Law and Race Commons^™

Ignoring The Sexualization Of Race: Heteronormativity, Critical Race Theory And Anti-Racist Politics, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action And Discrimination, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The contemporary debate about race in the United States is perplexing. Each side seems genuinely to feel distressed at the demands being made by the other. Racial minorities point to Dred Scott's insistence on racial castes, Plessy's endorsement of official segregation, and Brown's reluctance to remedy unlawful discrimination as evidence that the white majority is inevitably inclined to advance its own interests at minority expense. Minority group members, therefore, tend to argue that the only way to arrest this majoritarian inclination is through the use of race-conscious remedial programs that will ensure an equitable distribution of resources. Most members of …

The African American, Latino, And Native American Graduates Of One American Law School, 1970-1996, David L. Chambers, Richard O. Lempert, Terry K. Adams

Articles

In the spring of 1965, only one African American student and no Latino students attended the University of Michigan Law School. At the time, Michigan, like most American law schools, was a training place for white males. In 1966, the law school faculty adopted a new admissions policy that took race into account as a plus factor in the admissions process. This policy of affirmative action has taken many forms over the years, but, across the decades of the 1970's, the 1980's and the 1990's, about 800 African Americans, 350 Latinos, 200 Asian Americans and 100 Native Americans have graduated …

Doing Well And Doing Good: The Careers Of Minority And White Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School, David L. Chambers, Richard O. Lempert, Terry K. Adams

Articles

Of the more than 1,000 law students attending the University of Michigan Law School in the spring of 1965, only one was African American. The Law School faculty, in response, decided to develop a program to attract more African American students. One element of this program was the authorization of a deliberately race-conscious admissiosn process. By the mid-1970s, at least 25 African American students were represented in each graduating class. By the late 1970s, Latino and Native American students were included in the program as well. Over the nearly three decades between 1970 and 1998, the admissions efforts and goals …

Redressing The Imbalances: Rethinking The Judicial Role After R. V R.D.S., Dianne Pothier, Richard Devlin

Dianne Pothier Collection

The Decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. R.D.S. dealt with whether a trial judge's comments, about interactions between police officers and "non-white groups", gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias in the circumstances. They strongly criticize the contrary ruling of the dissent as inappropriately drawing a false dichotomy between decisions based on evidence and decisions based on generalizations, and as improperly ignoring social context with an unwarranted confidence in the ideology of colour blindness. While more supportive of the majority's analysis, the authors also find cause for concern, with somewhat different emphasis in the nature …

Latinos, Assimilation And The Law: A Philosophical Perspective, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Although Latinos have been in the United States for many years, they have not been completely assimilated into mainstream American society. Separate Latino enclaves, as well as unique Latino cultural practices, demonstrate that Latinos have not fully assimilated. This article responds to those who advocate the use of legal means to ensure Latino assimilation. This article argues that one should reject pressure to assimilate, and instead recognize the worth of distinctive cultural traditions of Latinos and other minorities. Moreover, this article uses philosophical literature to designate important limits on the demand for Latinos and others to assimilate into dominant society. …

Crossover Dreams: The Roots Of Latcrit Theory In Chicana/O Studies Activism And Scholarship, Kevin R. Johnson, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

As the century comes to a close, critical Latina/o theory has branched off from Critical Race Theory. This article considers how this burgeoning body of scholarship finds its roots in a long tradition of Chicana/o activism and scholarship, particularly the work of Chicana/o Studies scholar-activists. In the critical study of issues of enduring significance to the greater Latina/o community, we owe a deep intellectual debt to the generations of scholarship focusing on Chicana/os in the United States.

This praise might strike some knowledgeable observers as odd. Chicana/o Studies developed with an exclusive focus on the subordination of persons of Mexican …

Apartheid As A Crime Against Humanity: A Submission To The South African Truth And Reconciliation Commission, Ronald C. Slye

Michigan Journal of International Law

The question of whether apartheid is a crime against humanity might seem an odd one for many people living outside South Africa-and indeed for the vast majority of people living inside South Africa. With the recent demise of legalized apartheid in South Africa, one might ask if apartheid's status under international law has any contemporary relevance beyond a small group of legal academics. The status of apartheid under international law-in particular whether apartheid constitutes a crime against humanity-is a question that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission ("TRC") was obligated to address in its final report.

Testimony, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Do Minorities Really Benefit? The Untold Truth About Vouchers, Marie A. Galindo

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming

Measuring Gender Equity, Alfred Dennis Mathewson, Robert D. Rogers

Faculty Scholarship

It is our intent to provide some insight into the development of compliance plans with an eye toward a university's athletic program policy. In Part I, we explore conventional attempts to measure relative demand and its use in litigated cases. In Part II, we describe the measurement instrument we used to conduct the empirical study. Our study is distinguished from conventional efforts in two respects.2 7 First, we did not seek to measure the number of athletes with interest and ability. Rather we sought to measure the relative amounts of athletic participation that would be consumed if a university satisfied …

Global Issues In Compensatory Justice: Introduction, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Shedding Some Light On Lending: The Effect Of Expanded Disclosure Laws On Home Mortgage Marketing, Lending And Discrimination In The New York Metropolitan Area, Richard D. Marsico

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Surviving Title Vii: Defending Municipal Residency Requirements In Minority Communities, Erika L. Wood

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Expert Report Of Robert B. Webster, Robert B. Webster

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The author’s opinions are based primarily upon knowledge and insight gained in the forty years in which he has been a practicing attorney, counselor, arbitrator, mediator, bar officer, and state court judge. Webster’s opinions are also based in part upon materials described in Section IV.B, within.

Transnational Critical Race Scholarship: Transcending Ethnic And National Chauvinism In The Era Of Globalization, Ibrahim J. Gassama

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Eric Yamamoto's article, Critical Race Praxis: Race Theory and Political Lawyering Practice in Post-Civil Rights America, brings a needed perspective to scholarship seeking to place domestic social justice struggles within the context of a broader and more complex mix of forces at play. While Yamamoto does not highlight a critical transnational perspective in this particular article, he writes from a perspective that presumes transnational analysis is essential in making sense of the socio-economic and political forces affecting our lives as individuals and members of multiple, intersecting communities. The local, the national, and the international are inextricably bound and present …

Lawyering For Social Change: What's A Lawyer To Do?, Kevin R. Johnson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article analyzes two questions that are raised by Professor Yamamoto's provocative article. Part I argues that any significant transformation of the social structure of United States society is far more likely to occur through mass political movements than through litigation. Consequently, advocates of social change, especially those trained in law, should not expect too much reform from the courtrooms. They instead should consider how traditional legal action might complement and encourage-not replace-community activism and political involvement. Put simply, an exclusive focus on litigation will not accomplish fully the desired objective. Part II contends that attorneys' ethical duties to their …

Expert Report Of Kent D. Syverud, Kent D. Syverud

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Expert report from an educator with experience teaching many students in many settings; particular experience teaching the same subject matter to classes that are racially homogenous and racially heterogeneous, and to classes where non-white students make up a tiny fraction of the enrolled students and where their numbers are more significant.

Rejoinder (Response To Article By William G. Bowen And Derek Bok), Terrance Sandalow

Articles

In The Shape of the River, presidents Bowen and Bok pronounce the race-sensitive admission policies adopted by selective undergraduate schools a resounding success. The evidence they adduce in support of that conclusion primarily concerns the performance of African-American students in and after college. But not all African-American students in those institutions were admitted in consequence of minority preference policies. Some, perhaps many, would have been admitted under race-neutral policies. I argued at several points in my review that since these students might be expected to be academically more successful than those admitted because of their race, the evidence on which …

Not Him, Sister's Stories & Teresita (Poems), Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Commercial And Corporate Lawyers 'N The Hood, Alfred Dennis Mathewson

Faculty Scholarship

I shall begin the development of this proposition with a theme from a "Last Lecture" I was asked to deliver by the UNM Campus Ministries several years ago. I was asked to pretend that I would die immediately after giving the lecture. I opened the lecture with a story my mother used to tell us about the time she was traveling on Trailways with two of my older brothers, then toddlers. The bus driver asked her to move to the back of the bus. She had not wanted to get up but decided that compliance with the demand was in …

Emphasizing Torts In Claims Of Discrimination Against Black Female Athletes, Alfred Dennis Mathewson

Faculty Scholarship

In Black Women, Gender Equity and the Function at the Junction, I argued that an equality-based legal regime does not provide an adequate remedy for African-American female athletes. Instead I suggested that a tort-based regime may be more appropriate. I did so knowing that gender and racial discrimination are torts and I did not intend to suggest otherwise. They are statutory torts founded upon equality principles. What I intended was to draw more upon the general tort principles involved in an antidiscrimination action. I specifically invoked the notion of using mass tort theories. I wish to sketch a brief but …

A Comparative Analysis Of Women's Issues: Toward A Contextualized Approach, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

"This Article proposes a methodology for comparative analysis of women's rights using insights from critical race theory and feminism. Comparative analysis by a Western scholar must reconcile a perspective developed in the United States with respect for another culture. In discussing women's rights, lawyers, judges, students and sociologists have justified certain women's situations as an inherent aspect of culture. For example, traditional "female genital surgery" has been defended as a "mere bodily mutilation" that is the "sine qua non of the whole teaching of tribal law, religion, and morality." In Mexico, "machismo" has been justified as an immutable characteristic of …

Tricky Magic: Blacks As Immigrants And The Paradox Of Foreignness, Lolita K. Buckner Inniss

Publications

Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the "outsider." Many whites could look at the social position of blacks and feel that color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not American. Perhaps that is why one of the first epithets that many …

Caste, Class, And Equal Citizenship, William E. Forbath

Michigan Law Review

There is a familiar egalitarian constitutional tradition and another we have largely forgotten. The familiar one springs from Brown v. Board of Education; its roots lie in the Reconstruction era. Court-centered and countermajoritarian, it takes aim at caste and racial subordination. The forgotten one also originated with Reconstruction, but it was a majoritarian tradition, addressing its arguments to lawmakers and citizens, not to courts. Aimed against harsh class inequalities, it centered on decent work and livelihoods, social provision, and a measure of economic independence and democracy. Borrowing a phrase from its Progressive Era proponents, I will call it the social …

Minority Preferences Reconsidered, Terrance Sandalow

Reviews

During the academic year 1965-66, at the height of the civil rights movement, the University of Michigan Law School faculty looked around and saw not a single African-American student. The absence of any black students was not, it should hardly need saying, attributable to a policy of purposeful exclusion. A black student graduated from the Law School as early as 1870, and in the intervening years a continuous flow of African-American students, though not a large number, had been admitted and graduated. Some went on to distinguished careers in the law.

Chain Gangs, Boogeymen And Other Real Prisons Of The Imagination, Lisa Kelly

Articles

This narrative is a fictionalized account of real legal, historical, and interpersonal issues rooted in the social construction of race.

In The Wake Of Hopwood: An Update On Affirmative Action In The Education Arena, Carla Pratt

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

The World Refugee Regime In Crisis: A Failure To Fulfill The Burden-Sharing And Humanitarian Requirements Of The 1951 Refugee Convention, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Musarat-Akram provided several examples which illustrate the crisis of the international refugee regime. Specifically, they illustrate, first, that the protections offered so generously in the language and purpose of the 1951 Refugee Convention⁷ are more European and-Western-centered than ever before.

Second, they illustrate some of the restrictionist policies by which Western and industrialized states have succeeded in confining huge refugee flows to the most impoverished and least developed states in the world.

Third, they illustrate that the initial limitations inherent in the 1951 Refugee Convention have now been exacerbated by state practice which interprets the Convention language and …

The Private Law Of Race And Sex: An Antebellum Perspective, Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

In this article, Professor Adrienne D. Davis traces the interaction of race, sex, and estate law in the antebellum and postbellum South. Through a close analysis of intestate succession and testamentary transfers involving the formerly enslaved, she unearths the role of private law in reconciling and preserving both property rights and racial hierarchy. The article centers on a series of historical case studies involving the rights of formerly enslaved women and their children to postmortem transfers of wealth. While the law of private property generally served to reinforce racial hierarchy, these cases involved the use of property rights -- specifically, …