Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Things Invisible To See: State Action & Private Property, Joseph William Singer, Isaac Saidel-Goley

Texas A&M Law Review

This Article revisits the state action doctrine, a judicial invention that shields “private” or “non-governmental” discrimination from constitutional scrutiny. Traditionally, this doctrine has applied to discrimination even in places of public accommodation, like restaurants, hotels, and grocery stores. Born of overt racial discrimination, the doctrine has inflicted substantial injustice throughout its inglorious history, and courts have continuously struggled in vain to coherently apply the doctrine. Yet, the United States Supreme Court has not fully insulated “private” or “horizontal” relations among persons from constitutional scrutiny. The cases in which it has applied constitutional norms to non-governmental actors should be celebrated rather …

Combating Discrimination Against The Formerly Incarcerated In The Labor Market, Ifeoma Ajunwa, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Northwestern University Law Review

Both discrimination by private employers and governmental restrictions in the form of statutes that prohibit professional licensing serve to exclude the formerly incarcerated from much of the labor market. This Essay explores and analyzes potential legislative and contractual means for removing these barriers to labor market participation by the formerly incarcerated. First, as a means of addressing discrimination by the state, Part I of this Essay explores the ways in which the adoption of racial impact statements—which mandate that legislators consider statistical analyses of the potential impact their proposed legislation may have on racial and ethnic groups prior to enacting …

Equal Protection And White Supremacy, Paul Butler

Northwestern University Law Review

The project of using social science to help win equal protection claims is doomed to fail if its premise is that the Supreme Court post-McCleskey just needs more or better evidence of racial discrimination. Everyone—including the Justices of the Court—already knows that racial discrimination is endemic in the criminal justice system. Social science does help us to understand the role of white supremacy in U.S. police and punishment practices. Social science also can help us understand how to move people to resist, and can inform our imagination of the transformation needed for equal justice under the law.

50 Years Later—The State Of Civil Rights And Opportunity In America, Catherine E. Lhamon

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

Abridged Transcript, The Summit for Civil Rights, November 9, 2017

The Summit For Civil Rights: Mission, Structure, And Initial Outcomes, Myron Orfield, William Stancil

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever?, Elizabeth K. Julian

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Legislation Committee Charge, Legislation Committee Summit For Civil Rights

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Litigation Committee Charge, Litigation Committee Summit For Civil Rights

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Does The African American Need Separate Charter Schools?, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Steven Nelson, Matt Kronzer

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

The Persistence Of Segregation In The 21st Century, Paul A. Jargowsky

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Cashing In On Convicts: Privatization, Punishment, And The People, Laura I. Appleman

Utah Law Review

For-profit prisons, jails, and alternative corrections present a disturbing commodification of the criminal justice system. Though part of a modern trend, privatized corrections has well-established roots traceable to slavery, Jim Crow, and current racially-based inequities. This monetizing of the physical incarceration and regulation of human bodies has had deleterious effects on offenders, communities, and the proper functioning of punishment in our society. Criminal justice privatization severs an essential link between the people and criminal punishment. When we remove the imposition of punishment from the people and delegate it to private actors, we sacrifice the core criminal justice values of expressive, …

Accelerated Civil Rights Settlements In The Shadow Of Section 1983, Katherine A. Macfarlane

Utah Law Review

The families of Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott have obtained multimillion dollar settlements from the cities in which their family members lost their lives. This Article identifies and labels these settlements as a legal response unique to high-profile policeinvolved deaths: accelerated civil rights settlement. It defines accelerated civil rights settlement as a resolution strategy that uses the threat of 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 litigation rather than litigation itself to compensate police-involved shooting victims’ family members. This Article explains how accelerated civil rights settlement involves no complaint or case—nothing is filed. Also, the goal of accelerated civil …

"Our Taxes Are Too Damn High": Institutional Racism, Property Tax Assessment, And The Fair Housing Act, Bernadette Atuahene

Northwestern University Law Review

To prevent inflated property tax bills, the Michigan Constitution prohibits property tax assessments from exceeding 50% of a property’s market value. Between 2009 and 2015, the City of Detroit assessed 55%–85% of its residential properties in violation of the Michigan Constitution, and these unconstitutional assessments have had dire consequences. Between 2011 and 2015, one in four Detroit properties have been foreclosed upon for nonpayment of illegally inflated property taxes. In addition to Detroit, the other two cities in Michigan’s Wayne County where African-Americans comprise 70% or more of the population—Highland Park and Inkster—have similarly experienced systemic unconstitutional assessments and unprecedented …

Diversity Entitlement: Does Diversity-Benefits Ideology Undermine Inclusion?, Kyneshawau Hurd, Victoria C. Plaut

Northwestern University Law Review

Ideologies are most successful (or most dangerous) when they become common-sense—when they become widely accepted, taken-for-granted truths—because these truths subsequently provide implicit guidelines and expectations about what is moral, legitimate, and necessary in our society. In Regents of University of California v. Bakke, the Court, without a majority opinion, considered and dismissed all but one of several “common-sense” rationales for affirmative action in admissions. While eschewing rationales that focused on addressing discrimination and underrepresentation, the Court found that allowing all students to obtain the educational benefits that flow from diversity was a compelling rationale—essential, even, for a quality education. …

Mccleskey V. Kemp: Field Notes From 1977-1991, John Charles Boger

Northwestern University Law Review

The litigation campaign that led to McCleskey v. Kemp did not begin as an anti-death-penalty effort. It grew in soil long washed in the blood of African-Americans, lynched or executed following rude semblances of trials and hasty appeals, which had prompted the NAACP from its very founding to demand “simple justice” in individual criminal cases. When the Warren Court signaled, in the early 1960s, that it might be open to reflection on broader patterns of racial discrimination in capital sentencing, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) began to gather empirical evidence and craft appropriate constitutional responses. As …

Eyes Wide Open: What Social Science Can Tell Us About The Supreme Court's Use Of Social Science, Jonathan P. Feingold, Evelyn R. Carter

Northwestern University Law Review

The Northwestern University Law Review’s 2017 Symposium asked whether McCleskey v. Kemp closed the door on social science’s ability to meaningfully contribute to equal protection deliberations. This inquiry is understandable; McCleskey is widely understood to have rendered statistical racial disparities doctrinally irrelevant in the equal protection context. We suggest, however, that this account overstates McCleskey and its doctrinal impact. Roughly fifteen years after McCleskey, Chief Justice William Rehnquist—himself part of the McCleskey majority—invoked admissions data to support his conclusion that the University of Michigan Law School unconstitutionally discriminated against white applicants.

Chief Justice Rehnquist’s disparate treatment of statistical …

Tipped Scales: A Look At The Ever-Growing Imbalance Of Power Protecting Religiously Motivated Conduct, Why That's Bad, And How To Stop It, Jeff Nelson

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note examines the current state of the law that seemingly allows individuals to harm and discriminate against others on the basis of their protected religious beliefs. This Note also explores how such a result has been made possible and how it may be stymied by judicial and legislative action. Section II discusses a short history of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause leading up to Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, and also includes an examination of both the real and possible harmful effects of RFRAs, current reactions to the application of these laws domestically, and interesting parallels internationally. Section III …

A Kentucky Town Votes Against A Culture War Rematch, Campbell Robertson

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Caudill To Face Davis This November, The Morehead News

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Man Denied Marriage License By Kim Davis Loses Primary Bid, Will Not Face Her In Fall, Will Wright

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Gay Man Denied Marriage License By Kim Davis Loses Bid To Challenge Her For Kentucky County Clerkship, Mahita Gajanan

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Amy Schumer, Susan Sarandon Give Cqsh To Kim Davis' Would-Be Opponent, Andrew Wlfoson

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Fred T. Korematsu Center For Law And Equality As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellee And For Affirmance, Fred T. Korematsu Center For Law And Equality

Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality

Fair Housing Center of Washington v. Breier-Scheetz

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Kim Davis Denied His Marriage License. Will Voters Let Him Try To Oust Her?, Will Wright

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Leveraging Social Science Expertise In Immigration Policymaking, Ming H. Chen

NULR Online

The longstanding uncertainty about how policymakers should grapple with social science demonstrating racism persists in the modern administrative state. This Essay examines the uses and misuses of social science and expertise in immigration policymaking. More specifically, it highlights three immigration policies that dismiss social scientific findings and expertise as part of presidential and agency decision-making: border control, crime control, and extreme vetting of refugees to prevent terrorism. The Essay claims that these rejections of expertise undermine both substantive and procedural protections for immigrants and undermine important functions of the administrative state as a curb on irrationality in policymaking. It concludes …

Quebec V A And Taypotat: Unpacking The Supreme Court’S Latest Decisions On Section 15 Of The Charter, Alicja Puchta

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The Supreme Court of Canada’s articulation for the test for discrimination under section 15 of the Charter has undergone numerous permutations over the past twenty-five years. The Supreme Court introduced its latest round of changes in its 2013 decision in Québec (Attorney General) v A and its 2015 decision in Kahkewistahaw First Nation v Taypotat. Together, these two decisions clarified that the appropriate approach to section 15 was not one focused strictly on stereotype and prejudice, but rather on all contextual factors that may inform whether an impugned law violates the norm of substantive equality. This paper critically analyzes the …

Death In America Under Color Of Law: Our Long, Inglorious Experience With Capital Punishment, Rob Warden, Daniel Lennard

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

The Concept Of “Unusual Punishments” In Anglo-American Law: The Death Penalty As Arbitrary, Discriminatory, And Cruel And Unusual, John D. Bessler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, like the English Bill of Rights before it, safeguards against the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments.” To better understand the meaning of that provision, this Article explores the concept of “unusual punishments” and its opposite, “usual punishments.” In particular, this Article traces the use of the “usual” and “unusual” punishments terminology in Anglo-American sources to shed new light on the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. The Article surveys historical references to “usual” and “unusual” punishments in early English and American texts, then analyzes the development of American constitutional law as …

Litigating Trauma As Disability In American Schools, Taylor N. Mullaney

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.