of this essay is to consider the response of the Supreme Court of the United States to two general aspects of racial discrimination: first, discrimination as restrictive of political freedom and, second,discrimination as restrictive of the enjoyment of such social advantages as the acquisition and occupancy of real estate, transportation and education.