Law Commons^™

Separate But Free, Joshua E. Weishart

Law Faculty Scholarship

“Separate but equal” legally sanctioned segregation in public schools until Brown. Ever since, separate but free has been the prevailing dogma excusing segregation. From “freedom of choice” plans that facilitated massive resistance to desegregation to current school choice plans exacerbating racial, socioeconomic, and disability segregation, proponents have venerated parental freedom as the overriding principle.

This Article contends that, in the field of public education, the dogma of separate but free has no place; separate is inherently unfree. As this Article uniquely clarifies, segregation deprives schoolchildren of freedom to become equal citizens and freedom to learn in democratic, integrated, …

Let’S Go To The Beach: Gender Segregation As A Tool To Accommodate Religious Minorities, Sarah Gibbons

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fair Housing’S Third Act: American Tragedy Or Triumph?, Heather R. Abraham

Journal Articles

Fifty-two years ago, Congress enacted a one-of-a-kind civil rights directive. It requires every federal agency—and state and local grantees by extension—to take affirmative steps to undo segregation. In 2020, this overlooked Fair Housing Act provision—the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” or “AFFH” mandate—has heightened relevance. Perhaps most visible is Donald Trump’s racially charged “protect the suburbs” campaign rhetoric. In an apparent appeal to suburban constituents, his administration repealed a race-conscious fair housing rule, replacing it with a no-questions-asked regulation that elevates “local control” above civil rights.

The maneuver is especially stark as protesters fill the streets, marching in opposition to systemic …

Nine Ways Of Looking At Oklahoma City: An Essay On Sam Anderson’S Boom Town, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The New Tipping Point: Disruptive Politics And Habituating Equality, Sarah E. Waldeck, Rachel D. Godsil

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Essay argues that the events of 2020 opened a window of political opportunity to implement policies aimed at dismantling structural injustice and systemic racism. Building on the work of philosopher Charles Mills and political scientist Clarissa Rile Hayward, we argue that the Black Lives Matter Movement constituted the “disruptive politics” necessary to shift dispositions of many in the United States toward racial equity by interrupting the white “epistemologies of ignorance.” Moreover, because policies that correct structural injustice are beneficial for people across race, even those whose hearts and minds remained closed may embrace legislative policies that function to dismantle …

Looking Toward Restorative Justice For Redlined Communities Displaced By Eco-Gentrification, Helen H. Kang

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

MJEAL chose to publish Helen Kang’s piece, Looking Toward Restorative Justice for Redlined Communities Displaced by Eco-Gentrification, because it offers a unique analytic approach for analyzing the roots of environmental racism and the appropriate tools to help rectify it. She offers an argument for why restorative justice needs to be the framework and explains how we can accomplish this in the context of a whole government solution. MJEAL is excited to offer what will be an influential approach for environmental restorative justice to the broader activist and academic community.

Uncle Sam’S Dilemma: Whether Prioritizing Confederate Memorials Over National Sentiment Is A Monumental Mistake, Hayley A. Valla

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keeping Up: Walking With Justice Douglas, Charles A. Reich

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brown, Massive Resistance, And The Lawyer's View: A Nashville Story, Daniel Sharfstein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Every grassroots story complicates what we already know, and the history of Cecil Sims and his world48 stands out in at least two important ways. First, Sims's work on issues relating to segregated education predates Brown. In the late 1940s, as Southern states responded to Supreme Court decisions desegregating graduate education, Sims assumed a central role in developing nominally race-neutral proposals that involved a series of complex transactions and legal forms. Just as the Civil Rights Movement began years before Brown and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Sims is emblematic of the segregated South's "long history" of resistance to civil rights. …