Law and Race Commons^™

History's Stories, Stephan Landsman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman

Beyond Black Demons & White Devils: Antiblack Conspiracy Theorizing & The Black Public Sphere, Regina Austin

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Discrimination In The Education Process Based On Race, Deborah Mayo-Jeffries

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rosa Parks: Foremother & Heroine Teaching Civility & Offering A Vision For A Better Tomorrow, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Report On The Consultation With The Maritime School Of Social Work Community, Dianne Pothier

Dianne Pothier Collection

In my assessment there is a genuine and strong commitment to affirmative action and anti-racism at the MSSW. But that in itself is only the beginning. Real cross cultural understanding is a major challenge, and needs to be constantly worked at. In the process, mistakes will be made on all sides. Allowances need to be made for that. The School looks at itself compared to other institutions; critics look at the School compared to an ideal world. Neither perspective holds the complete truth. The MSSW needs to continue to work at the effectiveness of its affirmative action program, defining that …

Overcoming "Stigmas": Lesbian And Gay Districts And Black Electoral Empowerment, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the United States, historically, members of racial and sexual minority groups have been prevented from effectively participating in governmental decisionmaking because the political districting system denies them adequate representation in the political process. Following the 1990 census, blacks, in particular, saw significant gains in their political representation as a result of redistricting, only to suffer a sharp reduction of their voting rights with the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in the Shaw and Miller cases. Whereas voting rights litigation once explored ways to prevent minority vote dilution, today's jurisprudence focuses on the ramifications of the "stigma" faced by blacks …

Affirmative Action As A Women's Issue, Helen Norton

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Unconscious And The Law The Law And The Unconscious, Jorge Degregorio

Cardozo Law Review

The god Apollo, whose diverse gifts included the ability to interpret dreams, was recognized as the first author of the law, which was dictated through his oracle in Delphi. For his sacred person, dreams were laws and laws, dreams. Let us invent a story in order to fill in the missing pages of the myth:

Laws, as well as the power to decipher the soul's mysteries from dreams, were bestowed upon the Androgyns by the god. Once they acquired the power of law and of dream interpretation, they attempted to scale Olympus and sit on the gods' stage. Zeus, presiding …

Language And Silence: Making Systems Of Privilege Visible, Adrienne D. Davis, Stephanie M. Wildman

Scholarship@WashULaw

A colleague of mine once had a dream in which I appeared. My colleague, who is African-American, was struggling in this dream to be himself in the presence of a monolithic white maleness that wanted to oppress my friend and deny his intellect, his humanity, and his belonging in our community. In his dream, I, a white woman, attempted to speak on his behalf, but the white man and I spoke as if my friend were not there.

This portrayal disturbed me because I know my friend can speak for himself. Recognizing this fact, he described my discomfort at participating …

Integrating The "Underclass": Confronting America's Enduring Apartheid, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton's American Apartheid argues that housing integration has inappropriately disappeared from the national agenda and is critical to remedying the problems of the so-called "underclass." Reviewer Olati Johnson praises the authors' refusal to dichotomize race and class and the roles both play in creating and maintaining housing segregation. However, she argues, Massey and Denton fail to examine critically either the concept of the underclass or the integration ideology they espouse. Specifically, she contends, the authors fail to confront the limits of integration strategies in providing affordable housing or combating the problem of tokenism. Massey and Denton …

The Punishment Of Hate: Toward A Normative Theory Of Bias-Motivated Crimes, Frederick M. Lawrence

Michigan Law Review

This article explores how bias crimes differ from parallel crimes and why this distinction makes a crucial difference in our criminal law. Bias crimes differ from parallel crimes as a matter of both the resulting harm and the mental state of the offender. The nature of the injury sustained by the immediate victim of a bias crime exceeds the harm caused by a parallel crime. Moreover, bias crimes inflict a palpable harm on the broader target community of the crime as well as on society at large, while parallel crimes do not generally cause such widespread injury.

The distinction between …

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 …

The Michael Jackson Pill: Equality, Race, And Culture, Jerome Mccristal Culp Jr.

Michigan Law Review

This chronicle is in tribute to the work of Derrick Bell, past, present, and future. I have borrowed his character Geneva Crenshaw as part of that tribute, and I hope she helps me raise some of the issues that he has taught us are important.

All characters in this chronicle are fictional, including Professor Culp and Professor Bell. Any relationship they may have to the real Professor Bell and Professor Culp is dictated by the requirements of creativity and the extent to which reality and fiction necessarily merge. I know that the real Derrick Bell is wiser than the one …

The Anticaste Principle, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

In this essay, I seek to defend a particular understanding of equality, one that is an understanding of liberty as well. I call this conception "the anticaste principle." Put too briefly, the anticaste principle forbids social and legal practices from translating highly visible and morally irrelevant differences into systemic social disadvantage, unless there is a very good reason for society to do so. On this view, a special problem of inequality arises when members of a group suffer from a range of disadvantages because of a group-based characteristic that is both visible for all to see and irrelevant from a …

Caste And The Civil Rights Laws: From Jim Crow To Same-Sex Marriages, Richard A. Epstein

Michigan Law Review

In this essay I address the notion of caste in two separate contexts: in the traditional disputes over race and sex, and in the more modem disputes over sexual orientation. In both cases the idea of caste and its kindred notions of subordination and hierarchy are used to justify massive forms of government intervention. In all cases I think that these arguments are incorrect. In their place, I argue that the idea of caste should be confined to categories of formal, or legal, distinctions between persons before the law. This more limited notion of caste supplies no justification for the …

Race Against The Court: The Supreme Court And Minorities In Contemporary America, Melissa Nicholson Starkey

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Race Against the Court: The Supreme Court and Minorities in Contemporary America by Girardeau A. Spann

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

Articles

No abstract provided.

Perceptual Prisms And Racial Realism: The Good News About A Bad Situation, Jonathan K. Stubbs

Law Faculty Publications

A moment of critical reflection seems appropriate. We are nearly half way through the last decade of the last century of this millennium. The Cold War has abated (at least temporarily) and the United States remains a world leader in human rights protections. Eastern European countries and the former Soviet Republics are taking fledgling steps toward creating stable democratic institutions. Nevertheless, widespread challenges face the world community--civil wars in numerous countries, nµclear proliferation, and the AIDS epidemic . . . .

Force African-American Fathers To Parent Their Delinquent Sons - A Factor To Be Considered At The Dispositional Stage, Lundy Langston

Journal Publications

What species can survive and function when a substantial segment of its young male population is harnessed by the burdens of substance abuse, unemployment, and incarceration? Empirical data suggests that these maladies have infected African-American males at a rate alarmingly disproportionate to that of other races. This trend, if it continues, suggests that America is creating a dysfunctional class. In this Article the term "dysfunctional" refers to a predicament wherein African-American males engage in violent activities.' Their conduct may be attributable to their inability to contribute to the family or smaller groups which form the foundation of the social order …

Queer Intersectionality And The Failure Of Recent Lesbian And Gay "Victories", Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Amidst the juridical heterosexism of our legal system, the few successful lesbian and gay cases stand out as brilliant, hopeful harbingers of the future. With good cause, lesbian and gay people have hailed state cases that indicate Bowers v. Hardwick has not contaminated all American courts. Although termed "victories" for the lesbian and gay community, several recent New York cases exclude many queer legal needs. Four cases, Braschi v. Stahl Assoc., In the Matter of the Adoption of Evan, M.A.B. v. R.B. and Thomas S. v. Robin Y., embody the law's progress on lesbian and gay issues. This essay …

The Quest For Freedom In The Post-Brown South: Desegregation And White Self-Interest, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Legal Indeterminacy, Judicial Discretion And The Mexican-American Litigation Experience: 1930-1980, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article explores a jurisprudential point: legal indeterminacy in the context of Mexican-American civil rights litigation. The article argues that because of legal uncertainty or indeterminacy the resolution of key issues was not inevitable. Judges often had discretion to reach their conclusions. In this regard, the article concludes that the courts generally exercised their discretion by taking a position on key issues against Mexican-Americans. The article points out that exposing the exercise of judicial discretion and the lack of inevitability in civil rights cases is important for two major reasons. At one level, exposing the exercise of judicial discretion is …

Ugly: An Inquiry Into The Problem Of Racial Gerrymandering Under The Voting Rights Act, Daniel D. Polsby, Robert D. Popper

Michigan Law Review

In the discussion that follows, we focus on the case of congressional districting rather than on districting in general. Although we proceed in this manner for the sake of clarity, it is also true that no single, all-purpose normative theory of electoral mechanics will cover every case of democratic representation, from county commissions to mosquito control districts to sovereign legislatures. We do not claim that one can generalize our argument to every sort of election to which the VRA might apply. Yet we think our argument does approximate a theory of general application.

Race And Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines After Shaw V. Reno, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Samuel Isaacharoff

Michigan Law Review

Shaw is no doubt a major opinion that attempts to define limits on the use of racial or ethnic classifications in electoral redistricting. The main thrust of this article is to assess the critical question of whether Shaw renders unconstitutional the type of race-conscious realignment of electoral configurations that have given meaning to the voting rights reforms of the past two decades. In making this assessment, we try to ascertain exactly how the Court has limited the use of race-conscious districting, and we try to determine whether there is any jurisprudential coherence to the Court's latest confrontation with the law …

Expressive Harms, "Bizarre Districts," And Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw V. Reno, Richard H. Pildes, Richard G. Niemi

Michigan Law Review

This article attempts to define the constitutional principles that characterize Shaw and to suggest how those principles might be applied in a consistent, meaningful way. Part I, in which we argue that Shaw must be understood to rest on a distinctive conception of the kinds of harms against which the Constitution protects, is the theoretical heart of the article. We call these expressive harms, as opposed to more familiar, material harms. In Part II, we briefly survey the history of previous, largely unsuccessful, efforts in other legal contexts to give principled content to these kinds of harms in redistricting. …