Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Unsung Hero: The Life Of A Foot Soldier For Justice, Valerie M. Jensen

William Mitchell Law Review

Review of Frederick L. McGhee: A Life on the Color Line, 1861-1912. By Paul D. Nelson. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002. 234 pages. $29.95

A Legacy Of Public Law 280: Comparing And Contrasting Minnesota’S New Rule For The Recognition Of Tribal Court Judgments With The Recent Arizona Rule, Kevin K. Washburn, Chloe Thompson

William Mitchell Law Review

Tribal court dockets across the country have been growing steadily, and tribal courts are becoming an important part of the judicial fabric of the United States. To acknowledge this reality, state courts and legislatures across the United States have begun to address the important issues of how and whether to recognize tribal court judgments in state courts. The Minnesota Supreme Court adopted a rule that took effect in January of 2004 that provides guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of tribal court orders and judgments. The Minnesota Supreme Court Rule on the Recognition and Enforcement of Tribal Court Orders and …

Brown As Icon, Steven L. Winter

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Affirmative Action, Wendy B. Scott

Journal Articles

The author served as the moderator of a panel at the Symposium entitled Twenty-Five Years: The Future of Affirmative Action. In this Commentary, she reviews articles by Professors Kevin Brown, Leland Ware, and John Valery Mute appearing elsewhere in this Issue.

Querying Lawrence, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 2003, the Supreme Court in the landmark decision Lawrence v. Texas found a Texas law, banning homosexual, but not heterosexual, sodomy to be unconstitutional. Thus, Lawrence ended the Bowers era in which morality was deemed to be a justification for discrimination against gays and lesbians. While the decision did bring to United States Constitutional analysis the radical idea that gays and lesbians are people too, it stopped short of addressing the real problem the case presents--the existence of a second-class citizenry. This Article examines the Lawrence decision in light of both the international, regional, and foreign jurisprudence and the …

O Say, Can You See: Free Expression By The Light Of Fiery Crosses, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article presents a comprehensive, context-based theory which both places cross burning in its proper doctrinal framework and recognizes the history of cross burning as one of Ku Klux Klan-inspired terrorism directed at African Americans. The author prefaces critical commentary on the Supreme Court's decision in Virginia v. Black with analysis of the full landscape of cross burning cases including another issue to which others have paid little attention - the ways in which state courts have negotiated First Amendment challenges to cross burning statutes. Thoroughly examining cross burning from each of these perspectives, the Article argues that cross burning …

The Road Not Taken In Brown: Recognizing The Dual Harm Of Segregation, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Gay Marriage And The Black Community, A Policy Maker’S Perspective: Interview With State Senator Dianne Wilkerson, Castellano Turner

Trotter Review

A vocal supporter of gay marriage, Senator Dianne Wilkerson explains in this interview that her support stems from her own reality as a Black person, a child of the Civil Rights movement, and her personal experiences with discrimination stemming from her skin color. As a policy maker, Wilkerson asserts her unwillingness to subject other human beings to the same treatment that she has been subjected to, because of their sexual orientation.

To Be Brown In Brazil: Education And Segregation Latin American Style Colloquium - Relearning Brown: Applying The Lessons Of Brown To The Challenges Of The Twenty-First Century, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

As a scholar who studies civil rights movements from a comparative perspective, the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education1 decision causes me to query the power of Brown as a symbol of equality outside of the United States. Because there is a larger community of African descendants living in Latin America and the Caribbean than there is in the United States, examining the role of Brown in Latin America and the Caribbean is particularly worthwhile. Furthermore, focusing on the Latin American and Caribbean contexts is also relevant due to the significant influence of the …

Meade V. Dennistone: The Naacp's Test Case To "...Sue Jim Crow Out Of Maryland With The Fourteenth Amendment.", Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

In 1936, Edmond D. Meade, an African-American pastor at Israel Baptist Church in Baltimore, contracted to purchase a home in an almost exclusively white block of Baltimore City. Meade’s purchase was followed by a suit by the white residents to block the use of the home by the new buyers. This work examines the legacy of Meade v. Dennistone, the effect of the decision on “free market forces” and concludes by considering the impact of the decision – and the community response – on the final judicial rejection of the “separate but equal” treatment of the races.

'I Do' Kiss And Tell: The Subversive Potential Of Non-Normative Sexual Expression From Within Cultural Paradigms, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Using a comparative analysis of the equality movements of sexual minorities in Canada and India the author identifies a symbiosis between the subversive benefits of a deconstructionist approach to equality and the practical achievements to be gained by a rights-based model of social justice. The analysis is conducted through an examination of the role that the expression of same-sex desire plays in the legal and social positions of sexual minorities in Canada and India. The author argues that the acquisition of rights can provide sexual minorities with greater access to dominant cultural rituals and that such access provides opportunities to …

Degrees Of Freedom: Building Citizenship In The Shadow Of Slavery, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

By seeing events in the past as part of a dynamically evolving system with a large, but not indefinite, number of degrees of freedom, we can turn our attention to the multiple possibilities for change, and to the ways in which societies that are initially similarly situated may go on to diverge very sharply. Thus it is, I will argue, with societies in the 19th century that faced the challenge of building citizenship on the ruins of slavery.

Derechos Y Honra Públicos: Louis Martinet, Plessy Contra Ferguson Y El Acceso A La Ley En Luisiana, 1888-1917, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

Rebecca J. Scott explores the historical context of Plessy v. Ferguson to two ends. First, Scott argues that that the historical situation, including everyday legal practice, helps us understand the source of the arguments in the case. In particular, the plaintiffs based their understanding of their rights in the French revolution, the Louisiana Constitution, and their experience exercising their rights through notaries. Second, Scott argues that the plaintiffs and defendants sought to frame the case with different rights. For the plaintiffs, the issue with the Separate Car Act was "public rights" and "the dignity of citizenship." The defendants instead framed …

Playing With Work: Must "Work" Be Treated As A "Major Life Activity" For Purposes Of The Americans With Disability Act?, Daniel A. Mcmillan

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note explores the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 (“ADA”) and how two Supreme Court decisions, Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc. and Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky v. Williams, could ultimately restrict the Act's reach. The ADA protects disabled individuals from discrimination in employment, in access to services by both private and public entities, and in access to telecommunications. The Act defines a disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual.” According to the Note, under traditional agency regulations and case law from the lower courts “work” …

The Conception Of Brown, Robert L. Carter

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article discusses the pervasive racism that continues to exist in the United States and examines the critical role that the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education played in transforming race relations. The Article stresses the need to find a way to rid the country of race and color differentiation and emphasizes the deleterious effect that segregated school systems have on black school childrens ability to learn. The Article examines how Brown came about and states that the Court's rejection of Plessy v. Ferguson is what makes the case so significant. The Article discusses some of the important …

Austria's Pre-War Brown V. Board Of Education, Maria L. Marcus

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article discusses the Austrian Constitutional Court's 1931 decision in which it held that the University of Vienna's regulations dividing students into ethnically based groups was unconstitutional. The article compares the similarities and differences between this case and later critical American equal opportunity cases including Brown v. Board of Education and suggests that an understanding of the current racial challenges is most effective by examining both global and American perspectives. This article explores the balance between maintaining universities autonomy and ensuring that racism does not foster in an institution free from judicial intervention. In discussing two cases, this article points …

"Press Prudence," Nazi Student Orders, And Jim Crow, Louis H. Pollak

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article discusses the 1931 decision of the Austrian Constitutional Court in which it was held that rules promulgated by the University of Vienna, which aimed to separate the student body into four ethnically-defined nations, were invalid. The Article notes the striking similarities of the case to Brown v. Board of Education and other American equal protection education cases. In examining the decision the article states that in declining to uphold an equivalent to the 'separate but equal' doctrine, the Austrian justices did for Austrian law what Plessy had failed to do for US law thirty five years before. The …

Every Day Is A Good Day For A Judge To Lay Down His Professional Life For Justice , Jack B. Weinstein

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article discusses the notion that a judge’s obligation to obey precedent should, if circumstances require, be overridden in an effort to oppose gross injustices and violations. Even in the face of critisicim and outrage, judges, because of their intimate knowledge of the system and unique vantage point, have a duty to speak out against any law that they find morally repugnant and to expose injustices wherever they can. The article analyses the various actions that judges may take to avoid enforcing laws that they believe to be fundamentally unjust, including the option of resignation and the power of lower …

Bolling Alone, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Under the doctrine of reverse incorporation, generally identified with the Supreme Court's decision in Bolling v. Sharpe, equal protection binds the federal government even though the Equal Protection Clause by its terms is addressed only to states. Since Bolling, however, the courts have almost never granted relief to litigants claiming unconstitutional racial discrimination by the federal government. Courts have periodically found unconstitutional federal discrimination on nonracial grounds such as sex and alienage, and reverse incorporation has also limited the scope of affirmative action. But in the presumed core area of preventing federal discrimination against racial minorities, Boiling has virtually no …

Critical Race Histories: In And Out, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

Insider critiques of CRT also require critical assessment. Recent internal critics complain that racial identity discourse, including multidimensionality theory, marginalizes more important attention to material, class, or economic issues. If their claim holds true, the material harm critics serve a vital purpose: because racial injustice causes and interacts with economic deprivation, any progressive racial justice movement should interrogate class and economic inequality concems. Nevertheless, the analysis of the material harm critics suffers because it dichotomizes class and multidimensionality. Although these critics bifurcate multiplicity and class analysis, multiplicity theories relate to class analysis in two important respects. First, poverty has multidimensional …

Natural Law And The Regulation Of Sexuality: A Critique, Dr. Brent L. Pickett

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

I will argue that the natural-law understanding of sexuality, and its application to the law, is deeply flawed, in regards to homosexuality and sodomy. I begin by laying out some of the foundations of the natural law position. Central to the position is an account of human goods that are seen as good in themselves, and hence as rational bases for choice and human action. In regards to sexuality, the two most important goods, at least from the natural law perspective, are those of marriage and personal integration. I argue that a real appreciation of the role of these two …

Panel Three: Introduction, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

I think some of my colleagues will ask questions about these cases, to ask who is a man or woman, but if the question is legally, what is male or female, and if you think about the questions that you've read, say, in common law out of the Supreme Court – and I'll just talk about discrimination cases, although I think you can talk about other ones, too – think about the sex discrimination cases. The struggle is about, what is discrimination, but the Court in Craig v. Born is talking about different control restrictions for men and women. Or …

Privacy On The Open Road, Dorothy J. Glancy

Faculty Publications

The discussion begins by describing some of the surveillance techniques and technologies that can affect the privacy of travelers along public roadways. Then the article turns to examine some of the privacy interests of people on the open road. The next part considers some of the many types of legal rights that protect the privacy of people on public roads or highways. The article concludes by addressing the principle that people on the open road have important rights to freedom from intrusions and interferences with their on-the-road activities.

Affirmative Action And Colorblindness From The Original Position, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, the author explores Grutter v. Bollinger from the vantage point of the colorblindness principle. He posits that the Grutter decision is noteworthy for two reasons. First, the Court rejected the argument that the Constitution is colorblind and that the classifications based on race are per se unconstitutional. Second, the Court explicitly recognized that racial categorizations are not all morally equivalent. The author uses classical liberalism as a heuristic for exploring whether the colorblindness argument is necessarily a moral imperative. He ultimately concludes that the Court adopted the correct approach in Grutter in rejecting the allure of the …

Precursors Of Rosa Parks: Maryland Transportation Cases Between The Civil War And The Beginning Of World War I, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

When Rosa Parks refused to move to a seat in the back of the bus in Montgomery, it sparked the boycott and was a critical event in the Civil Rights movement. But Mrs. Parks was the culmination of a long tradition of resistance to segregation. Many teachers, ministers, businessmen and ordinary citizens refused to accept second class treatment on the railways and waterways of Maryland between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I, and took their protest to the courts. Facing hostile state courts after the Civil War, African-American plaintiffs needed to access the …

Brown At 50: Reconstructing Brown'S Promise, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

Today the measure of equal education for black children often is the racial composition of the school population rather than the quality of education received. Increasingly educational achievement for children of all races is tied to socioeconomic status. Since whites as a group are more affluent than non-whites, race and class tend to get conflated leaving uninformed people to conclude that racial integration alone is the measure of equal educational opportunities for black and other non-white children. Legal scholars writing about equal educational opportunities tend to focus either on ways to achieve racial integration or funding equality. Few scholars explore …

Race And Equality Across The Law School Curriculum: The Law Of Tax Exemption, David A. Brennen

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

What is the relevance of race to tax law? The race issues are apparent when one studies a subject like constitutional law. The Constitution concerns itself explicitly with such matters as defining rights of citizenship, allocating powers of government, and determining rights with respect to property. Given the history of our country -- with slavery followed by periods of de jure and de facto racial discrimination -- these constitutional law matters obviously must have racial dimensions.

Tax law, however, does not generally concern itself explicitly with matters of race. Tax law is often thought of as completely race neutral in …

Games Ceos Play And Interest Convergence Theory: Why Diversity Lags In America’S Boardrooms And What To Do About It, Steven A. Ramirez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Furthering American Freedom: Civil Rights & The Thirteenth Amendment, Alexander Tsesis

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Abstract: This Article discusses why the Thirteenth Amendment's reach extends beyond the institution of slavery and has important implications for civil liberties. The Amendment-in providing a mechanism to protect fundamental rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence and Preamble to the Constitution-not only ended slavery, but also created a substantive assurance of freedom. This Article reviews Thirteenth Amendment jurisprudence and shows that, despite substantial narrowing after its adoption, the Amendment is a source of sweeping constitutional power for enacting federal civil rights legislation. The Article also distinguishes congressional power under the Thirteenth Amendment from that under the Fourteenth Amendment and …

Bearing The Costs Of Racial Inequality: Brown And The Myth Of The Equality/Efficiency Trade-Off, Steven A. Ramirez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.