Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

A Rational Basis For Affirmative Action: A Shaky But Classical Liberal Defense, Richard A. Epstein

Michigan Law Review

I am honored to participate in a symposium on the occasion of the lOOth anniversary of one of America's preeminent law reviews. I am saddened, however, to write, at what should be a moment of celebration, with the knowledge that both the Law School and the College of Literature, Science and the Arts are enmeshed in extensive litigation over the critical and explosive issue of affirmative action. To find striking evidence of the deep split of learned judicial views on this issue, it is necessary to look no further than the sequence of opinions in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter …

Some Effects Of Identity-Based Social Movements On Constitutional Law In The Twentieth Century, William N. Eskridge Jr.

Michigan Law Review

What motivated big changes in constitutional law doctrine during the twentieth century? Rarely did important constitutional doctrine or theory change because of formal amendments to the document's text, and rarer still because scholars or judges "discovered" new information about the Constitution's original meaning. Precedent and common law reasoning were the mechanisms by which changes occurred rather than their driving force. My thesis is that most twentieth century changes in the constitutional protection of individual rights were driven by or in response to the great identity-based social movements ("IBSMs") of the twentieth century. Race, sex, and sexual orientation were markers of …

Contract Rights And Civil Rights, Davison M. Douglas

Michigan Law Review

Have African Americans fared better under a scheme of freedom of contract or of government regulation of private employment relationships? Have court decisions striking down regulation of employment contracts on liberty of contract grounds aided black interests? Many contemporary observers, although with some notable dissenters, would respond that government regulation of freedom of contract, particularly the antidiscrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has benefited African Americans because it has restrained discriminatory conduct by private employers. Professor David E. Bernstein challenges the view that abrogation of freedom of contract has consistently benefited African Americans by …

Civil Rights In The New Decade: The Geography Of Opportunity, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is truly an honor and a privilege to have been invited to return to my home state of Alabama to talk about the civil rights agenda in the new decade. Lest you think that I lack the appropriate credentials to speak on this issue, I will tell you that I did go to jail for the cause. At the age of four months, I was taken by my mother, Joan Carpenter Cashin, to a sit-in at a lunch counter in Huntsville, Alabama. When my mother was arrested, she insisted on taking me with her to jail. I am very …

Building Community In The Twenty-First Century: A Post-Integrationist Vision For The American Metropolis, Sheryll D. Cashin

Michigan Law Review

[T]he problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. When W.E.B. DuBois wrote this prophetic statement at the dawn of the twentieth century, the American metropolis did not yet exist. Perhaps DuBois could not have predicted the sprawled, socioeconomically fragmented landscape that is so familiar to the majority of Americans who now live and work in metropolitan regions. But his prediction of a "color line" that would sear our consciousness and present the chief social struggle for the new century proved all too correct. As we contemplate the twenty-first century, Gerald Frug's book, City Making, makes clear …

Historical Essay: In The Name Of God; An American Story Of Feminism, Racism, And Religious Intolerance: The Story Of Alma Bridwell White, Kristin E. Kandt

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

53 Years In The Struggle For Equal Rights: An African-American Jurist's Life In The Law (Equal Justice Under The Law: An Autobiography By Constance Baker Motley), Lancelot B. Hewitt

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Race And Property Values In Entrenched Segregation, Margalynne Armstrong

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why Judicial Reversal Of Apartheid Made A Difference, William A. Fischel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Did Buchanan v. Warley' have any practical effect on the economic well-being of black Americans? Michael Klarman argues that it did not, since the enforcement of racial segregation proceeded along other lines, such as regular zoning, racial covenants, informal discrimination, and unofficial violence. David Bernstein disagrees in part with Kiarman's conclusion. He argues that Buchanan v. Warley effectively made more housing available to blacks in urban areas, even if it did not promote racial integration.

I second Bernstein's conclusion by putting Buchanan in the context of the urban-economics theory of housing segregation. Because Buchanan helped blacks gain a foothold, albeit …

Hopwood, Equal Protection, And Affirmative Action: Can Anyone's Ox Be Gored?, David J. Jannuzzi

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Scenes From The Southside: A Desegregation Drama In Five Acts, Jennifer E. Spreng

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Heart Of Equal Protection: Education And Race, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

Brown vs. Board of Education established more than the unconstitutionality of the separate but equal doctrine in public education. Brown also gave the importance of education a constitutional dimension. Involuntary racial segregation creates a stigma wherever it exists which indisputably affects all children's self-esteem by possibly undermining that of children of color and by artificially inflating that of White children. Unfortunately, more recent cases that raise questions about the right to a public education seem less willing to acknowledge the importance of education and the importance of integration in public education. Since Brown, the Court has held repeatedly that …

Beyond Admissions: Racial Equality In Law Schools, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

Beginning with a discussion of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, this article discusses the meaning of “integration.” In McLaurin, the University of Oklahoma was forced to abandon its segregation policy and not separate black students from their white classmates in all settings (not just the classroom). The McLaurin decision raised the fundamental questions: "What is integration?" and "How is integration related to racial equality?" Significantly, the McLaurin Court clarifies that equality is premised on integration and that integration means more than just having a presence in an institution. …

The Residential Segregation Of Baltimore's Jews: Restrictive Covenants Or Gentlemen's Agreement?, Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

At Loggerheads: The Supreme Court And Racial Equality In Public School Education After Missouri V. Jenkins, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

June 12th of 1995 marked a somber occasion in the annals of school desegregation litigation. On that day, the United States Supreme Court sent disturbing messages in its opinion in Missouri v. Jenkins. The Court's decision hinders achievement of the objective of school desegregation litigation—providing equal educational opportunities for African-American public school children—and detrimentally impacts other substantive areas of civil rights litigation. This article examines what I believe are several important general consequences of Jenkins's the impairment of a trial judge's discretionary equitable remedial powers; the Court's establishment of a new agenda that sacrifices the interests of African-American …

The Ghosts Of Homer Plessy, Rodney A. Smolla

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Remark: Brown V. Board: Revisited, Michael A. Middleton

Faculty Publications

[T]he Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools. What he needs is Education. What he must remember is that there is no magic, either in mixed schools or in segregated schools. A mixed school with poor and unsympathetic teachers, with hostile public opinion, and no teaching of truth concerning black folk, is bad. A segregated school with ignorant placeholders, inadequate equipment, poor salaries, and wretched housing, is equally bad. Other things being equal, the mixed school is the broader, more natural basis for the education of all youth. It gives wider contacts; it inspires greater self-confidence; and suppresses the …

History's Stories, Stephan Landsman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman

Racial Segregation In Canadian Legal History: Viola Desmond's Challenge, Nova Scotia, 1946, Constance Backhouse

Dalhousie Law Journal

Viola Desmond's courageous efforts to eliminate racial segregation are not as well known to Canadians in general. However, the legal response to Viola Desmond' s challenge provides one of the best examples of the historical role of law in sustaining racism in Canada.

No Time For Trumpets: Title Vii, Equality, And The Fin De Sièchle, D. Marvin Jones

Michigan Law Review

My essay seeks to examine the internal architecture of the discursive barrier - the wall - that the Supreme Court has built within the doctrinal framework of Title VII and concomitantly within the discourse of equality. To understand how the Court has erected this discursive wall, we must begin with history. Equality, while historically a vehicle for national identity and contemporaneously for modernist conceptions of justice, is synchronically and diachronically indeterminate. Equality is a deeply sedimented concept with not one objective meaning but successive levels of meaning built up over time. Each of those historic understandings is itself a unity …

Untenable, Unchristian, And Unconstitutional, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Professor Tobias provides an account of the ultimately successful 1960 efforts to desegregate the Petersburg, Virginia Public Library.

Pure Politics, Girardeau A. Spann

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this article considers the impact that judicial discretion has on the traditional model of judicial review, and that model's reliance on the Supreme Court as the primary guardian of minority interests. Part II argues that the interests of racial minorities can be better advanced through the ordinary political process than through the process of Supreme Court adjudication. Part Ill emphasizes that minority participation in Supreme Court proceedings cannot ultimately be avoided and, accordingly, suggests a political model of the Court that minorities can use in an effort to neutralize the Court's distortion of the political process. Part …

Race And The Police Power: 1890 To 1937, Richard A. Epstein

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Finding A "Manifest Imbalance": The Case For A Unified Statistical Test For Voluntary Affirmative Action Under Title Vii, David D. Meyer

Michigan Law Review

This Note analyzes the "manifest imbalance" standard developed in Weber and Johnson and the various approaches the lower courts have taken in trying to apply the test. Part I examines the Weber and Johnson opinions in some detail, and argues that the Court intended to permit affirmative action aimed at remedying the evident effects of past discrimination, regardless of whether the employer or society at large is to blame. Section I.A describes the diverging constitutional and statutory standards for evaluating voluntary affirmative action programs, and the policies behind the divergence. Sections I.B and I.C take a closer look at the …

The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation, David D. Meyer

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation by Charles A. Lofgren

The Peaceful Resolution Of Norfolk's Integration Crisis Of 1958-1959, Nancy Parker Ford

History Theses & Dissertations

In 1958 Norfolk experienced one of the most serious crises in its long history when six of its public secondary schools were closed by the governor. The closings were a result of Virginia's massive resistance program and forced 10,000 students to seek alternative education for five months or abandon their education entirely. Interviews with major participants in the crisis as well as investigation of newspaper accounts and editorials, personal papers of participants, city and School Board documents, and major works on the period reveal the factors involved in Norfolk's peaceful approach to integration. A comparison with the situation in Little …

The Naacp's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, Robert L. Carter

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 by Mark Tushnet

Private Enforcement And The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The first section of the Fair Housing Act declares that "[i]t is the policy of the United States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing throughout the United States." If the United States has been officially committed to providing for fair housing for the past 20 years, why is segregated housing still the prevailing norm throughout our nation? Why does discrimination still regularly occur when minority homeseekers venture into white areas? Why are the opportunities for living in stable, integrated neighborhoods only marginally better now than they were a generation ago in the days of Lyndon Johnson, Everett McKinley …

Beyond Busing: Inside The Challenge To Urban Segregation, Lawrence T. Gresser

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Beyond Busing: Inside the Challenge to Urban Segregation by Paul R. Dimond

The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy And School Desegregation, Mary Jo Newborn

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation by Jennifer L. Hochschild