Law and Race Commons^™

Fostering Resilience And Belonging In Marginalized Law Students, Carol Pauli

Carol Pauli

No abstract provided.

Justice For Rodney King, Scott C. Burrell, Alan R. Dial, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

May 1992 letter from three Howard University School of Law students to President George H.W. Bush advocating that the United States Department of Justice invoke the Petite Policy to initiate a criminal action against the Los Angeles Police Department police officers responsible for brutally beating Rodney King despite the fact that these offers had been acquitted in a California state court. The letter, which was read in front of the White House by Thomas Mitchell to hundreds of people who had gathered to urge the federal government to take action, sets forth a clear legal basis to permit the Justice …

Destabilizing The Normalization Of Rural Black Land Loss: A Critical Role For Legal Empiricism, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

Mitchell's study exemplifies the New Legal Realist goal of combining qualitative and quantitative empirical research to shed light on important legal and policy issues. He also demonstrates the utility of a ground-level contextual analysis that examines legal problems from the bottom up. The study tracks processes by which black rural landowners have gradually been dispossessed of more than 90% of the land held by their predecessors in 1910. Mitchell points out that despite the continuing practices that contribute to this problem, there has been very little research on the issue, and what little attention legal scholars have paid to it …

Growing Inequality And Racial Economic Gaps, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

Over the past several decades, economic inequality has grown dramatically in the United States while inter-generational economic mobility has declined, which has challenged the very notion of the "American Dream." In fact, the United States is more economically unequal than most other industrialized countries. Further, there are dramatic and growing racial economic gaps in this country. Despite the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the various spinoffs it has catalyzed, there has not been any sustained, widespread social movement to address economic inequality in the United States over the course of the past several decades. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a …

From Reconstruction To Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, And Community Through Partition Sales Of Tenancies In Common, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

This article considers one of the primary ways in which African Americans have lost millions of acres of land that they were able to acquire in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning part of the twentieth century and the sociopolitical implications of this land loss. Specifically, this article highlights the fact that forced partition sales of tenancy in common property, referred to more commonly as heirs' property, have been a major source of black land loss within the African American community. The article argues that involuntary black land loss has had a significant negative impact upon …

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

Thomas W. Mitchell

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 …

Hip-Hop And Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power, And Law, Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

U.S. housing law is finally receiving its due attention. Scholars and practitioners are focused primarily on the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crises. Yet the current recession has also resurrected the debate about the efficacy of place-based lawmaking. Place-based laws direct economic resources to low-income neighborhoods to help existing residents remain in place and to improve those areas. Law-and-economists and staunch integrationists attack place-based lawmaking on economic and social grounds. This Article examines the efficacy of place-based lawmaking through the underutilized prism of culture. Using a sociolegal approach, it develops a theory of cultural collective efficacy as a justification for place-based …

Education Rights And Wrongs: Publicly Funded Vouchers, State Consitutions, And Education Death Spirals, Michael Heise

Michael Heise

No abstract provided.

Colonialism And Constitutional Memory, Aziz Rana

Aziz Rana

The United States shares a number of basic traits with various British settler societies in the nonwhite world. These include longstanding histories in which colonists and their descendants divided legal, political, and economic rights between insiders and subordinated outsiders, be they expropriated indigenous groups or racial minorities. But Americans rarely think of themselves as part of an imperial family of settler polities and instead generally conceive of the country as quintessentially anti-imperial and inclusive. What explains this fact and what are its political consequences? This Article offers an initial response, arguing that a significant reason is the symbolic power of …

Law Enforcement And White Power: An F.B.I. Report Unraveled, 41 T. Marshall L. Rev. 103 (2015), Samuel Vincent Jones

Samuel V. Jones

Because of intensifying civil strife over the recent killings of unarmed Black men, women, and boys, many Americans are wondering, “What's wrong with our police?” Remarkably, one of the most compelling but unexplored explanations may rest with an FBI warning of October, 2006, which reported that “[W]hite supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” represented a significant national threat.

Societal Connection Between Blackness And Criminality Leads To Violence Against Innocent, Casey Bohrman

Casey Bohrman

No abstract provided.

Between Black And White: The Coloring Of Asian Americans, 14 Wash. U. Global Stud. L. Rev. 637 (2015), Kim D. Chanbonpin

Kim D. Chanbonpin

As in other ethnic and racial groups, colorism plays a significant role in the social interactions in and among Asian Americans. Investigating colorism in the Asian American community provides insights into how group members construct their own racial identities in relation to the broader race-stratified society. A colorism inquiry is a necessary intervention into the existing discourse of Asian American identity construction because it complicates common understandings of the Black/White binary in ways that shed new light on inter- and intra-racial relationships. This article addresses colorism in the Asian American community, and demonstrates both how Asian Americans have been racialized …

A Civil Rights Remembrance, Carol Pauli

Carol Pauli

No abstract provided.

Welfare Queens And White Trash, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Myth: Hard Work And Credentials Determine Employment Opportunities

Alev Dudek

Power, Economics And The 'Islamic Terrorism' Narrative, Alev Dudek

Alev Dudek

The Way Of Colorinsight: Understanding Race And Law Effectively Through Mindfulness-Based Colorinsight Practices., Rhonda Magee

Rhonda V Magee

Most of us know that, despite the counsel of the current Supreme Court, colorblindness is not, by itself, an effective remedy against racism. This is so because it does not comport with our cognitive (or social) experience of the real world. Thus, legal scholars, backed by cognitive scientists, have called for a move from colorblindness to color insight -- defined as an understanding of race and its pervasive operation in our lives and in the law. This Article is the first to explore the role of research-grounded mindfulness-based contemplative practices in enhancing what may be called ColorInsight, and to suggest …

Racial Emotions And The Feeling Of Equality, Janine Young Kim

Janine Kim

Moral Judgments, Expressive Functions, And Bias In Immigration Law, Emily Ryo

Emily Ryo

In a lucid and trenchant style characteristic of Professor Hiroshi Motomura’s writing, Immigration Outside the Law offers rich descriptive and prescriptive analyses of three major themes underlying debates about unauthorized migration: the meaning of unlawful presence, state and local involvement in the regulation of unauthorized migration, and the integration of unauthorized migrants into American society. This review advances several ideas that I argue are important to understanding these key themes. In brief, I suggest that a more comprehensive understanding of public debates about unauthorized migration requires examining lay moral judgments about unlawful presence, the expressive functions of immigration law, and …