Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

African-American Farmers And Fair Lending: Racializing Rural Economic Space, Cassandra Jones Havard

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This article critiques the federal policy and legislation that makes USDA a financial intermediary designed to give farmers access to credit in light of the federal class action settlement of claims between African-American farmers and USDA. The challenged statutory scheme allows locally elected farmers to make decisions regarding these low-cost loan funds. USDA's approach has both federalist and economic underpinnings. The article identifies the arguments supporting devolution of power from the federal government to local jurisdictions and examines the competing theories of information costs, transaction costs, and agency costs as they relate to USDA as a financial intermediary. Finally, it …

Holocaust Deniers Can't Be Ignored: History: As Victims And Witnesses Of World War Ii Die Off, Revisionist Views Of The Nazi Horrors Could Gain Broader Acceptance, Kenneth Lasson

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On trial in an English courtroom, where British historian David Irving has sued American professor Deborah Lipstadt for defamation, is not only the scholars' reputations but history itself. Irving claims that he was libeled by Lipstadt's 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," in which she called him "one of the most dangerous of the `revisionists'" because, "familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda." But under British law, the burden of proof in defamation is squarely on the defendant, thus making it necessary for Lipstadt …

A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.: Who Will Carry The Baton?, F. Michael Higginbotham, José F. Anderson

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It was a rainy November day during Thanksgiving weekend of 1997. The scene was the Washington, D.C., childhood home of Dr. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.'s beloved wife. Our assignment was to assist in the removal, packing, and transport of a few prized family heirlooms that were to be taken to their home in Newton, Massachusetts.

On the early morning drive into Washington, D.C., our conversation was mostly idle chit-chat. Little did we know that the circumstances of the day would lead to an amazing set of discussions, the importance of which we could never have imagined at …

Health Care Divided: Race And Healing A Nation, Sidney D. Watson

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Race matters. Race—particularly racial segregation—casts a pervasive shadow over the organization of American health care. It influences the ownership and governance of institutional providers. It helps account for the high cost of health care in the United States. It contributes to America’s abysmal health status, among the worst of the industrialized world. It is reflected, in part, in the lack of national health insurance. So David Barton Smith begins this book, a book he describes as the story of “a divided nation, a divided health care system, and the uncompleted journey to heal both.”[1]

Most of us are not comfortable …

The Glass Ceiling In Law Firms: A Form Of Sex-Based Discrimination, Rebecca Korzec

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At a certain level, women lawyers collide with a "glass ceiling," an invisible, artificial barrier which prevents women from being promoted to management and leadership positions within a business or firm. The glass ceiling 'represents a subtle form of sex discrimination - unwritten, generally unspoken, but very pervasive.' Its presence is reflected in trends and statistics which consistently reveal women's underrepresentation in executive and management positions.

This article focuses on whether the glass ceiling formed as a result of sex discrimination, blatant or subtle, or whether it formed as a result of women lawyers' differing qualifications or career choices. It …

Drum Majors For Justice, F. Michael Higginbotham, José F. Anderson

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Many lawyers worked with the legendary Thurgood Marshall to overturn the Supreme Court's infamous separate but equal doctrine, which had permitted racial segregation in schools and public accommodations. But while most Marylanders are aware of Marshall's contribution, few recognize the name of his colleague, William I. Gosnell.

At that time, Gosnell was one of only 32 black lawyers in the state of Maryland. In fact, due to the state's racial segregation policy, both he and Marshall had received scholarships to attend out- of-state law schools. They were denied entry to the University of Maryland because of their skin color. While …

The Interplay Of Race And False Claims Of Jury Nullification, Nancy S. Marder

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No abstract provided.

Ax-Grinding Politics Leads To Unequal Justice, Kenneth Lasson

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No abstract provided.

Writing Rules Does Not Right Wrongs, Odeana R. Neal

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I believe the work that lawyers, legal academics, and judges do is important. Our work allows us to devise legal theories, develop litigation strategies and determine outcomes that can make a tremendous difference in people's lives. As a result, I applaud the insight and creativity of Judge Beck and Professors Glennon and Goldfarb. Their work demonstrates how law can be used to protect gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, their relationships and their families.

Twain's Admiration Of Jews Conflicted His Article Of 100 Years Ago Seems Less Flattering Today, Kenneth Lasson

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It's been exactly a hundred years since Mark Twain first revealed himself as an unmitigated admirer of Jewish people. "A marvelous race, by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I suppose." he wrote in "Concerning the Jews," published in March of 1898 by Harper's magazine.

How different after all was Twain from H.L. Mencken, who (after the posthumous publication of his diaries) was attacked as an anti-Semite? As literary critic Joseph Epstein has pointed out, Mencken talked about Jews the way they talked about themselves: "But H.L. Mencken was no anti-Semite. For that he would have …

Passage Of Religious Freedom Act Necessary To Fulfill Maryland's National Leadership Role, Kenneth Lasson

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Three hundred sixty-four years ago this month, two tiny sailing ships arrived near what is now St. Mary's City with the first settlers in Maryland. The Ark and the Dove were sent to the New World by Cecil Calvert. Lord Baltimore had founded his small colony as a haven for those persecuted in England because of their religious beliefs.

On numerous occasions since then - from passage of the Act of Toleration in 1649 to the achievement of full civil liberties for Jews in 1825 to landmark Supreme Court decisions involving the state in the 1960s - Maryland has been …

Catch Me If You Can! Resolving The Ethical Tragedies In The Brave New World Of Jury Selection, José F. Anderson

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Since the Supreme Court's opinion in Batson v. Kentucky, the rules and tools available to lawyers for selecting juries have changed dramatically from what they had been for decades in American courtrooms. The Court's well intentioned effort in Batson to attempt to eliminate racial discrimination from the process of jury selection set in motion a series of modifications in lawyer decision making which have changed how lawyers fill the jury box. Prior to Batson, the sacrosanct tool known as the peremptory challenge had been virtually unassailable as a jury selection weapon. Abuses by prosecutors, particularly in the southern United States, …

Holocaust Denial And The First Amendment: The Quest For Truth In A Free Society, Kenneth Lasson

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From the ashes of the Holocaust we have come once again to learn the terrible truth, that the power of Evil cannot be underestimated. Nor can the effect of the spoken and written word. It has been but a half-century since the liberation of Nazi death camps, a little more than a decade since the First International Conference on the Holocaust and Human Rights, and a few short years since the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum first put on display its documentation of horror. Yet today that form of historical revisionism popularly called "Holocaust denial" abounds worldwide in all its …

Introduction, Symposium On Section 1983 (Symposium Editor), Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

The Restructuring Of Narrative And Empathy In Section 1983 Cases (Symposium), Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

The Age Discrimination In Employment Act At Thirty: Where It's Been, Where It Is Today, Where It's Going, Howard C. Eglit

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No abstract provided.

Thurgood Marshall: Legal Strategist For The Civil Rights Movement, F. Michael Higginbotham, José F. Anderson

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This brief article covers the career of attorney and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, covering his early days as an attorney working for the NAACP, up to his career on the nation's highest court. Of particular interest are the hardships of his early days as a lawyer, as one of only 32 African American lawyers in Maryland in 1935. The key cases during his career are touched upon, along with the legal strategies used to further the cause of civil rights.

Legislating Virtue: How Segregationists Disguised Racial Discrimination As Moral Reform Following Brown V. Board Of Education, Anders Walker

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Shortly after the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education,[1] Mississippi Circuit Judge Tom P. Brady [2] delivered a speech to a chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution on the decision’s consequences. Brady’s speech, later published and popularized throughout the South,[3] declared that the ruling’s ultimate goal was not educational equality, but racial amalgamation:[4]

Let’s get one thing unmistakably clear, the leaders of the three million block-voting negroes of the North and East and of California, together with segments of the Communist-front organizations of our population, have set as their …

Perspectives On Missouri V. Jenkins: Abandoning The Unfinished Business Of Public School Desegregation 'With All Deliberate Speed', José F. Anderson

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This essay examines the continuing struggle that centers around whether this country will allow public elementary and secondary school officials to use race-conscious, and sometimes aggressive, tools to eliminate the continuing presence of predominantly single race schools in most of our urban centers. Despite the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, the efforts to desegregate schools in some areas of America appear to have eliminated only the legal barriers to truly integrated schools. Many school systems have simply resegregated through demographic shifts prompted by urban decay and "white flight." In Missouri v. Jenkins, the Supreme Court struck down certain …

The Limits Of Legal Discourse: Learning From The Civil Rights Movement In The Quest For Gay And Lesbian Civil Rights, Odeana R. Neal

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The African-American struggle for civil rights has been a long one, one that began with the importation of the first black person into the country as a slave, and continues today. Through radical political struggle coupled with legal precedent, de jure segregation became a part of the past of the United States. Meticulous legal strategizing by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund culminated with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared unconstitutional the governmental practice of segregating on the basis of race. Careful legislative lobbying—as well as the threats posed by radical black political groups who …

Beyond Gender: Peremptory Challenges And The Roles Of The Jury, Nancy S. Marder

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No abstract provided.

State Constitutional Torts: Deshaney, Reverse-Federalism And Community, Sheldon Nahmod

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No abstract provided.

Social Justice And The Myth Of Fairness: A Communal Defense Of Affirmative Action, Phillip J. Closius

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This Article shall examine the characteristics of the current analytical framework by first examining some harmful effects resulting from the prioritization of fairness: excessive generalization, formalism and superficiality, and materialism. The Article will then examine in detail the Supreme Court's resolution of modern affirmative action issues. The Court has generated confusion and discord by applying simplistic concepts to complex problems and by adhering to the primacy of fairness in a context in which all interested parties claim that fairness favors their result. Finally, this Article will critique the Court's inability to provide a consistent doctrinal basis for discussing affirmative action …

Myths And Moms: Images Of Women And Termination Of Parental Rights, Odeana R. Neal

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For most of us, the word "mother" evokes a myriad of often conflicting images and emotions, expectations and disappointments, and gratitude and blame. What a mother is - our own mothers and the class of people who are mothers - means much more than that a woman has given birth. We expect mothers to provide their children with all the love, caring, nurturing, and emotional fulfillment that we perceive those children need and desire; we expect her to be all things that we want her to be when we need her to be them. A woman who can fulfill the …

Lawyering Askew: Excesses In The Pursuit Of Fees And Justice, Kenneth Lasson

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Lawyer-bashing in America has long been a national pastime, having somehow escaped the palliative of political correctness that has greatly diminished other scurrilous pursuits like Jewish-American-Princess-baiting and Polish-joking.

Much of the profession's negative image can be ascribed to the sheer number of people hanging out their shingles as attorneys at law - just about as many per capita as there are inmates currently serving time in all the state prisons. Lawyers are likewise chastised for the hard-sell hucksterism of their advertising, the exponential growth of their caseloads, and the endless upward spiral of their fee scales. No doubt such perceptions, …

Fight Muhammad's 'Secret' With Facts, Kenneth Lasson

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No abstract provided.

Homelessness At The Millennium, Peter W. Salsich

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This article discusses the government’s response to what appeared at the time to be an overnight explosion of the homeless population in big cities and small towns as a result of major economic and social changes of the early 1980s. In order to respond effectively to underlying problems of homelessness, it explores solutions that are more comprehensive than merely building shelters. The author argues that while homelessness has a direct link to poverty, the government must also address more complex causes including, the lack of adequate mental health care, substance abuse, a decline in the availability of affordable housing, and …

Urban Housing: A Strategic Role For The States, Peter W. Salsich

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The author argues that states have both the capacity and the opportunity to play a leading role in revitalizing national housing policy. At a time when federal housing programs were declining, state administered housing programs came to the forefront. Detailing the growth of state administered housing policies, the article notes that creative, diverse, flexible, and community planned affordable housing programs being funded by states. States also have opportunities for leadership in housing through coordinated application of state zoning powers in conjunction with state administration of federal housing programs. In conclusion, the article recommends gradually phasing out centralized federal housing in …

Recognizing Violence Against Women: Gender And The Hate Crimes Statistics Act, Elizabeth Pendo

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This article argues that acts of gender-based violence should be recognized under the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990, and that certain types of violence against women, such as rape, are fundamentally gender-based. Part I examines the existing definition of hate crimes under the HCSA, and the exclusion of the majority of violence against women. Part II suggests gender should be included as a category under the HCSA because of the similar effects of violence directed at women due to gender, and violence directed at members of other groups because of their group identity. Using acquaintance rape as an example, …

Groveling At The Feet Of Football's Greedy Lords, Kenneth Lasson

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No abstract provided.