Law Commons^™

Change Is Needed; How Latinos Are Affected By The United States Criminal Justice System, Christopher F. Bagnato

Christopher F. Bagnato

Latinos have been present in this country for centuries. They slowly have been making their mark in the communities of this country, usually seen but not really heard or noticed. Yet during the past thirty years the amount of Latino immigrants has skyrocketed. Census projections indicate that Latinos will be the biggest minority population in this county in the near future. The issues with discrimination of Latinos started on the streets with phrases like, “racial profiling” and “driving while brown,” and have moved into new places like the courtroom. Latinos have had to face not only the burden of prejudice …

Can Effective Apology Emerge Through Litigation?, Alphonse A. Gerhardstein

Law and Contemporary Problems

Gerhardstein provides a number of examples in which the factors identified by Roger Conner and Patricia Jordan--ripeness, a window of opportunity, and a symbolic act or gesture--came together to facilitate apology by a public leader. But he doesn't think that the window of opportunity needs to be exogenously determined. Rather, advocates can, through litigation and settlement demands, create that window. He believes that apology by public officials can do more to promote healthy civic society than can mere monetary settlement.

Teaching 'Whren' To White Kids, M. Katherine B. Darmer

M. Katherine B. Darmer

This paper was inspired by my experiences as a white criminal procedure professor teaching mostly-white classes and arises at the intersection of WHREN v. UNITED STATES and GRUTTER v. BOLLINGER. The article starts from the premise that criminal procedure remains highly racialized, with blacks experiencing the criminal justice system in significantly different ways than do whites. The article suggests that the lack of minority voices in the classroom poses a significant barrier to effectively teaching criminal procedure and critiques current approaches to criminal procedure pedagogy.

Teaching Whren To White Kids, M. K.B. Darmer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article addresses issues at the intersection of United States v. Whren and Grutter v. Bollinger at a time when the reality of racial profiling was recently illustrated by the high-profile arrest of a prominent Harvard professor. Given the highly racialized nature of criminal procedure, there is a surprising dearth of writing about the unique problems of teaching issues such as racial profiling in racially homogeneous classrooms. Because African American and other minority students often experience the criminal justice system in radically different ways than do Whites, the lack of minority voices poses a significant barrier to effectively teaching criminal …

Henry Louis Gates And Racial Profiling: What's The Problem?, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

A string of recent studies has documented significant racial disparities in police stops, searches, and arrests across the country. The issue of racial profiling, however, did not receive national attention until the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at his home in Cambridge. This raises three questions: First, did Sergeant Crowley engage in racial profiling when he arrested Professor Gates? Second, why does it take the wrongful arrest of a respected member of an elite community to focus the attention of the country? Third, why is racial profiling so pervasive in American policing?

The answers to these questions are …