Law and Race Commons^™

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 …

The Just Prosecutor, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

As the most powerful actors in our criminal legal system, prosecutors have been and remain one of the principal drivers of mass incarceration. This was and is by design. Prosecutorial power derives from our constitutional structure--prosecutors are given almost unfettered discretion to determine who to charge, what to charge, and, often, what the sentence will be. Within that structure, the prosecutor's duty is to ensure that justice is done. Yet, in exercising their outsized power, some prosecutors have fully embraced a secondary, adversarial role as a partisan advocate at the significant cost of seeking justice.

The necessary reforms of our …

Cancelling Justice? The Case Of James Clark Mcreynolds, Todd C. Peppers

Scholarly Articles

Over the last several years, there has been a vigorous debate as to whether monuments and memorials of Confederate leaders and controversial historical figures should be purged from the public square. These conversations have included former Supreme Court justices and have led to the removal of multiple statues of former Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the infamous “Dred Scott” decision. Drawing on the arguments mounted for and against the removal of statues, this article explores the decision of a small liberal arts college to strip the name of former Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds from a campus building. …

A Reckoning Over Law Faculty Inequality, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

Below, I review Dr. Meera E. Deo’s book, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia, published last year by Stanford University Press. In Unequal Profession, Deo, an expert on institutional diversity, presents findings from a first-of-its-kind empirical study, documenting many of the challenges women of color law faculty confront daily in legal academia. Deo uses memorable quotes and powerful stories from the study’s faculty participants to present her important work in 169 readable and revealing pages. Unequal Profession begins by outlining the barriers women of color face when entering law teaching and progresses through the life cycle …

Abolishing Racist Policing With The Thirteenth Amendment, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

This Essay was also published online at 67 UCLA L. Rev. Disc. 200 (2020).

Policing in America has always been about controlling the Black body. Indeed, modern policing was birthed and nurtured by white supremacy; its roots are found in slavery. Policing today continues to protect and serve the racial hierarchy blessed by the Constitution itself. But a string of U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving the Thirteenth Amendment offers Congress a tool with which to target institutions that have preserved social, political, and official norms associated with slavery. In those cases, the Supreme Court held that Congress has broad enforcement …

Invisible Histories & The Failure Of Protected Classes, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

Our legal history suggests that the evolution of our discrimination law has been and likely should be the continuing enumeration of protected classes. There is, however, a counter-intuitive problem: protecting specific groups suggests to the public that everyone else is fair game, providing implicit legitimacy to other harmful stereotypes. To illustrate this problem this article constructs the legal history of stereotypes and prejudicial acts against Appalachians, a marginalized group that does not fit neatly in the protected categories. Considering then how our courts have treated the relationship between stereotypes and discrimination, along with recent sociological evidence, this article suggests that …

Seven Principles: Increasing Access To Law School Among Students Of Color, Catherine E. Smith

Scholarly Articles

In Fall 2010, I became one of the first tenured professors in the nation to hold a deanship dedicated exclusively to diversity in a school of law. As the Associate Dean of Institutional Diversity and Inclusiveness at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law ("SCOL"), I am charged with strengthening access to the legal academy, particularly among, but not limited to, students and faculty of color. This Essay describes the evolution of my role and the seven principles that currently guide student pipeline and recruitment efforts at the SCOL. These principles help the SCOL focus those efforts, work strategically, …

William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.: Breaking The Color Barrier At The U.S. Supreme Court, Todd C. Peppers

Scholarly Articles

The purpose of this essay is twofold: It will endeavor to succinctly summarize the important events of Coleman’s life and professional career, while making the argument that these achievements were as groundbreaking in the legal community as Robinson’s were to baseball. Admittedly, looking to our national pastime is hardly an original literary maneuver; The myriad similarities and links between baseball and the law have offered rich material for many legal writers.2 Moreover, this article does not wish to diminish Coleman’s accomplishments by comparing them to a mere “game.” By drawing upon the sixtieth anniversary of Robinson’s debut, my hope is …

Queer As Black Folk, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

LGBT discourse that frames homophobia as being the same as racism reinforces homophobia, racism, and sexism. Although sameness arguments may be effective in some instances, such arguments are not the optimal approach to an interracial dialogue on LGBT issues, especially if the participants in the conversation have not had an opportunity to build mutual respect and trust. In order to unify subordinated groups, we must reframe the discussion around superordinate goals.

At the societal level, advocates must come to see that we-LGBT people, black people, and those of us who live at the intersections thereof-do not have to be the …

Reparations, Social Reconciliation, And The Significance Of Place: A Legal And Philosophical Examination Of Indigenous Cases In The United States And Their Global Implications, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

During genocide, populations are frequently displaced from their homelands. In the process of reparations, displacement is often viewed as a problem of shelter, food, and safety. In this framework, land is treated as an economic commodity—any given piece of land is interchangeable with another or for money. This approach is a product of Enlightenment thinking, which emphasizes the rights of the individual over communal rights to land, and conceptualizes land and social identity as strongly separated. This Enlightenment framework of rights, and the accompanying de-emphasis of place, is particularly strong in the United States. Because American legal principles have played …

The Group Dangers Of Race-Based Conspiracies, Catherine E. Smith

Scholarly Articles

This article argues that just as federal courts recognize the group dangers of criminal conspiracies, they should recognize the special group dangers of race-based conspiracies, and hold racist corporate officers accountable for racially motivated intracorporate conspiracies under § 1985(3). If the defendants in Dickerson had been found guilty of the most basic federal criminal conspiracy, such as conspiring to defraud the government, they would have been sentenced accordingly because the majority of circuits reject the application of the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine to criminal conspiracies. The federal courts do not immunize intracorporate criminal conspiracies because "the action by an incorporated collection …

(Un)Masking Race-Based Intracorporate Conspiracies Under The Ku Klux Klan Act, Catherine E. Smith

Scholarly Articles

The intracorporate conspiracy doctrine should not be applicable to § 1985(3) conspiracies. Section 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act was designed to specifically challenge collective action and eliminate the many ways in which individuals conspired to engage in civil rights violations. Some commentators may argue that race-based intracorporate agreements are actionable under other federal antidiscrimination laws and state causes of actions. However, § 1985(3) fulfills a unique role in the national comprehensive civil rights scheme to eliminate different forms of bias-motivated and discriminatory actions. As the only federal civil conspiracy statute that punishes individuals who use collective resources to …

Affirmative Action In Question: A Coherent Theory For Section 15(2), Mark A. Drumbl, John D.R. Craig

Scholarly Articles

Affirmative action programs are constitutionally protected in Canada under section 15(2) of the Charter. This section has received little judicial interpretation and, consequently, no coherent approach to the interpretation of section 15(2) has been developed. Furthermore, there is an urgent need to define the meaning of section 15(2), as affirmative action programs can be used to perpetuate stereotypes and discrimination while being given a blanket endorsement through section 15(2). The authors suggest that section 15(2) does not merely promote substantive equality, as this is the function of section 15(1), but embodies the social justice conception of equality, which allocates social …