Law and Race Commons^™

#Metoo Innovators: Disrupting The Race And Gender Code By Asian Americans In The Tech Industry, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

This Article focuses on how Asian American women innovators of the #MeToo generation are disrupting the code of conduct in the tech industry. The code is hard-wired into the tech bro culture of mirrortocracy, resulting in hiring practices that perpetuate existing company demographics and statistics that show that Asian American women face 2.91 times the disadvantage compared to white women. In addition, of all gender and racial groups, Asian American female innovators are the least likely to become executives. This Article identifies and explains how these innovators are the disruptors on several fronts. Utilizing everything from judicial means to traditional …

Antiracism, Reflection, And Professional Identity, Monte Mills, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries

Articles

Intent on more systematically developing the emerging professional identities of law students, the professional identity formation movement is recasting how we think about legal education. Notably, however, the movement overlooks the structural racism imbedded in American law and legal education. While current models of professional development value diversity and cross-cultural competence, they do not adequately prepare the next generation of legal professionals to engage in the sustained work of interrupting and overthrowing race and racism in the legal profession and system. This article argues that antiracism is essential to the profession’s responsibility to serve justice and therefore key to legal …

Public (Ai)Ccomodations, Jevan Hutson, Deepak George, Aj Kidd, Sulaf Al-Saif, Mandy (Meiyun) Ku, Devin Glaser, Devin Glaser

Articles

This Note discusses the use of Al surveillance in places of public accommodations and its implications for civil rights and antidiscrimination law. Part I documents the extensive Al surveillance employed in areas of public accommodation, where American antidiscrimination laws explicitly provide for elevated protection. Part II uses critical race theory to explore how contemporary antidiscrimination law marries two approaches to antidiscrimination in a way that undercuts its own ability to remedy injustice. Part III reveals how antidiscrimination law fails to address issues implicated by Al surveillance in areas of public accommodations, and Part IV proposes a simple solution: abolish it.

The Eighth Amendment Power To Discriminate, Kathryn E. Miller

Washington Law Review

For the last half-century, Supreme Court doctrine has required that capital jurors consider facts and characteristics particular to individual defendants when determining their sentences. While liberal justices have long touted this individualized sentencing requirement as a safeguard against unfair death sentences, in practice the results have been disappointing. The expansive discretion that the requirement confers on overwhelmingly White juries has resulted in outcomes that are just as arbitrary and racially discriminatory as those that existed in the years before the temporary abolition of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia.1 After decades of attempting to eliminate the requirement, conservative justices …

Atoning For Dred Scott And Plessy While Substantially Abolishing The Death Penalty, Scott W. Howe

Washington Law Review

Has the Supreme Court adequately atoned for Dred Scott and Plessy? A Court majority has never confessed and apologized for the horrors associated with those decisions. And the horrors are so great that Dred Scott and Plessy have become the anti-canon of constitutional law. Given the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the Court’s historical complicity in the brutal campaign against African Americans, this Article contends that the Court could appropriately do more to atone.

The Article asserts that the Court could profitably pursue atonement while abolishing capital punishment for aggravated murder. The Article shows why substantial abolition of the capital sanction would …

Uncompromising Hunger For Justice: Resistance, Sacrifice, And Latcrit Theory, Brenda Williams, Edwin Lindo, Marc-Tizoc González

Articles

In this Article, three law professors report on and theorize a nonviolent direct-action campaign of the kind discussed by Dr. King in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Using the basic steps of the nonviolent campaign as an organizing framework, they analyze and report on the 18-day hunger strike by the Frisco 5 (a.k.a., Frisco5). This direct action protested the extrajudicial killings of Amilcar Perez-Lopez, Alex Nieto, Luis Góngora-Pat, and Mario Woods by San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers and advocated for institutional change to reduce the risk of homicides against persons with similarly racialized minority-group identities. Two weeks …

Race, Racism, And American Law': A Seminar From The Indigenous, Black, And Immigrant Legal Perspectives, Monte Mills, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries

Articles

Flagrant racism has characterized the Trump era from the onset. Beginning with the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has inflamed long-festering racial wounds and unleashed white supremacist reaction to the nation’s first black President, in the process destabilizing our sense of the nation’s racial progress and upending core principles of legality, equality, and justice. As law professors, we sought to rise to these challenges and prepare the next generation of lawyers to succeed in a different and more polarized future. Our shared commitment resulted in a new course, “Race, Racism, and American Law,” in which we sought to explore the roots …

Empirical Methods And Critical Race Theory: A Discourse On Possibilities For A Hybrid Methodology, Mario L. Barnes

Articles

No abstract provided.

"The More Things Change . . .": New Moves For Legitimizing Racial Discrimination In A "Post-Race" World, Mario L. Barnes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Mario L. Barnes

Articles

Reviewing Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship by Charles Epp, Steven Maynard-Moody, and Donald Haider (2014).

"Driving While Black" Redux: Illuminating New And Myriad Aspects Of Auto(Matic) Inequality, Mario Barnes

Articles

Reviewing Charles R. Epp, Steven Maynard-Moody, and Donald Haider-Markel, Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship (2014).

Windsor, Surrogacy, And Race, Khiara M. Bridges

Washington Law Review

Scholars and activists interested in racial justice have long been opposed to surrogacy arrangements, wherein a couple commissions a woman to become pregnant, give birth to a baby, and surrender the baby to the couple to raise as its own. Their fear has been that surrogacy arrangements will magnify racial inequalities inasmuch as wealthy white people will look to poor women of color to carry and give birth to the white babies that the couples covet. However, perhaps critical thinkers about race should reconsider their contempt for surrogacy following the Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Windsor. …

Racial Impact Statements: Considering The Consequences Of Racial Disproportionalities In The Criminal Justice System, Jessica Erickson

Washington Law Review

The American criminal justice system is currently suffering from a dramatic increase in mass incarceration and staggering rates of racial disproportionalities and disparities. Many facially neutral laws, policies, and practices within the criminal justice system have disproportionate impacts on minorities. Racial impact statements provide one potential method of addressing such disproportionalities. These proactive tools measure the projected impacts that new criminal justice laws and policies may have upon minorities, and provide this information to legislators before they decide whether to enact the law. Four states currently conduct racial impact statements, and other states are considering adopting their own versions. The …

Race And The Reference Librarian, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Ms. Whisner examines how race arises in the day-to-day work of law librarians, and discusses how law librarians can foster cultural competence and create more welcoming environments in diverse institutions.

Red Law, White Supremacy: Cherokee Freedmen, Tribal Sovereignty, And The Colonial Feedback Loop, Jeremiah Chin

Articles

Sovereignty and self-determination are cornerstones of arguments for Indigenous rights in the geographic United States. Both concepts assert an existence as Indigenous peoples, and reinforce status as nations with citizens and governments, rights and responsibilities, determined by Indigenous communities. In 2006, the Judicial Appeals Tribunal of the Cherokee Nation recognized that Lucy Allen and fellow Cherokee Freedmen, descendants of African slaves once owned by Cherokee, are citizens of the Cherokee Nation and had been citizens of the Cherokee Nation since the 1866 treaty with the United States. Less than a year later, the Cherokee Nation amended its constitution to limit …

The "Nixon Sabotage": The Political Origins Of The Equal Protection Challenge To The Voting Rights Act, Danieli Evans

Articles

Critics of the Voting Rights Act argue that the anti-discrimination law requires states to engage in unconstitutional discrimination, as state decisionmakers must be conscious of race in order to ensure that voting policies do not weaken minority representation. This argument relies on the idea that subjective racial motivation is the essence of unconstitutional discrimination (even if benevolent, or to promote racial inclusion). The conventional understanding among constitutional scholars is that this “search for the bigoted decisionmaker” developed in employment and housing discrimination decisions between 1976 and 1979. Previous accounts have not recognized the role that the 1971 school desegregation decision …

Property, Privacy And Power: Rethinking The Fourth Amendment In The Wake Of U.S. V. Jones, Dana Raigrodski

Articles

This Article seeks to uncover invisible gender, race, and class biases driving modern Fourth Amendment discourse. Unlike traditional theories, which tend to view the Fourth Amendment through the lens of either privacy or property, this Article advances a theory focusing on the real issues of power and control that fuel Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Specifically, the Article exposes the private/public and home/market dichotomies that are central to the Supreme Court rhetoric as arbitrary and artificial. It finds that current Fourth Amendment discourse protects the interest of white, privileged men and perpetuates male ideology as well as male domination. That focus leaves …

Lockdown For Liberty: Black Masculinities, Mass Incarceration And Labor In The Georgia Prisoners Strike, Jeremiah Chin

Articles

This article examines the Georgia prisoners’ protest and uses the prisoners’ list of demands to examine the relationship between historical and present notions of race, labor, rights and incarceration. Particular focus will be placed on how mass incarceration is racialized in the disproportionate imprisonment of men of color, specifically black men, and how this contributes to the invisibility of this population in the public eye. The next section offers a theoretical framework to understand how prisons and prisoner issues are removed from public discourse, the general assumptions undergirding public perceptions of prisons and how common sense assumptions of prisons can …

Inextricably Political: Race, Membership, And Tribal Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff

Washington Law Review

Courts address equal protection questions about the distinct legal treatment of American Indian tribes in the following dichotomous way: are classifications concerning American Indians “racial or political?” If the classification is political (i.e., based on federally recognized tribal status or membership in a federally recognized tribe) then courts will not subject it to heightened scrutiny. If the classification is racial rather than political, then courts may apply heightened scrutiny. This Article challenges the dichotomy itself. The legal categories “tribe” and “tribal member” are themselves political, and reflect the ways in which tribes and tribal members have been racialized by U.S. …

Preliminary Report On Race And Washington's Criminal Justice System, Research Working Group, Task Force On Race And The Criminal Justice System

Washington Law Review

We are pleased to present the Preliminary Report on Race and Washington’s Criminal Justice System, authored by the Research Working Group of the Task Force on Race and the Criminal Justice System. The Research Working Group’s mandate was to investigate disproportionalities in the criminal justice system and, where disproportionalities existed, to investigate possible causes. This factbased inquiry was designed to serve as a basis for making recommendations for changes to promote fairness, reduce disparity, ensure legitimate public safety objectives, and instill public confidence in our criminal justice system. The Task Force came into being after a group of us …

What A Load Of Hope: The Post-Racial Mixtape, Jeremiah Chin

Articles

This Comment analyzes how Supreme Court decisions and recent legislation have used the language of post-racialism to re-center whiteness through the law. Rather than using explicit racist language, the post-racial project exploits the language of historical antiracist efforts to negate experiences with discrimination while continuing a hostile environment for racial groups and promoting white supremacy in the United States.

Beginning with Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger, and school desegregation in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, this Comment analyzes …

A Fresh Cut In An Old Wound–A Critical Analysis Of The Trayvon Martin Killing: The Public Outcry, The Prosecutors’ Discretion, And The Stand Your Ground Law, Tamara F. Lawson

Articles

If the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case is to have value beyond its immediate facts, it is important to consider the case through a broad lens that encompasses law, politics, and culture and the relevant intersectionality of each. This essay gives a contextualized historical perspective with which to view the Black community’s reaction to the initial lack of criminal charges in the case. It explains why the circumstances surrounding Trayvon’s death were experienced as a fresh cut in an old, but deep, collective wound, for many Blacks. It addresses the exacerbation African Americans felt regarding law enforcement’s perceived indifference towards Trayvon, …

Rebellious State Crimmigration Enforcement And The Foreign Affairs Power, Mary Fan

Articles

The propriety of a new breed of state laws interfering in immigration enforcement is pending before the Supreme Court and the lower courts. These laws typically incorporate federal standards related to the criminalization of immigration ("crimmigration'), but diverge aggressively from federal enforcement policy. Enacting states argue that the legislation is merely a species of "cooperative federalism" that does not trespass upon the federal power over foreign affairs, foreign commerce, and nationality rules since the laws mirror federal standards. This Article challenges the formalist mirror theory assumptions behind the new laws and argues that inconsistent state crimmigration enforcement policy and resulting …

The Once And Future Equal Protection Doctrine?, Mario L. Barnes, Erwin Chemerinsky

Articles

This Essay is the third in a series of pieces assessing Equal Protection Doctrine and jurisprudence. Here, we endeavor to do two things: (1) to utilize constitutional structure, text, and history to interrogate the concept of equality protected under the Fourteenth Amendment; and (2) to critique the Supreme Court's present approach to adjudicating constitutional discrimination claims. With regard to the meaning of equality, we assert that if the text of the Reconstruction Amendments and the stated goals of Reconstruction are used to inform constitutional analysis, then equality should be understood as a substantive rather than formalist concept. Reconstruction, however, was …

Foreword: Latcrit Theory, Narrative Tradition And Listening Intently For A "Still Small Voice", Mario L. Barnes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Racial Paradox In A Law And Society Odyssey, Mario L. Barnes

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Post-Race Equal Protection?, Mario L. Barnes, Erwin Chemerinsky, Trina Jones

Articles

No abstract provided.

“Whites Only Tree,” Hanging Nooses, No Crime?: Limiting The Prosecutorial Veto For Hate Crimes In Louisiana And Across America, Tamara F. Lawson

Articles

News coverage of three nooses hanging from the "whites only tree" at Jena High School, in Jena, Louisiana, created public outcry. Criticism rose as the public learned that District Attorney Reed Walters exercised his prosecutorial discretion to decline to press charges against the white students that admitted hanging the nooses, yet over zealously charged black students with attempted murder for conduct normally considered a battery or a school-yard-fight. The apparent lack of equity in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion became the focus of heated debate. Although the Jena High School incidents occurred in 2006, the Jena story is unpleasantly reminiscent …

Be Careful What You Ask For: Educacion Para Todas/Os, The Perils And The Power, Jessica Solyom, Jeremiah Chin, Kristi Ryujin

Articles

Demonstrations supporting human and civil rights, while often romanticized as a phenomenon of the past, are becoming more pervasive today, reflecting the continued forms of discrimination and oppression undocumented workers, individuals, and families experience. In the past few years, Utah residents have been engaged in their own battle to determine the level of support the state is willing to extend students of color interested in attending institutions of higher education. On the "frontstage" many of the state's universities echo a rhetoric of support for diversity. Some even go as far as to outline their commitment to diversity as part of …

By Any Other Name?: On Being "Regarded As" Black, And Why Title Vii Should Apply Even If Lakisha And Jamal Are White, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Mario L. Barnes

Articles

Applying theories concerning the social construction of race, this Article borrows from the definition of disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and the courts' analyses of disability discrimination cases under the "regarded as" disabled provision of the ADA, which allows a plaintiff to bring a claim against an employer who regards the plaintiff as having an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. Using the "regarded as" provision as a model, this Article proposes a new method for recognizing discrimination claims based on the use of proxies for race-even when those proxies have been used …