Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Race And Rapport: Homophily And Racial Disadvantage In Large Law Firms, Kevin Woodson

Law Faculty Publications

Over the past two decades, clients and other constituencies have pushed large law firms to pursue greater racial diversity in attorney hiring and retention. Although these firms have devoted extraordinary resources toward better recruiting and retaining attorneys of color, and despite a proliferation of “best practices” guides and diversity policy recommendations, these considerable efforts have yielded only modest gains. With respect to black attorneys in particular, the tide of racial progress in these firms has moved forward at a glacial pace, even ebbing and receding in recent years.

Although large law firms now hire significant numbers of black attorneys as …

Registering Offense: The Prohibition Of Slurs As Trademarks, Christine Haight Farley

Contributions to Books

Since 1967, Pro-Football has registered six marks that include the term “redskins,” a derogatory racial epithet that refers to Native Americans. The use of disparaging marks dates back to the 19th century when brands commercialized racial stereotypes, such as Aunt Jemima. Today, offensive marks, including those that ridicule race, ethnicity, gender and religion are proliferating prompting the question of what role trademark law plays in protecting the interests of diverse communities. Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act prohibits the registration of marks that consist of matter that may disparage or bring into contempt or disrepute any person, institution, or belief. …

Lsac Data Reveals That Black/White Multiracials Outscore All Blacks On Lsat By Wide Margins, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The “Social Magic” Of Merit: Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In The English And Welsh Legal Profession, Hilary Sommerlad

Fordham Law Review

The discourse of merit is central to the “boundary” practices deployed by the white male elite of the English legal profession to exclude outsiders. The official discourse of government and regulatory body reports presents merit as an objectively verifiable and quantifiable property, synonymous with “excellence,” the salience of which in the recruitment process is indicative of the modernization of the profession. In this form it is mobilized to deflect criticism of the slow progress toward diversity. Critical interrogation of the discourse of merit reveals that it operates rather differently as a key structuring principle of the profession. The alternative meaning …

Naming Men As Men In Corporate Legal Practice: Gender And The Idea Of “Virtually 24/7 Commitment” In Law, Richard Collier

Fordham Law Review

This Article seeks to reframe and turn the conversation about gender equity in the legal profession on its head, taking up Hannah Brenner’s recent call to reconceptualize problems and rethink solutions around gender equity in the profession. It does so by moving beyond the frame of the retention of women and exploring selected aspects of the gendered practices of men in relation to this notion of the ideal legal professional in large transnational “city” law firms. The Article traces how particular ideas about men and gender are, on closer examination, implicated in a broader recasting of lawyer professionalism within the …

An Empirical Analysis Of Diversity In The Legal Profession, Jason P. Nance, Paul E. Madsen

UF Law Faculty Publications

The purpose of this Study is to empirically examine the diversity of the legal profession. The primary distinctive features of this empirical analysis are that it evaluates diversity in the legal profession by (a) carefully comparing it against other prestigious professions that have significant barriers to entry, and (b) focusing on young individuals who recently began their careers. These distinctions are made to isolate anomalies that are more likely caused by forces specific to the legal profession rather than general social forces that limit the eligibility of historically disadvantaged groups to pursue prestigious employment opportunities. Further, by narrowing our focus …

Gender Diversity And Same-Sex Marriage, Ian Farrell, Nancy Leong

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Opponents of same-sex marriage have recently adopted a curious new argument. The argument goes something like this. The Supreme Court has held that diversity is a compelling state interest in institutions of higher education. Opposite-sex marriage includes gender diversity, while same-sex marriage does not. Therefore, states may allow same-sex marriage while banning opposite-sex marriage — even if the ban triggers heightened scrutiny under equal protection or due process — because opposite-sex marriage furthers gender diversity, while same-sex marriage does not.

The gender diversity argument against same-sex marriage has made its way into a number of briefs during the recent increase …

Judicial Diversity After Shelby County V. Holder, William Roth

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In 2014, voters in ten of the fifteen states previously covered by the Voting Rights Act ("VRA") preclearance formula-including six of the nine states covered in their entirety-will go to the polls to elect or retain state supreme court justices. Yet despite the endemic underrepresentation of minorities on state benches and the judiciary's traditional role in fighting discrimination, scholars have seemingly paid little attention to how Shelby County v. Holder's suspension of the coverage formula in section 4(b) has left racial minorities vulnerable to retrogressive changes to judicial-election laws. The first election year following Shelby County thus provides a compelling …

Dan Subotnik, Toxic Diversity: Race, Gender, And Law Talk In America, Hannah Abrams

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Tale Of Two Minority Groups: Can Two Different Minority Groups Bring A Coalition Suit Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act Of 1965, Sara Michaloski

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Academic Extremism Threatens Democratic Values (Commentary), Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

Veritas vos liberabit, chanted the scholastics of yesteryear — "the truth will set you free." It's hard to see how that mantra could be echoed by latter-day counterparts in the academy. Consider the recent resolution by the American Studies Association that advocated an academic boycott of Israel. Its argument — that Israeli universities are complicit in state policies violating Palestinians' human rights — belies the truth: Israel has long been the most diverse, inclusive and tolerant of any Middle Eastern country.

A Lawyer Looks At Civil Disobedience: How Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Reframed The Civil Rights Revolution, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay reconstructs Lewis F. Powell, Jr.’s thoughts on the civil rights movement by focusing on a series of little-known speeches that he delivered in the 1960s lamenting the practice of civil disobedience endorsed by Martin Luther King, Jr. Convinced that the law had done all it could for blacks, Powell took issue with King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, impugning its invocation of civil disobedience and rejecting its calls for compensatory justice to make up for slavery and Jim Crow. Dismissive of reparations, Powell developed a separate basis for supporting diversity that hinged on distinguishing American pluralism from Soviet totalitarianism. …

Still Unconstitutional: Our Nation's Experiment With State-Sponsored Sex Segregation In Education, David S. Cohen, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

Since federal regulations authorized single-sex education in 2006, there has been an explosion of single-sex schools and classes. Although the Supreme Court has not ruled, three federal court decisions have addressed the constitutionality of single-sex classes, and the issue will percolate toward Supreme Court review soon. The arguments are that parents should have choices and “diversity” of educational options, that “brain research” shows that boys and girls are so biologically different to need sex-specific educational environments, that educational outcomes are better, and single-sex learning environments allows boys and girls to break through gender stereotypes. This article dissects these arguments within …

The 'Compelling Government Interest' In School Diversity: Rebuilding The Case For An Affirmative Government Role, Philip Tegeler

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

How far does Justice Kennedy’s “moral and ethical obligation” to avoid racial isolation extend? Does the obligation flow primarily from Supreme Court case law, does it derive from an evolving consensus in the social sciences, or does it also have a statutory basis in Title VI and other federal law? In addition to its value as a justification for non-individualized, race-conscious remedial efforts by state and local governments, does the compelling interest identified in Parents Involved also suggest an affirmative duty on the part of the federal government? And if so, how far does this affirmative duty extend, and how …

The Legal Challenges Of Diversity (Review Essay), Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

Within the last year two excellent books, Mariana Valverde’s Everyday Law on the Street: City Governance In an Age of Diversity and Victoria Saker Woeste’s Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech, address how social anxieties about “diversity” surface in the development and enforcement of the law. While the two books focus on different eras and countries, they similarly illustrate the tensions in legal contexts that can result from the growth in diversity

Retaining Color, Veronica Root

Journal Articles

It is no secret that large law firms are struggling in their efforts to retain attorneys of color. This is despite two decades of aggressive tracking of demographic rates, mandates from clients to improve demographic diversity, and the implementation of a variety of diversity efforts within large law firms. In part, law firm retention efforts are stymied by the reality that elite large law firms require some level of attrition to function properly under the predominant business model. This reality, however, does not explain why firms have more difficulty retaining attorneys of color — in particular black and Hispanic attorneys …

"Why Is Gender A Form Of Diversity?": Rising Advantages For Women In Global Indian Law Firms, Swethaa Ballakrishnen

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Women in Legal Practice: Global and Local Perspectives, Symposium, June 5-8, 2012. Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association.

Racial Capitalism, Nancy Leong

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Racial capitalism — the process of deriving social and economic value from racial identity — is a longstanding, common, and deeply problematic practice. This Article is the first to identify racial capitalism as a systemic phenomenon and to undertake a close examination of its causes and consequences.

The Article focuses on instances of racial capitalism in which white individuals and predominantly white institutions use nonwhite people to acquire social and economic value. Affirmative action doctrine and policies provide much of the impetus for this form of racial capitalism. These doctrines and policies have fueled an intense legal and social preoccupation …

In Defense Of Deference: The Case For Respecting Educational Autonomy And Expert Judgments In Fisher V. Texas, Eboni S. Nelson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Promoting Language Access In The Legal Academy, Gillian Dutton, Beth Lyon, Jayesh M. Rathold, Deborah M. Weissman

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

"Promoting Language Access in the Legal Academy," details the progress made by the legal profession in meeting the needs of individuals with limited English language proficiency. The authors outlines the current need, summarizes various approaches taken by law schools, and emphasizes the value of training bilingual law students as well as mobilizing a cadre of undergraduate interpreters.

Grutter's Denouement: Three Templates From The Roberts Court, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Precedent from the Roberts Court shows the Justices taking three distinct approaches to precedent they dislike. Each provides a template for the Court to criticize race-based affirmative action in higher education, as Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is widely expected to do. Most narrowly, the Court might use Fisher to issue a warning, much like it did in 2009 when it sidestepped a constitutional challenge to the Voting Rights Act; under this approach, the opinion would spell out why the Justices think the diversity celebrated in Grutter v. Bollinger no longer provides sufficient justification for the use of …

Applying Indices Post-Grutter To Monitor Progress Toward Attaining A Diverse Student Body, Roger W. Reinsch, Sonia Goltz, Hong Chen, Joel C. Tuoriniemi

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The Supreme Court decision in Grutter v. Bollinger provided more definitive guidance for institutions of higher education desiring to use racial preferences in an effort to achieve a diverse student body. This Article first examines Grutter and other relevant cases to set forth the parameters established by the Supreme Court concerning how university preferences, including but not limited to race, may be used in an admissions policy. This Article then provides a framework for creating and using diversity indices that can help institutions implement the guidelines found in these court decisions and monitor whether or not the goal of diversity …

Retaining Diversity In The Classroom: Strategies For Maximizing The Benefits That Flow From A Diverse Student Body, Chris Chambers Goodman

Pepperdine Law Review

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the United States Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether diversity is a sufficiently compelling government interest to justify an affirmative action program that considered race and ethnicity in allocating law school admission offers. The Court determined that diversity was a compelling interest, resolving the conflict in the federal circuits on that issue. In this article, Goodman argues that the courts must examine the tightness of the fit between the goal of either achieving diversity or of realizing the benefits that flow from a diverse student body, and the means used to try to accomplish either …

Middle Income Peers As Educational Resources And The Constitutional Right To Equal Access, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

Concentrated poverty in public schools continues to be a leading determinate of the educational opportunities that minority students receive. Since the effective end of mandatory desegregation, advocates have lacked legal tools to address it. As an alternative, some advocates and scholars have attempted to incorporate the concerns of concentrated poverty and racial segregation into educational litigation under state constitutions, but these efforts have been slow to take hold. Thus, all that has remained for students in poor and minority schools is the hope that school finance litigation could direct sufficient resources to mitigate their plight. This Article offers another solution. …

Timeline Of African-American Legal History In Nevada (1861-2011), Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

For the first time in Nevada history, this timeline depicts selected events in the history of African-American lawyers, civil rights, and diversity in Nevada's bar and bench. It includes many historically significant pictures and is part of a special Black History Month issue of the Nevada Lawyer, the official publication of the State Bar of Nevada. That issue highlights the achievements and contributions of African-American lawyers in Nevada in honor of the 51st anniversary of the first African American (Charles L. Kellar) passing the Nevada state bar examination, the 48th anniversary of the first two African Americans admitted to the …

Talking About Race And Equality, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

Lots of people of different races are increasingly uncomfortable talking about race. They prefer to function in a colorblind society where they insist that race is irrelevant. Not surprisingly, the concept of racial silencing is consistent with the concept of colorblindness. Logically, it seems impossible to talk about race if we are not even supposed to see it. The idea seems to be that if people who believe in racial equality magically stopped seeing and talking about race they could avoid the negativity surrounding racial issues and just hope that the inequality would fix itself. But we know that if …

The Promise Of Grutter: Diverse Interactions At The University Of Michigan Law School, Meera E. Deo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School on the grounds of educational diversity. Yet the Court's assumption that admitting diverse students into law school would result in improved race relations, livelier classroom conversations, and better professional outcomes for students has never been empirically tested. This Article relies on survey and focus group data collected at the University of Michigan Lav School campus itself in March 2010 to examine not only whether, but how diversity affects learning. The data indicate both that there are sufficient numbers of students of color …

Overwhelmed By Big Consolidation: Bringing Back Regulation To Increase Diversity In Programming That Serves Minority Audiences, Caridad Austin

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Note addresses diversity in the media and the need for regulation that will enhance programming so that it is inclusive of minority audiences. It begins by analyzing the historical development of diversity in the media through landmark cases, such as Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, and it addresses the consolidating effects of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the FCC's 2003 Report and Order. It argues that despite technological growth, the FCC's open market regulatory approach of the last three decades has resulted in a lack of diverse perspectives in the media and that the FCC needs …

When "The Evil Day" Comes, Will Title Vii's Disparate Impact Provision Be Narrowly Tailored To Survive An Equal Protection Clause Challenge?, Eang L. Ngov

Faculty Scholarship

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Employers must be careful about the intentional and unintentional effect of their employment practices, even when acting with good motive. Title VII’s disparate impact provision holds employers liable for employment practices that cause an adverse impact on racial groups, even when the employment practice applies equally to all groups and was not implemented to disadvantage a particular group. A prima facie case of disparate impact can arise solely based on numbers - a comparison between the rate at which one racial group passes a test or is selected for hiring or …

Teaching Gender As A Core Value In Business Organizations Class, Cheryl L. Wade

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I teach a business organizations course that is typically a large class with up to ninety students. At some point in the first week of each semester, I talk about public companies and the men who lead them. I point out to my students that while it is appropriate in most contexts to use gender-neutral language, it would be inaccurate to do so when talking about big business. Only fifteen percent of the board seats at Fortune 500 companies are held by women, and only sixteen percent of Fortune 500 corporate officers are women. I let my students know …