Law and Race Commons^™

Ochoa, Big Ten Law Deans Pledge Support For Diversity Ahead Of Scotus Affirmative Action Ruling, The Indiana Lawyer

Christiana Ochoa (7/22-10/22 Acting; 11/2022-)

s the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hand down a decision that could fundamentally alter affirmative action, a group of law school deans — including Dean Christiana Ochoa of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law — has issued a statement affirming the deans’ commitment to diversity.

The group of 15 deans represent Big Ten law schools, including IU Maurer. In their statement — which IU Maurer posted to its official Facebook page — the deans say they are “joining together to affirm our commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion through legally permissible means, regardless of the outcome of …

The Pathological Whiteness Of Prosecution, India Thusi

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Criminal law scholarship suffers from a Whiteness problem. While scholars appear to be increasingly concerned with the racial disparities within the criminal legal system, the scholarship’s focus tends to be on the marginalized communities and the various discriminatory outcomes they experience as a result of the system. Scholars frequently mention racial bias in the criminal legal system and mass incarceration, the lexical descendent of overcriminalization. However, the scholarship often fails to consider the roles Whiteness and White supremacy play as the underlying logics and norms driving much of the bias in the system.

This Article examines the ways that Whiteness …

Does U.S. Federal Employment Law Now Cover Caste Discrimination Based On Untouchability?: If All Else Fails There Is The Possible Application Of Bostock V. Clayton County, Kevin D. Brown, Lalit Khandare, Annapurna Waughray, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Theodore M. Shaw

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article discusses the issue of whether a victim of caste discrimination based on untouchability can assert a claim of intentional employment discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981. This article contends that there are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is a form of religious discrimination under Title VII. The question of whether caste discrimination is a form of race or national origin discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981 depends upon how the courts apply these definitions to caste discrimination based on untouchability. There are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is recognized within the concept …

Pathological Racism, Chronic Racism & Targeted Universalism, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Race and law scholars almost uniformly prefer antisubordination to anticlassification as the best way to understand and adjudicate racism. In this short Essay, we explore whether the antisubordination framework is sufficiently capacious to meet our present demands for racial justice. We argue that the antisubordination approach relies on a particular conception of racism, which we call pathological racism, that limits its capacity for addressing the fundamental restructuring that racial justice requires. We suggest, in a manner that might be viewed as counterintuitive, that targeted universalist remedies might be more effective to address long term racial inequality but might also be …

Toward A Law And Politics Of Racial Solidarity, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The killings of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and others have occurred under different factual circumstances, in different states, at the hands of both state and private actors, and have engendered different levels of outrage on the basis of their perceived egregiousness. Collectively and cumulatively, they have forced Americans to, once again, wrestle with the visible manifestation of racism and structural inequality. This confrontation is not simply a function of the inability to avert one’s eyes when faced with incontrovertible evidence of evident inhumanity and abject degradation, though it is in part that. After all, how to justify the …

The Violence Of Nosy Questions, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay examines a little-studied aspect of police procedure: police officers’ unfettered power to ask questions of motorists. The questions officers ask after they have stopped a car can run the gamut from questions about the nature of the motorist’s travel plans to nosy personal questions. Such questions are often intrusive, and drivers report feeling degraded by having to answer them. This Essay argues that these questions should be regulated because giving officers complete control over what they ask motorists provides a significant space for racial discrimination in policing, creates resentment, and encourages minorities to distrust the police.

Evolution Of The Racial Identity Of Children Of Loving: Has Our Thinking About Race And Racial Issues Become Obsolete?, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Dead Canaries In The Coal Mines: The Symbolic Assailant Revisited, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The well-publicized deaths of several African-Americans—Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling among others—at the hands of police stem from tragic interactions predicated upon well-understood practices analyzed by police scholars since the 1950s. The symbolic assailant, a construct created by police scholar Jerome Skolnick in the mid-1960s to identify persons whose behavior and characteristics the police view as threatening, is especially relevant to contemporary policing. This Article explores the societal roots of the creation of a Black symbolic assailant in contemporary American policing.

The construction of African-American men as symbolic assailants is one of the most important factors characterizing police …

Race, Federalism, And Voting Rights, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Habermas, The Public Sphere, And The Creation Of A Racial Counterpublic, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Review Of Prigg V. Pennsylvania: Slavery, The Supreme Court, And The Ambivalent Constitution, Susan David Demaine

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 1842, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, resolving a dispute about fugitive slave rendition that had raged between the states for decades. H. Robert Baker’s analysis of the decision and the events that led up to it is the first book-length work to investigate Prigg and its place in American history. Baker traces the development of fugitive slave laws and recounts the heart-wrenching story that lies behind Prigg to shed light on the Supreme Court’s decision and the gradual clarification of American federalism.

The Hangman's Noose And The Lynch Mob: Hate Speech And The Jena Six, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Taking the hangman's noose hanging in Jena, Louisiana in 2006 as a starting point, this Article begins by placing the hanging of a noose in historical context. The Article then proceeds to explore contemporary manifestations of noose hanging in the workplace, in schools and other settings. The Article examines noose hangings that occurred around the country since the display in Jena to explore the social meaning of a noose. Also examined are media constructions of noose hanging and the perception that some Blacks targeted by noose hanging have had of these incidents. The article concludes with a victim based reasonable …