Law and Race Commons^™

A Crisis Of Confidence And Legal Theory: Why The Economic Downturn Should Help Signal The End Of The Doctrine Of Efficient Breach, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

To understand subprime behavior and efficient breaches, it is imperative to first examine the necessary social predicate for economic transactions. Accordingly, Part I will offer an overview of society and the market, highlighting the importance of reciprocity and trust to both. Part II will define the economic transactions implicated by this Article: basic contracting, efficient breach of contract, and the subprime behavior of the current economic crisis. Part III will make explicit the nexus between subprime behavior and efficient breaches by explaining that subprime behavior and efficient breaches are linked by shared elements; they are opportunistic in nature, are interested …

Pot As Pretext: Marijuana, Race, And The New Disorder In New York City Street Policing, Amanda Geller, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Although possession of small quantities of marijuana has been decriminalized in New York State since the late 1970s, arrests for marijuana possession in New York City have increased more than tenfold since the mid-1990s, and remain high more than 10 years later. This rise has been a notable component of the city’s “Order Maintenance Policing” strategy, designed to aggressively target low-level offenses, usually through street interdictions known as “stop, question, and frisk” activity. We analyze data on 2.2 million stops and arrests carried out from 2004 to 2008, and identify significant racial disparities in the implementation of marijuana enforcement. These …

Incarceration And The Economic Fortunes Of Urban Neighborhoods, Jeffrey Fagan, Valerie West

Faculty Scholarship

New research has identified the consequences of high rates of incarceration on neighborhood crime rates, but few studies have looked beyond crime to examine the collateral effects of incarceration on the social and economic well being of the neighborhoods themselves and their residents. We assess two specific indicia of neighborhood economic well-being, household income and human capital, dimensions that are robust predictors of elevated crime, enforcement and incarceration rates. We decompose incarceration effects by neighborhood racial composition and socio-economic conditions to account for structural disadvantages in labor force and access to wealth that flow from persistent patterns of residential segregation. …

Class, Classes, And Classic Race Baiting: What’S In A Definition?, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Amber Fricke

Faculty Scholarship

Overall, in this Article, we briefly lay out each of our challenges to Sander's arguments in Class in American Legal Education. In Part I, we first address the very problems that Sander's article highlights about the difficulties of defining class and SES, problems that may make classbased affirmative action programs less feasible and effective than Sander suggests. In so doing, we identify what we consider to be defects in Sander's class/SES groupings. We also highlight the complexities around class and race that already exist within law student populations, answering in part the important questions about to whom black law students …

Originalism's Race Problem, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

For all its proponents' claims of its necessity as a means of constraining judges, originalism is remarkably unpopular outside the United States. Recommended responses to judicial activism in other countries more typically take the form of minimalism or textualism. This Article considers why. Ifocus particular attention on the political and constitutional histories of Canada and Australia, nations that, like the United States, have well-established traditions of judicial enforcement of a written constitution, and that share with the United States a common law adjudicative norm, but whose political and legal cultures less readily assimilate judicial restraint to constitutional historicism. I offer …

Minority Practice, Majority's Burden: The Death Penalty Today, James S. Liebman, Peter Clarke

Faculty Scholarship

Although supported in principle by two-thirds of the public and even more of the States, capital punishment in the United States is a minority practice when the actual death-sentencing practices of the nation's 3000-plus counties and their populations are considered This feature of American capital punishment has been present for decades, has become more pronounced recently, and is especially clear when death sentences, which are merely infrequent, are distinguished from executions, which are exceedingly rare.

The first question this Article asks is what forces account for the death-proneness of a minority of American communities? The answer to that question – …

Twenty Years Of Critical Race Theory: Looking Back To Move Forward, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

This Article revisits the history of Critical Race Theory (CRT) through a prism that highlights its historical articulation in light of the emergence of postracialism. The Article will explore two central inquiries. This first query attends to the specific contours of law as the site out of which CRT emerged. The Article hypothesizes that legal discourse presented a particularly legible template from which to demystify the role of reason and the rule of law in upholding the racial order. The second objective is to explore the contemporary significance of CRT's trajectory in light of today's "post-racial" milieu. The Article posits …

Inside Out, Elizabeth F. Emens

Faculty Scholarship

Russell Robinson has done it again. With Masculinity as Prison: Sexual Identity, Race, and Incarceration, he has given us another provocative Article, which illuminates a phenomenon in the world and, indirectly, in ourselves. The Article represents much of what generally makes Robinson’s work so compelling. First, he writes about tremendously complex subjects and attends to their many complexities in remarkably lucid prose. Second, despite his critical perspective, he does not hesitate to make prescriptive arguments.

In this Article, he even ventures into the hallowed ground of constitutional argument, something he has not done since his first article on race-based …

Stimulus And Civil Rights, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Federal spending has the capacity to perpetuate racial inequality, not simply through explicit exclusion, but through choices made in the legislative and institutional design of spending programs. Drawing on the lessons of New Deal and postwar social programs, this Essay offers an account of the specificfeatures offederal spending that give it salience in structuring racial arrangements. Federal spending programs, this Essay argues, are relevant in structuring racial inequality due to their massive scale, their creation of new programmatic and spending infrastructures, and the choices made in these programs as to whether to impose explicit inclusionary norms on states and localities. …

Discrimination By Comparison, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Contemporary discrimination law is in crisis, both methodologically and conceptually. The crisis arises in large part from the judiciary's dependence on comparators – those who are like a discrimination claimant but for the protected characteristic – as a favored heuristic for observing discrimination. The profound mismatch of the comparator methodology with current understandings of identity discrimination and the realities of the modern workplace has nearly depleted discrimination jurisprudence and theory. Even in run-of-the-mill cases, comparators often cannot be found, particularly in today's mobile, knowledge-based economy. This difficulty is amplified for complex claims, which rest on thicker understandings of discrimination developed …

Reading Charles Black Writing: "The Lawfulness Of The Segregation Decisions" Revisited, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

The year 2010 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Charles L. Black, Jr.'s "The Lawfulness of the Segregation Decisions." Professor Black's magisterial essay on the Supreme Court's 1954-1955 decisions in Brown v. Board of Education and its companion cases is, by any account, a foundational text in the scholarly literature on race and law in the United States. Black's short but searing defense of Brown introduced ideas and arguments about race, about law, and about the law of race that transformed the field. I can think of no better way to celebrate this inaugural issue of the Columbia …

President's Missed Chance With Sikhs, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

Decision to skip temple visit made out of fear, expediency

Report & Recommendations Legal Scholar Team, Margaret E. Montoya, Tucker Culbertson, Marc-Tizoc González

Faculty Scholarship

The Report’s Recommendations for next steps reflect and incorporate the multiple experiences, false starts, insights, frustrations and new beginnings that represent the various ways that diversity works within the different sectors of the legal profession. We have included Recommendations that are already being used as well as some that are ambitious and aspirational. Within each of the four sectors of the profession, the recommendations are broadly categorized, but not prioritized. We recognize that every individual or organization will have its own priorities based on its unique circumstances. We do encourage the Report’s users to select and prioritize recommendations for next …

Civil Rights And The Wartime Supreme Court, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

The following essay was written for our Race and the Supreme Court event by Dawinder S. Sidhu, a founding director of the Discrimination and National Security Initiative at Harvard University. Mr. Sidhu’s work focuses on discrimination against Muslim-Americans and those perceived to be Muslim, and he is coauthor of a book published in 2009 titled Civil Rights in Wartime.

First Korematsu And Now Ashcroft V. Iqbal: The Latest Chapter In The Wartime Supreme Court's Disregard For Claims Of Discrimination, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is concerned with shedding light on Iqbal. It will argue that this relatively obscure legal opinion may be one of the most infamous and harmful to American jurisprudence and individual rights of this generation. In particular, it will argue that (1) the Iqbal Court misapplied the traditional pleading standards that govern motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim in finding Iqbal’s particular complaint deficient and, in doing so, functionally and needlessly heightened those standards;19 and (2) the Court erred in finding unremarkable Iqbal’s allegations that the government engaged in blanket racial profiling of Muslims and Arabs …

Recovering Texas History: Tejanos, Jim Crow, Lynchings & The University Of Texas School Of Law, Jose R. "Beto" Juarez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Forced Sale Risk: Class, Race, And The "Double Discount", Thomas W. Mitchell, Stephen Malpezzi, Richard K. Green

Faculty Scholarship

What impact does a forced sale have upon a property owner's wealth? And do certain characteristics of a property owner such as whether they are rich or poor or whether they are black or white, tend to affect the price yielded at a forced sale? This Article addresses arguments made by some courts and legal scholars who have claimed that certain types of forced sales result in wealth maximizing, economic efficiencies. The Article addresses such economic arguments by returning to first principles and reviewing the distinction between sales conducted under fair market value conditions and sales conducted under forced sale …

Arizona's Notice Of Claim Statute: Guidance On Clearing This Procedural Hurdle And Suggestions For Its Improvement, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

The Arizona Constitution empowers the legislature to establish rules for how and under what circumstances the State may be sued. Pursuant to this constitutional authority, the Arizona State Legislature enacted Arizona Revised Statutes Section 12-821.01, which requires those with claims against an Arizona public entity or employee to file notice of the claims prior to the initiation of legal action. This procedural prerequisite to initiate a suit may be prudent as a matter of public policy. In practice, however, the state courts have been unable to issue reliable decisions with respect to the statute’s requirements. The state courts’ evolving understanding …

The Future Of The United States Commission On Civil Rights, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

In The Future of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Professors Lisa Crooms and Dawinder Sidhu discuss the potential for expanding the mandate of the Commission. Professor Crooms opens by noting that suggestions to expand the Commission’s mandate to include human rights have been around for decades, and argues that such ideas are still worth adopting. She comments that the Commission would have to engage in extensive fact-finding in order to justify such an expansion. Professor Crooms raises further concerns over manipulation of the appointment process for commissioners, but that such manipulation has not necessarily jeopardized the Commission’s role. Indeed, …

Seeking Educational Self-Determination: Raza Studies For Revolution, Margaret E. Montoya, Marcos Pizarro, Monica Nanez, Ray Chavez, Nadine Bermudez

Faculty Scholarship

This article is a multi-textured effort to explain the educational, social justice work of MAESTR@S, an innovative, organic group of educational activists fighting to address the needs of Latina/o youth. It is unlike anything we have ever written and probably unlike anything you are likely to read in an academic journal such as Equity & Excellence in Education.We do not have a well-defined result that we are reporting to you. Instead, we see ourselves on a quest, with a deep concern about the current educational choices facing most raza youth and their teachers, and a commitment to try to work …

The Story Of Bob Jones University V. United States: Race, Religion, And Congress' Extraordinary Acquiescence, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

On May 25, 1983, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had authority to deny tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University, Goldsboro Christian School, and other private and religious schools with racially discriminatory educational policies. The Court relied on the statute’s broad purpose and placed significant weight on Congress’ failure to enact legislation to overturn the IRS policy. A complete account of the legislative history, provided here, both supports and undercuts the Court’s opinion. More importantly, this story provides an account of the dynamic interaction among a Supreme Court critical of racial integration, a …

Pregnant Man: A Conversation, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher, Mary Anne Case, Elizabeth Emens, Berta E. Hernandez-Truyol,, Vivian M. Gutierrez, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Kimberly Mutcherson, Peter Siegelman, Beth Jones

Faculty Scholarship

I'm a law professor who works on gender, sexuality, and culture in the international and comparative context. That's my head working. In "real" life, my partner, Howard, and I have been engaged in having a baby together for several years, a project that came to fruition with the birth of our daughter Melina. Of course, such a project evokes intensely complex feelings and thoughts. Beyond a simple transposition of the personal onto the political, I feel so fortunate to have engaged in myriad conversations with a variety of friends and colleagues who think much more carefully about the family and …

All In The Family, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi

Faculty Scholarship

Your essay “Pregnant Man?” highlights many significant issues concerning the intersection of law, gender, sexuality, race, class, and family. In an earlier article A House Divided: The Invisibility of the Multiracial Family, we explored many of these issues as they relate to multiracial families, including our own. Specifically, we, a black female-white male married couple, analyzed the language in housing discrimination statutes to demonstrate how law and society function together to frame the normative ideal of family as heterosexual and monoracial. Our article examined the daily social privileges of monoracial, heterosexual couples as a means of revealing the invisibility of …

Activating Systemic Change Toward Full Participation: The Pivotal Role Of Boundary Spanning Institutional Intermediaries, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Racial and social justice advocacy is in an era of transition. Race continues to permeate people's lives and to structure the social and economic hierarchy, but often in complicated ways that elude bright line categories. Disparities frequently result from cognitive bias, unequal access to opportunity networks, and other structural dynamics, rather than from intentional exclusion. For example, disparities in access to higher education persist as a result of differences in access, information, resources, networks, and evaluation, which give rise to achievement differentials at each critical turning point affecting successful advancement. These differences accumulate to produce substantial disparities in college participation …

Another Interdisciplinary Collaboration—This Time With A Professor Of German!, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

The University of New Mexico International Studies Institute has a relationship with the German government in which the Institute runs a summer program at a castle near Dusseldorf known as Schloss-Dyck. In summer 2010, I am going to have the privilege of teaching in the program with a Jason Wilby, a UNM visiting Professor of German. We put a joint proposal together. He will teach about the culture, political environment and constitutional framework right after the Weimar Republic was created as a result of WWI. I will teach about the Nuremberg trials, with a particular focus on the trial of …

The Declining Significance Of Presidential Races?, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Osamudia James

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium Essay examines the campaign that led up to the last presidential election to illuminate the complex interplay between race and class within our society. Specifically, it explores how race and class functioned together to disadvantage President Obama in the race to the White House (even as he ultimately won the election). Section II focuses on how Obama’s income, job status, and prestigious education functioned as markers of elitism during the campaign, even as compared to opponents with more elite and wealthier backgrounds, and how these factors were used as tools by his opponents to convince lower-class white voters …

A Medical/Legal Teaching And Assessment Collaboration On Domestic Violence: Assessment Using Standardized Patients/Standardized Clients, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez, Cameron Crandall, Steve Mclaughlin, Diane Rimple, Mary Neidhart, Teresita Mccarty, Lou Clark, Carrie Martell, Gabriel Campos

Faculty Scholarship

Assessment of skills is an important, emerging topic in law school education. Two recent and influential books, Educating Lawyers published by the Carnegie Foundation and Best Practices in Legal Education, published by the Clinical Legal Education Association have both suggested dramatic reform of legal education. Among other reforms, these studies urge law schools to use outcome-based' assessments, i.e., using learning objectives and assessing knowledge and skills in standardized situations based on specific criteria, rather than simply comparing students' performances to each other.

Celebrating Critical Race Theory At 20, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

The year 2009 marks the twentieth anniversary of the first Critical Race Theory (CRT) workshop. On July 8, 1989, more than twenty scholars "who were interested in defining and elaborating on the lived reality of race, and who were open to the aspiration of developing theory" gathered together at a workshop in Madison, Wisconsin. 1 The 1989 workshop, which was spearheaded by Kimberle Crenshaw and organized by her, Neil Gotanda, and Stephanie Phillips, also included as its participants Anita Allen, Taunya Banks, Derrick Bell, Kevin Brown, Paulette Caldwell, John Calmore, Harlon Dalton, Richard Delgado, Linda Greene, Trina Grillo, Isabelle Gunning, …

Commencement Address, Cuny School Of Law, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

Who we are, how we see ourselves, how we want to be seen, what we value, how our memories connect us to specific histories in specific places — we communicate this information best through narratives. In Spanish we sometimes call such stories cuentos — an accounting. I encourage all of you to take time over the next few days to celebrate your graduation, this singular accomplishment of your lives, by accounting — by telling stories to those who have helped you, held you up, fed you, wiped your tears, paid your bills. Share your recollections.

Madison In Post-9/11 Cyberspace: Applying Federalist No. 10 To The Online Battle For ‘Hearts And Minds’, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

To be sure, there are at least a few problems with the approach of drawing upon the Framers for guidance with respect to the issues of the day. First, the Framers did not reach consensus on all matters. The famous rivalry between the Alexander Hamilton, a staunch nationalist from New York who favored a strong federal banking system and central government, and Jefferson, a republican from Virginia who preferred an agrarian lifestyle and trusted the people to do right by American society, perhaps best illustrates the fact that the Framers themselves were not in lockstep as to the makeup of …