Law and Race Commons^™

Fixing Forty Years Of Failure: Objective Solutions To Batson’S Subjective Shortfalls, Katherine E. Donoghue

Cardozo Law Review

It is a sunny afternoon in rural Georgia. A young Black man goes for a jog. On his route, he crosses the train tracks and heads into a predominantly White neighborhood. As his sneakers rhythmically hit the pavement, he hears the rev of a pickup truck behind him. Shortly after, he hears a second truck. The young jogger picks up his pace, but so do the trucks. The trucks chase him and eventually surround him. Two White men get out with shotguns. One stands ready, barrel raised. The other approaches the jogger and fires a bullet into his chest.

That …

Radical Restorative Justice: Reflections On Conflict, Trauma, And Hope In Chicagoland Schools, Amy J. Cohen, Uma Blanchard

Cardozo Law Review

This Article tracks how abolitionist and reformist debates are unfolding within urban schools’ attempts to smash the school-to-prison pipeline. We document how Chicago-area public school teachers are grappling with new restorative justice programs and their complex and divergent sociopolitical and institutional meanings. Drawing on over forty qualitative interviews with teachers, we illustrate how difficult widespread implementation of new conflict resolution mechanisms, in the name of restorative justice, are turning out to be. We analyze how teachers are interpreting restorative justice practices and the challenges they involve for students, educators, and school administrators who learn and teach and work in hierarchical …

Carceral Apartheid: Centering State Responsibility For The Racial Order, Ion Meyn

Cardozo Law Review

Racial harms are often attributed to private ordering. But the power of White communities to subordinate communities of color is not a constellation of private acts independent of state violence. When scrutinized, acts of racial exclusion, segregation, and violence persist to the extent they are aligned with the political order and backed by the state’s violent guarantee. The knowledge that any resistance to these acts will be met with state retribution bristles in the background.

There are different ways in which state violence produces and reproduces the racial order: (1) direct violence; (2) a violent guarantee backing communal acts of …

Pluralist Justice And Liberal Constitutionalism: A Reply To Critics, Michel Rosenfeld

Cardozo Law Review

An author is privileged to have his work seriously considered and evaluated by a group of preeminent scholars from different disciplines and parts of the world. This is even much more the case with respect to my book, A Pluralist Theory of Constitutional Justice: Assessing Liberal Democracy in Times of Rising Populism and Illiberalism, which was written in times of self-isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, thus lacking the input of the customary testing of ideas in conversations with colleagues with whom one habitually interacts while on campus. I am grateful for the live symposium on my book that …

“Today, The Constitution Prevails”: A History And Legacy Of Constitutional Racism, Zamir Ben-Dan

Cardozo Law Review

In a decision that surprised almost no one, the United States Supreme Court struck down the affirmative action programs at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina. The majority opinion recounted a jurisprudential history that started with the Fourteenth Amendment, jumped to Plessy v. Ferguson, and lingered on the progeny of Brown v. Board of Education. The opinion hailed Brown as the ultimate triumph, the case that spelled the beginning of the end of racism in America. It declared that the purpose of the Equal Protection Clause is to eliminate “all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.” …

The Chronic Growing Problem: Environmental And Social Justice Concerns With Indoor Cannabis Grows, Gina S. Warren

Cardozo Law Review

The rapid legalization of recreational marijuana across states has created environmental and social justice issues, particularly with indoor cultivation. Despite its federal illegality, twenty-four states and various territories have legalized marijuana, igniting a surge in indoor cultivation that bears significant environmental and social consequences. Indoor cultivation facilities require massive energy inputs, resulting in grid strain, pollution, and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the placement of these facilities often occurs in historically marginalized low-income communities, furthering environmental injustice and social harms, as these areas are disproportionately affected by the pollutants emitted from the cultivation processes, such as molds, bacteria, …

Battling Batson: State V. Andujar And New Jersey's Efforts To Fix A Broken Doctrine, Eli Shahar

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

“That Little Girl Was Me”: Kamala Harris And The Civil Whites Of 1964 And Beyond, Maureen Johnson

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Implications Of New York’S Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act For Transgender Housing In Prisons, Rebecca Barrett

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bans With No Bite: Why Racial Profiling Bans Are Unable To Create Racial Justice In Policing, Rebecca Yin

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why Do You Care About My Hair? A Proposal For Remedying Hair Discrimination In The Workplace On A Federal Level, Grayson Moronta

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

War & The Constitution: Chemical Agents And The Rights Of Protestors, Yomidalys GüIchardo Morel

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

“An Outrage Upon Our Feelings”: The Role Of Local Governments In Resistance Movements, Daniel Farbman

Cardozo Law Review

After the election of 2016, many who opposed President Trump and his policies argued that local governments and local power would be the best tools to resist those policies and strengthen democracy. Among the most prominent acts of local resistance in the last decade have been resolutions that declare a town or a city a “Sanctuary” and refuse to cooperate with federal authorities in the deportation of undocumented immigrants. This Article situates these resolutions in a long tradition of local opposition to state and federal laws that towns and cities deem unjust by examining local opposition to the Fugitive Slave …

I Choose, You Decide: Checking The Judiciary From Within, Jeremy N. Sheff

Cardozo Law Review

Efforts to rein in partisanship (or the perception thereof) on the Supreme Court tend to focus either on what Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn call “personnel reforms”—changes to the selection, appointment, or tenure of Justices—or on what they call “disempowering reforms”—changes that divert some of the judiciary’s authority to the political branches, for example via jurisdiction stripping. I propose a different—and perhaps complementary—reform, which would achieve some of the goals of both types of reform without requiring a constitutional amendment. I propose that the selection of a case for the Supreme Court’s discretionary appellate docket should be performed by a …

Fighting Chance: Conflicts Over Risk In Social Change Litigation, Gwendolyn Leachman

Cardozo Law Review

Drawing on a case study of marriage equality litigation, this Article examines how practice setting affects the construction of risk and the emergence of conflict in social change litigation. Although private law firms often work collaboratively with social movement organizations to pursue common goals, conflicts also emerge when movement groups oppose “risky” private litigation which could imperil the movement’s ongoing impact litigation strategies. How do attorneys in private firms and social movement organizations vary in their framing of risk in social change litigation? Under what conditions does that variation lead to conflict? The findings show that movement-based LGBT rights attorneys …

Child Abuse And Cannabis Use: How A Prima Facie Standard Mischaracterizes Parental Cannabis Consumption As Child Neglect, Jasmine Harris

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Children's Equality Rights: Every Child's Right To Develop To Their Full Capacity, Nancy E. Dowd

Cardozo Law Review

Children are born equal. Yet as early as eighteen months, hierarchies emerge among children. These hierarchies are not random butfall into patterns by race, gender, and class. They are not caused nor voluntarily chosen by children or their parents. The hierarchies grow, persist, and are made worse by systems and policies created by the state, perpetuating the position of the privileged and continuing the disadvantage of the subordinated. Children's equal right to develop to their capacity is severely undermined by policies and structures that hamper and block the development of some by creating barriers and challenges or failing to support …

Constitutional Diversity In New York's Specialized High Schools: The Shsat, The Discovery Program, And The Fourteenth Amendment, Corey Hirsch

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Judge's Attempt At Sentencing Consistency After Booker: Judge Jack B. Weinstein's Guidelines For Sentencing, Carolin E. Guentert, Ryan H. Gerber

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are Police Obsolete? Breaking Cycles Of Violence Through Abolition Democracy, V. Noah Gimbel, Craig Muhammad

Cardozo Law Review

On February 5, 2018, Baltimore activists organized a successful "cease-fire weekend," during which no one was killed-and the cops were not to thank. Indeed, as community anti-violence organizers worked to cool hot feuds in order to prove that endless violence was not their destiny, the Baltimore Police Department was sinking ever-deeper into perhaps the most shocking police corruption scandal of the twenty-first century.

The stark contrast between ordinary city residents risking their safety to fight against violence in their community and a corrupt police force committing and propagating acts of violence in the microcosmic streets of Baltimore raises what may …

Pretext And Justification: Republicanism, Policing, And Race, Ekow N. Yankah

Cardozo Law Review

On April 4, 2015, Police Officer Michael Slager gunned down Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina with a cool that resembled target practice. Scott's name joined a heartbreaking list of men of color killed by unjustified police violence. The video of the incident also broadcast to the world the spectacular violence always lurking beneath the surface of daily interactions between police and men of color.

The "Black Lives Matter" movement has fiercely insisted Scott's death not be viewed as an isolated incident but understood as woven into the fabric of American policing. American policing harms individual people of color, …

Rigor And Relationships: The Positive Case For Integration In Schools And Neighborhoods, Rachel D. Godsil

Cardozo Law Review

This Essay first explores the current conditions of schools and neighborhoods and the impediments to achieving successful integration in schools- implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat. Second, the Essay then identifies the strategies that are being employed in some schools to overcome these impediments and create quality schools that educate all students in a just and effective manner. Finally, the Essay explains how integrated neighborhoods would be the most effective long-term solution to the stereotyping and biases that underlie racial injustices across the board.

The Fair Housing Act At Fifty: Time For A Change, Elizabeth Julian

Cardozo Law Review

In order to put my views in this Article in context, I am going to briefly reference the experience upon which I base my comments. I am a civil rights lawyer. I filed my first systemic housing discrimination lawsuit in 1980 and litigated cases against HUD, cities, and local housing agencies through the 1980s up until I left private practice in 1993 to join the Clinton administration at HUD. For the next seven years, I looked at things from the inside, first as Deputy General Counsel for HUD's Civil Rights and Litigation office, and then as Assistant Secretary for its …

A Flood-Not A Ripple-Of Harm: Proximate Cause Under The Fair Housing Act, Justin P. Steil, Daniel Traficonte

Cardozo Law Review

Over the past decade, several city governments across the country have filed suits against banks pursuant to the Fair Housing Act seeking redress for municipal damages caused by the banks' discriminatory lending practices. Following the ruling in Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami, lower courts are now confronting the question of where to "draw the line" of proximate causation under the Fair Housing Act, and specifically whether the harms experienced by cities as a result of banks' discriminatory lending meet the requirements of proximate causation. In suggesting a direction for lower courts, the Court in City of …

Prosecuting Chinese "Spies": An Empirical Analysis Of The Economic Espionage Act, Andrew Chongseh Kim

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Guantánamo To Syria: The Extraterritorial Constitution In The Age Of "Extreme Vetting", Shawn E. Fields

Cardozo Law Review

This Article examines for the first time in scholarly literature whether and to what extent the Constitution applies extraterritorially to immigrants abroad. In particular, it explores whether non-detained immigrants and refugees outside the territorial boundaries of the United States can claim constitutional protection to challenge immigration policies and orders. The Supreme Court's recent willingness to reconsider the limits of the political branches' "plenary power" over immigration law and policy, coupled with the Court's recent extension of the Constitution to certain classes of extraterritorial noncitizens, suggests that a future role may exist for extraterritorial jurisprudence to inform constitutional immigration law. Using …

Rape In Context: Lessons For The United States From The International Criminal Court, Caroline Davidson

Cardozo Law Review

The law of rape is getting a rewrite. Domestically and internationally, major efforts are underway to reform rape laws that have failed to live up to their promises of seeking justice for victims and deterring future sexual violence. The cutting edge of international criminal law on rape eschews inquiries into consent and instead embraces an examination of coercion or a coercive environment. By contrast, in the United States, rape reform discussions typically center on consent. The American Law Institute's proposed overhaul of the Model Penal Code's provision on sexual assault carves out a middle ground and introduces, in addition to …

(Re)Defining Race: Addressing The Consequences Of The Law's Failure To Define Race, Destiny Peery

Cardozo Law Review

Modern lawmakers and courts have consistently avoided discussing how to define race for legal purposes even in areas of law tasked regularly with making decisions that require them. This failure to define what race is in legal contexts specifically requiring such determinations, and in the law more broadly, creates problems for multiple actors in the legal system, from plaintiffs deciding whether to pursue claims of discrimination, lawyers deciding how to argue cases, and legal decision-makers deciding cases where race is not only relevant but often central to the legal question at hand. This Article considers the hesitance to engage with …

The Constitutionality Of Racially Integrative Purpose, Elise C. Boddie

Cardozo Law Review

The article explores the constitutionality of policies that are race-neutral on their face but are designed to include historically marginalized racial groups, arguing that such policies are presumptively constitutional. The author suggests that the Supreme Court, influenced by Justice Kennedy's opinions, is increasingly accepting these policies as constitutional if they promote racial integration without using race-specific means.

Human Capital Discrimination, Law Firm Inequality, And The Limits Of Title Vii, Kevin Woodson

Cardozo Law Review

This Article advances the legal scholarship on workplace inequality through use of evidence derived from interviews of a sample of black attorneys who have worked in large, predominantly white law firms. It does so by calling attention to the manner in which these firms operate as sites of human capital discrimination-patterns of mistreatment that deprive many black associates of access to the substantive work opportunities crucial to their professional development and career advancement. This Article identifies the specific arrangements and practices within these firms that facilitate human capital discrimination and describes the varied, often subtle harms and burdens that they …