Law and Race Commons^™

An Argument Against Unbounded Arrest Power: The Expressive Fourth Amendment And Protesting While Black, Karen Pita Loor

Faculty Scholarship

Protesting is supposed to be revered in our democracy, considered “as American as apple pie” in our nation’s mythology. But the actual experiences of the 2020 racial justice protesters showed that this supposed reverence for political dissent and protest is more akin to American folklore than reality on the streets. The images from those streets depicted police officers clad in riot gear and armed with shields, batons, and “less than” lethal weapons aggressively arresting protesters, often en masse. In the first week of the George Floyd protests, police arrested roughly 10,000 people, and approximately 78 percent of those arrests were …

Citizen's Arrest And Race, Ira P. Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

I begin with a mea culpa. In 2016, I published an article about citizen’s arrest. The idea for the article arose in 2014, when a disgruntled Virginia citizen attempted to arrest a law school professor while class was in progress. I set out to research and write a “traditional” law review article. In it, I traced the origins of the doctrine of citizen’s arrest to medieval England, imposing a positive duty on citizens to assist the King in seeking out suspected offenders and detaining them. I observed that the need for citizen’s arrest lessened with the development of organized and …

The Perils Of Private Prosecutions, Angela J. Davis

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In Against Prosecutors, Bennett Capers proposes that we largely abandon the current system of public prosecutions and return to private prosecutions. His goal is to empower the victims of crime to make decisions currently made by public prosecutors—whether to bring charges, what the charges should be, and how the cases should be resolved.

Professor Capers’ goals are laudable. As he notes, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and the criminal legal system is rife with unwarranted racial disparities. Professor Capers correctly notes that prosecutors play a substantial role in perpetuating these problems. However, his proposed …

Of Afrofuturism, Of Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe

Faculty Scholarship

Algorithms are proliferating in criminal legal structures. The predictions produced by these algorithms inform life-altering decisions around surveillance and incarceration. Their continued use poses a challenge to ongoing racial justice efforts. Contesting how algorithms of today maintain the racial status quo requires a fundamental rethinking of the algorithm project. This essay explores how Afrofuturism can facilitate such a rethinking. It imagines how applying an Afrofuturist paradigm to the adoption, construction, implementation, and oversight of algorithms could radically change the kind of algorithms developed and the purposes for which they are developed. Tapping into this potential offers the chance for members …

Viewing Access To Justice For Rural Mainers Of Color Through A Prosecutorial Lens, Maybell Romero

Maine Law Review

Rural areas throughout the country, including those in Maine, are beginning to navigate the challenges and benefits of burgeoning communities of color. District Attorneys’ offices in the state, however, have done little to prepare for this major demographic shift. Maine district attorneys must expand their understanding of their duties to do justice and assure access to justice by better serving rural Mainers of color. While a number of scholars have focused on the legal challenges communities of color face in urban environments as well as those faced by what have been presumed to be White communities in rural areas, this …

Should The American Grand Jury Survive Ferguson, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The grand jurors deliberated in secret, as the masses demanded the indictment of the would-be defendants. Ultimately, the grand jury would refuse to indict, enraging the many who believed justice had been denied

I Want A Black Lawyer To Represent Me: Addressing A Black Defendant's Concerns With Being Assigned A White Court-Appointed Lawyer, Kenneth P. Troccoli

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

"I want a Black lawyer to represent me." These are the first words you hear after you introduce yourself to your new client. You have been appointed to represent this man on a criminal charge. You are white. He is Black. You answer that you are an experienced criminal lawyer and will represent him to the best of your ability, regardless of his or your race. He responds that he too is experienced with the criminal justice system-a system that targets Black men, like himself, for prosecution far more than whites, that sentences Black men to prison more frequently and …

Wielding The Double-Edge Sword: Charles Hamilton Houston And Judicial Activism In The Age Of Legal Realism, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A new progressive movement in the law profoundly affected the American judicial climate of the 1930s and 1940s. The jurisprudence of American Legal Realism, which sprang from the progressive American sociological jurisprudence, boasted the adherence of some of America's most influential legal minds. Legal Realism, which complemented the New Deal reform legislation emerging in the 1930s, advocated judicial deference to legislative and administrative channels on matters of social and economic policy. Judicial activism, which had been used as a tool for the protection of economic rights since the late nineteenth century, was seen as inimical to progressive social reform and, …