Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Reinventar La Esclavitud, Garantizar La Libertad: De Saint-Domingue A Santiago A Nueva Orleáns, 1803-1809, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

From French and Creole to Spanish, the domain of the Napoleonic Empire to the king of Spain, crossing the strait separating the French colony of Saint-Domingue and the Spanish colony of Cuba entailed a change of language and government. Some 18,000 people made that transition between the spring and summer of 1803 during the Revolutionary War in Saint-Dominque. Six years later, many crossed the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba to New Orleans and the recently acquired Louisiana Territory under the authority of a territorial governor and the United States Congress. What would these crossings lead to for those who had …

Symposium: Defining Race: Colorblind Diversity: The Changing Significance Of "Race" In The Post-Bakke Era, Bridgette Baldwin

Faculty Scholarship

In 1954, fifty-eight years after the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the Supreme Court was afforded another opportunity to reverse the “separate but equal doctrine” in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Brown I). Brown I was a consolidation of five civil rights cases from the District of Columbia, Delaware, Kansas, Virginia, and South Carolina that attempted to change race relations in America by affording African Americans a piece of the pie. A few other cases soon followed Brown I. In 1963, Goss v. Board of Education of Knoxville proclaimed that any program that structurally appeared to maintain segregation would …

Introduction: Challenging The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Deborah N. Archer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Introduction [Comments], Andrew Scherer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Constitutionality Of State And Local Laws Targeting Immigrants, Karla M. Mckanders

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This paper addresses current immigration issues across the country, specifically in Arkansas, and how lawyers can seek to achieve social justice for immigrants. There currently has been a lot of activity and discussion surrounding state and local laws targeting immigrants. Central to this discussion has been whether states and localities are constitutionally permitted to enact immigration laws and whether state and local actions upset the current immigration system and how, if at all, their actions affect documented and undocumented immigrants' rights. When states and localities pass immigration related laws, the main concern is whether federal, state or local governments are …

Postracial Discrimination, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Claims of racial injustice can be challenged by arguing that the culture makes it possible for minorities to compete with whites on a level playing field. Under this reasoning, racial disparities that continue to inhere in the allocation of societal benefits and burdens must be caused by the attributes of individual minority group members themselves, rather than by any invidious consideration of their race. The election of President Obama now gives this argument more apparent plausibility than it has had in the past. Indeed, if one were inclined to preserve the nation’s tradition of privileging white interests over the interests …

"We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone.", Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This essay is based on remarks at the 2008 teaching conference of the Society of American Law Teachers, on the theme Teaching for Social Change When You're Not Preaching to the Choir. It reflects on my experience as a liberal/progressive teaching constitutional law in a conservative southern state. It also explores the importance of not just training students in the skills of a junior lawyer but also preparing them for their long-term obligations as citizens and members of the bar.

If It Is Broken, Then Fix It: Needed Reforms To Employment Discrimination Law: 2009 Annual Meeting Of The Association Of American Law Schools Section On Employment Discrimination Law, Melissa Hart, Minna Kotkin, Roberto Corrada, Deborah Widiss

Publications

No abstract provided.

Constraining Public Employee Speech: Government's Control Of Its Workers' Speech To Protect Its Own Expression, Helen Norton

Publications

This Article identifies a key doctrinal shift in courts' treatment of public employees' First Amendment claims--a shift that imperils the public's interest in transparent government as well as the free speech rights of more than twenty million government workers. In the past, courts interpreted the First Amendment to permit governmental discipline of public employee speech on matters of public interest only when such speech undermined the government employer's interest in efficiently providing public services. In contrast, courts now increasingly focus on--and defer to--government's claim to control its workers' expression to protect its own speech.

More specifically, courts increasingly permit government …

Created In Its Image: The Race Analogy, Gay Identity, And Gay Litigation In The 1950s-1970s, Craig J. Konnoth

Publications

Existing accounts of early gay rights litigation largely focus on how the suppression and liberation of gay identity affected early activism. This Note helps complicate these dynamics, arguing that gay identity was not just suppressed and then liberated, but substantially transformed by activist efforts during this period, and that this transformation fundamentally affected the nature of gay activism. Gay organizers in the 1950s and 1960s moved from avoiding identity-based claims to analogizing gays to African-Americans. By transforming themselves in the image of a successful black civil rights minority, activists attempted to win over skeptical courts in a period when equal …

Procedural Extremism: The Supreme Court's 2008-2009 Labor And Employment Cases, Melissa Hart

Publications

It has become nearly a commonplace to say that the Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts is a court of “incrementalism.” The 2008 Term, however, featured several opinions that showcase the procedural extremism of the current conservative majority. In a series of sharply divided decisions, the Court re-shaped the law that governs the workplace - or more specifically the law that governs whether and how employees will be permitted access to the courts to litigate workplace disputes. At least as important as the Court’s changes to the substantive legal standards are the procedural hurdles the five …

Why The United States Supreme Court Got Some [But Not A Lot] Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel Analysis Right, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Cedaw, Compliance, And Custom: Human Rights Enforcement In Sub-Saharan Africa, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Winnter, Best Appellate Brief In The 2009 Native American Law Student Association Moot Court Competition, Alex Hagen, J.R. Laplante

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Richard Delgado And The Politics Of Citation, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

Twenty-five years ago, Professor Richard Delgado published The Imperial Scholar. The article asserted that a group of white scholars dominated the field of civil rights scholarship to the exclusion of minority scholars. It created a firestorm of sorts with what one critic called a "serious charge of invidious racism on the part of respected legal scholars." Professor Derrick Bell described the piece as "an intellectual hand grenade, tossed over the wall of the establishment as a form of academic protest." Whether as firestorm or grenade, this foundational piece had a tremendous impact on the legal landscape. This brief essay examines …

Democratizing The Courts: How An Amicus Brief Helped Organize The Asian American Community To Support Marriage Equality, Robert S. Chang, Karin Wang

Faculty Articles

In this essay, the authors offer an alternative rationale for amicus practice. This rationale emerges from thier experience working on a brief in support of marriage equality that sixty-three Asian American organizations endorsed. They found that an amicus brief can be an effective tool to engage and educate community-based organizations and their constituencies, thereby helping to advance social justice issues. Their story also illustrates how amicus practice can be used to organize communities around a legal issue and to democratize the courts. In this way, even if the effect of amicus briefs on litigation outcomes may be marginal, the process …

Critical Error: Courts’ Refusal To Recognize Intentional Race Discrimination Findings As Constitutional Facts, Bryan Adamson

Faculty Articles

Critical Error: Courts’ Refusal To Recognize Intentional Race Discrimination Findings as Constitutional Facts raises a novel double standard: while fact-specific trial court findings of actual malice are reviewed under the “independent judgment” standard (a wholesale re-weighting of the trial court record and decision) on appeal, intentional race discrimination findings are reviewed under the far more deferential Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52 clear error standard. Both legal concepts are arrived at through assessing state-of-mind determinations; both directly trigger constitutional proscriptions. Only actual malice, however, is classified as a constitutional fact, thus taking it out of the more deferential standard of …

Knocked Down Again: An East L.A. Story On The Geography Of Color And Colors, Steven W. Bender

Faculty Articles

The article discusses the history of struggle of Latin Americans and the legacy of gang violence in East Los Angeles, California. The author states that the positive thing about the place is the closeness of the community and families. However, the 2000 Census states that ninety-seven percent of the city's population is Latin American with about a quarter living below poverty line. Moreover, sociologists consider gang warfare as a defense of turf marked by defined geographic boundaries.

Secrecy And Democratic Decisions, Mark A. Chinen

Faculty Articles

Secrecy to protect intelligence sources and methods appears often in the nation's discourse about controversial national security matters. Often it is asked whether such secrecy is consistent with the nation's democratic principles and processes. This article argues such principles and processes provide a framework through which we try to answer questions about secrecy and indeed legitimate them, but are often too broad to provide definitive guidance in specific cases. At the same time, the sources and methods argument itself is overbroad because of the nature of the sources and methods themselves; the tentative nature of intelligence assessments derived from those …

Liberal Mccarthyism And The Origins Of Critical Race Theory, Richard Delgado

Faculty Articles

The article discusses the emergence of liberal McCarthyism and the origins of critical race theory in the U.S. It reviews the conflicting stories from Harvard Law School in Massachusetts and the University of California in Berkeley and Los Angeles about critical race theory. The article examines the role of radical professors Kingman Brewster, James Conant, Clark Kerr and Albert Bowker in McCarthyism. The author relates how professors David Trubek, Richard Abel, Staughton Lynd and Anthony Platt lost their job due to liberal McCarthyism.

The Anabaptist Conscience And Religious Exemption To Jury Service, Michael Hatfield

Articles

While the concern over religiously devout Americans who wish to serve on juries is a serious one, a potential juror dismissed from service over his or her religiosity suffers a real but relatively abstract damage. The punishment is being sent home when they want to stay.

This Article examines a different issue with more severe consequences: religiously devout citizens who risk being jailed for refusing to serve on a jury. Rather than asking whether Jesus could serve on a jury, this Article addresses whether we should force Jesus to serve if he said God told him not to. More specifically, …

An Open Letter From Heaven To Barack Obama, F. Michael Higginbotham

All Faculty Scholarship

Since the passing of A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. in 1998, many have wondered what the award winning author, longest-serving black federal judge, first black to head a federal regulatory agency, recipient of the Spingarn Medal and the Congressional Medal of Freedom, and author of the famous “Open Letter to Clarence Thomas” would think of the state of race relations today. Appointed to the Federal Trade Commission in 1962, Higginbotham served in several powerful federal positions including Vice-Chairman of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, member of the first wiretap surveillance court, and chief judge of a …

Foreword Symposium: Having It Our Way: Women In Maryland's Workplace Circa 2027, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

On November 14, 2007, the University of Baltimore School of Law, the University of Maryland School of Law and the Women's Law Center of Maryland co-sponsored a symposium entitled "Having it Our Way: Women in Maryland's Workplace Circa 2027." The insightful collection of papers in this volume of the University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class represents the work of employment law scholars, public policy specialists, and activists who presented on the current state of Maryland employment law and discussed Maryland's future. This distinguished group of experts and scholars present several themes: the hope of new …

Freedom Of Association, The Communist Party, And The Hollywood Ten: The Forgotten First Amendment Legacy Of Charles Hamilton Houston, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

Charles Hamilton Houston, the most important civil rights lawyer of the first half of the 20th century who developed the legal strategy in Brown v. Board of Education, ended his fabulous legal career representing a group of Hollywood screen writers known as the Hollywood Ten. See Lawson and Trumbo v. United States, 176 F.2d 49 (D.C. App.1949). In that case convictions and jail sentences were upheld for the defendants' failure to answer questions from the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) about their views on communism and whether or not each was members of the Communist Party. The matters in …

The Disabled Lawyers Have Arrived; Have They Been Welcomed With Open Arms Into The Profession? An Empirical Study Of The Disabled Lawyer, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article proceeds in seven parts. Part I briefly outlines the ADA's position on reasonable accommodations. Part II addresses how law firms are reacting and responding to the fact that they employ lawyers with mood disorders, such as depression or bipolar disorder, attorneys with learning disabilities, and individuals with alcohol or drug addiction. What disabilities are most often represented? Are lawyers with disabilities apt to receive work modifications to accommodate their disability? Are attorneys with mental illness provided with less stressful case assignments? Are lawyers with substance use disorders and alcohol or drug addiction assigned co-counsel to monitor or offer …

The Women's Right To Participate In The Game Of Baseball, David Fintz

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that women have historically been excluded from participating in baseball due to gender discrimination, which violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX. It critiques the narrow interpretation of state action in cases like Magill v. Avonworth Baseball Conference and advocates for broadening this doctrine to include youth organizations. The author proposes legal reforms, such as amending Little League charters, to ensure girls' inclusion in baseball programs. By addressing these legal barriers, the article suggests that girls can achieve greater opportunities in baseball, following the success of female athletes in other sports.

The Constitutional Future Of Race-Neutral Efforts To Promote Diversity And Avoid Racial Isolation In Our Elementary And Secondary Schools, Kimberly J. Robinson

Law Faculty Publications

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 that the racial classifications used by school districts in Seattle and Louisville to create diverse schools were unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy provided the deciding vote but also noted that school districts could pursue diversity and avoid racial isolation through race-neutral alternatives. He asserted that it was unlikely that race-neutral alternatives would be subject to strict scrutiny but articulated no rationale for this assertion. This Article argues that, after Parents Involved, school districts will focus on race-neutral efforts to create diverse schools …

From Ballots To Bullets: District Of Columbia V. Heller And The New Civil Rights, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This article posits that the Supreme Court's recent Second Amendment ruling District of Columbia v. Heller is a victory for civil rights, but not in the sense that most activists from the 1960s would recognize. Rather than a product of mid-century legal liberalism, Heller marks the culmination of almost forty years of coalition-based popular constitutionalism aimed at transforming the individual right to bear arms and the common law right to "employ deadly force in self-defense" into new civil rights. The implications of this are potentially great. By declaring the right to use deadly force in self-defense an "essential" right, the …

The Violent Bear It Away: Emmett Till & The Modernization Of Law Enforcement In Mississippi, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

Few racially motivated crimes have left a more lasting imprint on American memory than the death of Emmett Till. Yet, even as Till's murder in Mississippi in 1955 has come to be remembered as a catalyst for the civil rights movement, it contributed to something else as well. Precisely because it came on the heels of the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Till's death convinced Mississippi Governor James P. Coleman that certain aspects of the state's handling of racial matters had to change. Afraid that popular outrage over racial violence might encourage federal intervention in …

"Neutral" Principles: Rethinking The Legal History Of Civil Rights, 1934-1964, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper recovers Columbia Law Professor Herbert Wechsler's constitutional involvement in the long civilrights movement. Derided for criticizing Brown v. Board of Education in 1959, Wechsler first became involved in civil rights litigation in the 1930s, continued to be interested in civil rights issues in the 1940s, and argued one of the most important civil rights cases to come before the Supreme Court in the 1960s. His critique of Brown, this article maintains, derived not from a disinterest in the black struggle but from a larger conviction that racial reform should be process rather than rights-based. By recovering Wechsler's approach, …