Law and Race Commons^™

Equity Over Equality: Equal Protection And The Indian Child Welfare Act, Lucy Dempsey

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In 2018, a Texas District Court shocked the nation by declaring the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) unconstitutional pursuant to the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The decision was overturned by the Fifth Circuit but may well be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The ICWA provides a framework for the removal and placement of Indian children into foster and adoptive homes in such a way that attempts to reflect the unique values of Indian culture and supports the autonomy of the tribe. In doing so, the law treats Indian children differently than it would White children. But …

Cancer Alley And The Fight Against Environmental Racism, Idna G. Castellón

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Untangling Discrimination: The Crown Act And Protecting Black Hair, Alesha Hamilton

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Unconstitutional Police, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

Most Fourth Amendment cases arise under a basic fact pattern. Police decide to do something--say, stop and frisk a suspect. They find some crime--say, a gun or drugs--they arrest the suspect, and the suspect is subsequently charged with a crime. The suspect--who is all too often Black--becomes a defendant and challenges the police officers' initial decision as unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The defendant seeks to suppress the evidence against them or perhaps to recover damages for serious injuries under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The courts subsequently constitutionalize the police officers' initial decision with little or no scrutiny. Effectively, the …

Black Women's Suffrage, The Nineteenth Amendment, And The Duality Of A Movement, Danielle M. Conway

Faculty Scholarly Works

America is at an unprecedented time with self-determination for Black women, and this phase of the movement is reverberating throughout this nation and around the world. There is no confusion for those who identify as Black women that this movement is perpetual, dating back to the enslavement of Black people in America by act and by law. One need only look to the intersecting crises of 2020 to discern the reality of Black women’s—and by extension the Black community and by further extension individuals and groups marginalized, subordinated, and oppressed by white patriarchy—perpetual struggle for civil and human rights.

To …

Systemic Racism And Immigration Detention, Carrie L. Rosenbaum

Seattle University Law Review

The denouement of the Trump presidency was a white supremacist coup attempt against a backdrop of public reawakening to the persistence of institutionalized racism. Though the United States has entered a new administration with a leader that expresses his commitment to ending institutionalized racism, the United States continues to imprison Central American and Mexican immigrants at the southern border. If the majority of the people in immigration jails at the border are Latinx, does immigration law disparately impact them, and do they have a right to equal protection? If they do, would equal protection protect them? This Article explores whether …

Rock And Hard Place Arguments, Jareb Gleckel, Grace Brosofsky

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores what we coin “rock and hard place” (RHP) arguments in the law, and it aims to motivate mission-driven plaintiffs to seek out such arguments in their cases. The RHP argument structure helps plaintiffs win cases even when the court views that outcome as unfavorable.

We begin by dissecting RHP dilemmas that have long existed in the American legal system. As Part I reveals, prosecutors and law enforcement officials have often taken advantage of RHP dilemmas and used them as a tool to persuade criminal defendants to forfeit their constitutional rights, confess, or give up the chance to …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents.

License To Discriminate: A Rule For Protecting Limited English Proficient Persons From National Origin Discrimination By State Departments Of Motor Vehicles, Brandon T. Lozeau

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Black Citizenship, Dehumanization, And The Fourteenth Amendment, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The fight for full Black citizenship has been in large measure a fight against the systematic dehumanization of African Americans. Dehumanization is the process of treating people as less than human, as subhuman. Denying Blacks full and equal citizenship has gone hand in hand with denying their full humanity. To effectively promote equal citizenship for African Americans, therefore, requires an explicit commitment to ending their dehumanization.

In this Essay, Part I discusses the concept of dehumanization and its role in the infliction of harm on a dehumanized class of people. Part II discusses the concept of citizenship, and contend that …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Prohibiting The Punishment Of Poverty: The Abolition Of Wealth-Based Criminal Disenfranchisement, Amy Ciardiello

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The majority of U.S. states disenfranchise formerly incarcerated individuals because of their poverty by conditioning re-enfranchisement on the full payment of legal financial obligations. This Note discusses the practice of wealth-based criminal disenfranchisement where the inability to pay legal financial obligations, including fines, fees, restitution, interest payments, court debts, and other economic penalties, prohibits low-income, formerly incarcerated individuals from voting. This Note argues this issue has not been adequately addressed due to unsuccessful legislative reforms and failed legal challenges. An examination of state policies, federal and state legislative reforms, and litigation shows that a more drastic state legislative solution is …

Equal Protection Under Algorithms: A New Statistical And Legal Framework, Crystal S. Yang, Will Dobbie

Michigan Law Review

In this Article, we provide a new statistical and legal framework to understand the legality and fairness of predictive algorithms under the Equal Protection Clause. We begin by reviewing the main legal concerns regarding the use of protected characteristics such as race and the correlates of protected characteristics such as criminal history. The use of race and nonrace correlates in predictive algorithms generates direct and proxy effects of race, respectively, that can lead to racial disparities that many view as unwarranted and discriminatory. These effects have led to the mainstream legal consensus that the use of race and nonrace correlates …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Taxation As A Site Of Memory: Exemptions, Universities, And The Legacy Of Slavery, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Many universities around the United States are attempting to grapple with their institution’s history of direct and indirect involvement with transatlantic slavery. One of the first schools to do so was Brown University, which appointed a special committee in 2003 to study its historic institutional ties to slavery. After three years of investigation and discussion, the Brown committee recommended the creation of a public campus memorial and widespread educational efforts. In 2015, Georgetown University undertook a similar investigation on its campus; the working group ultimately recommended renaming certain university buildings, erecting public memorials, creating an academic center of the study …

Debt Bondage: How Private Collection Agencies Keep The Formerly Incarcerated Tethered To The Criminal Justice System, Bryan L. Adamson

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article examines the constitutionality of statutes which allow courts to transfer outstanding legal financial obligations to private debt collection agencies. In Washington State, the clerk of courts can transfer the legal financial obligation of a formerly incarcerated person if he or she is only thirty days late making a payment. Upon transfer, the debt collection agencies can assess a “collection fee” of up to 50% of the first $100.000 of the unpaid legal financial obligation, and up to 35% of the unpaid debt over $100,000. This fee becomes part of the LFO debt imposed at sentencing, and like that …

Reflections On The Effects Of Federalism On Opioid Policy, Matthew B. Lawrence

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Segregation In The Galleries: A Reconsideration, Richard Primus

Michigan Law Review Online

When constitutional lawyers talk about the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to questions of race, they often men-tion that the spectators’ galleries in Congress were racially segregated when Congress debated the Amendment.1 If the Thirty-Ninth Congress practiced racial segregation, the thinking goes, then it probably did not mean to prohibit racial segregation.2 As an argument about constitutional interpretation, this line of thinking has both strengths and weaknesses. But this brief Essay is not about the interpretive consequences, if any, of segregation in the congressional galleries during the 1860s. It is about the factual claim that the galleries …

Civil Rights In Living Color, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

This Article will examine how American civil rights law has treated “color” discrimination and differentiated it from “race” discrimination. It is a comprehensive analysis of the changing legal meaning of “color” discrimination throughout American history. The Article will cover views of “color” in the antebellum era, Reconstruction laws, early equal protection cases, the U.S. Census, modern civil rights statutes, and in People v. Bridgeforth—a landmark 2016 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals. First, the Article will lay out the complex relationship between race and color and discuss the phenomenon of colorism—oppression based on skin color—as differentiated from …

In Memory Of Professor James E. Bond, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law: In Memory of Professor James E. Bond.

A Class Action Lawsuit For The Right To A Minimum Education In Detroit, Carter G. Phillips

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Reevaluating Politicized Identity & Notions Of An American Political Community In The Legal & Political Process, Marvin L. Astrada Jd, Phd

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion: The Right To Education: With Liberty, Justice, And Education For All?

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Our Criminal Justice System Is A Bear Trap, Frederick K. Brewington

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Confession Obsession: How To Protect Minors In Interrogations, Cindy Chau

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Pretrial Detention In A Criminal System Looking For Justice, Gabrielle Costa

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Police Brutality And State-Sanctioned Violence In 21st Century America, Itohen Ihaza

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Remorse, Not Race: Essence Of Parole Release?, Lovashni Khalikaprasad

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

As Pertains To The Criminal Justice System, Is Hindsight 20/20?, Syndie G. E. Molina, Cristina Negrillo

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.