Law and Race Commons^™

Flattening The Eviction Curve: Lessons From Los Angeles About Tenant Protection During A Pandemic (And Beyond), Kaimipono D. Wenger

Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law

Health policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic often focused on “flattening the curve.” Health officials and politicians took steps to try to limit the number of people who were sick at any one time, to protect hospitals from being overwhelmed by a flood of patients. Some legal responses to evictions during this time were based on a similar rationale.

Similar to public health concerns around Covid-19, tenant advocates were concerned with the possibility that economic effects of the pandemic could lead to a “tsunami” of evictions hitting all at once and overwhelming legal advocates and tenant communities. Tenant advocates argued …

"Have You Met My Lawyer?" And "Making Lists Of What Was Lost", Kirsten Anderson

Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law

The theme of what justice looks like for those experiencing homelessness finds expression in two poems by social justice lawyer and poet Kirsten Anderson. Based on her nearly two decades of representing clients experiencing homelessness, she explores the nature of the client-lawyer relationship in a society where lawyers are usually only available to persons with wealth and power. Both poems explore the consequences of housing not being recognized as a human right—given visible expression in a humanitarian crisis of homelessness in a country where the rent is unaffordable for more than half the population.

The first poem, “Have you met …

Los Angeles Encampments, Christopher Chinn

Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law

My most recent work is not created in the shelter of a studio, but outside on the streets of my community and city. This on-going body of work challenges the accepted practice of “en plein air” painting by presenting not the picturesque and beautiful, but ugly and dirty places most avoid at great length, and do not wish to even see, encampments of Los Angeles’s unhoused residents. Painting is slow. The people who live in the tents and bivouacs that I paint are often very curious and ask me about what I am doing. In this way my work opens …

Beyond The Flames: Housing Justice And Rebuilding After The Wildfires, Michala Storms, Awoenam Mauna-Woanya, Christopher Chinn, Kaimipono D. Wenger

Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law

The speakers for this symposium explored the intersection of housing justice and the legal and policy obstacles encountered in rebuilding efforts in Los Angeles following the devastating wildfires. The wildfires burned more than 55,000 acres. That's approximately the size of Los Angeles city. Destroyed over 16,251 structures and has claimed at least 29 lives. These fires were the most catastrophic in all of Los Angeles County's history. The speakers discussed the challenges faced by displaced communities amid ongoing housing shortages, as well as the broader implications for housing policy and zoning. The conversation examined how attorneys, policy makers and the …

Letter From The Editors, Michael Green & Emily Epstein

Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law

No abstract provided.

Myths And Magical Thinking: American Civil Religion, The Establishment Clause, And “Codified Irrationality” In Anti-Crt Measures, Kyle Reinhard

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In Part I, I preview some of the overlapping tensions in U.S. public schooling created by the occasionally competing mandates of education federalism and democratic theory; describe the current state of the law with respect to the constitutionality of state and local governments seeking to inculcate (allegedly) prosocial community values in curriculum; and consider how battles over the meaning of “patriotism” through the decades show that ideology and religion often blend—and still, inevitably, make it—into the public square broadly nonetheless.

In Part II, I describe how religion is a useful tool, both descriptively and as a constitutional jurisprudential framework, …

Whose Right(S)?: Civil Rights Impact Of Cultural Conflicts In The Curriculum, S. David Mitchell

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Opponents of anti-woke legislation have challenged the presumption that the topics being taught are divisive or designed to indoctrinate students with a liberal or Left leaning ideology. Instead, they argue that these topics tell the unvarnished history of the United States. Furthermore, opponents have also challenged the asserted legality and validity of anti-woke legislation, arguing that the legislation infringes upon the First Amendment, specifically students’ and teachers’ academic freedom, students’ right to learn, and parents’ right to direct and control the education of their children. Unlike other controversial topics such as sexual education, which are taught in courses that …

From Freedom Schools To Freedom: A New Vision Of Desegregation, Joseph Kim

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

I begin with Part I, where I hone in on the school integration movement of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. I start at Brown v. Board of Education. When asked about Brown, most if not all people associate it with the racial integration of segregated public schools and the demise of Plessy v. Ferguson’s separate-but-equal doctrine. However, importantly, I argue that racial integration was not necessarily required by Brown. Rather than mandating racial integration of segregated schools, Brown mandated desegregation of segregated schools. The distinction between “desegregation” and “racial integration” is an important one. While …

Generative Suspicion And The Risks Of Ai-Assisted Police Reports, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Northwestern University Law Review

Police reports play a central role in the criminal justice system. Many times, police reports exist as the only official memorialization of what happened during an incident, shaping probable cause determinations, pretrial detention decisions, motions to suppress, plea bargains, and trial strategy. For over a century, human police officers wrote the factual narratives that shaped the trajectory of individual cases and organized the entire legal system.

This practice is about to change with the creation of AI-assisted police reports. Today, with the click of a button, large language models (LLMs), a type of generative AI using predictive text capabilities, can …

Promising The First Amendment: (De)Regulating Speech In Higher Education, Max M. Schanzenbach, Kimberly A. Yuracko

Northwestern University Law Review

The war between Hamas and Israel has caused havoc in higher education. Amid student unrest, alumni pressure, congressional hearings, civil rights investigations, and student lawsuits, universities stand at a crossroads. The current situation, in which most private universities unevenly regulate student speech under ambiguous student codes, is not sustainable politically or legally. A tsunami of litigation and regulatory actions has already begun. One increasingly favored response is for private universities to more vigorously enforce existing codes or expand their scope. An alternative is for private universities to deregulate student expression and commit by contract to the First Amendment. This Article …

Much Ado About Critical Race Theory, Matthew Patrick Shaw

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article offers novel observation and critical intervention in the challenge to state laws which have been adopted, allegedly, to prevent the teaching of critical race theory

(CRT) in public schools. Against the trend of recent scholarship that understands these laws as curricular censorship of topical subjects and seeks to contest their validity on those grounds, this Article more accurately identifies them as pedagogical censorship: Limits on teaching methods, which raise different, potentially more dispositive questions about the states’ educational decision-making authority—questions that the U.S. Supreme Court has long sought to avoid. But exposing these so-called “anti-CRT” laws as neither …

The Racialized Retaliatory State: Weaponizing Immigration Law To Criminalize Dissent, Karla Mckanders

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Essay examines how systemic racism impacts the ways immigration laws operate to retaliate and criminalize immigrants who dissent. Criminalizing dissent—which recently has become more widespread—is one tool within the immigration system that reinforces America’s racialized caste system. This Essay frames immigration exceptionalism as a continual state that excludes nonconforming bodies and ideologies to instill fear as a means of authoritarian governance. This Essay challenges the history of immigration exceptionalism as an objectively neutral system of governance, arguing that it has historically criminalized racialized migrants to suppress dissent and ideological viewpoints that are not aligned with America’s racialized project. Immigration …

“That’S Not My Name”: The Linguistic Violence Of Misnaming Parties In Court Proceedings, Robert S. Chang, Cecily C. Hazelrigg, Linda Cj Lee

Washington Law Review

This Article calls attention to the harms done when parties are misnamed in legal proceedings. Misnaming, which many might initially consider trivial, is properly understood as a form of linguistic violence that can inflict dignitary harms as well as have material consequences. Misnaming takes on a different valence when it is done by the state. This Article focuses on the misnaming of Indigenous, Asian, and Latine people, beginning first with the way misnaming is done by the administrative state. The authors then discuss misnaming as it has operated in legal proceedings, providing both historical and contemporary examples from federal and …

Making Youth Matter, Kimberly Ambrose

Washington Law Review

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States. The harm caused by this public health crisis falls disproportionately on Black and Brown youth. While it is broadly accepted that children are less blameworthy than adults for their criminal behavior, what does this mean when they have access to and use guns? The Supreme Court held that youth matters when juveniles face life without parole sentences because children are different from adults—they fail to appreciate risks and consequences; are more impulsive; more susceptible to peer and family influence; less able to remove themselves …

Another Broken Promise: The Mmiwg2s Crisis And The Violation Of The Federal Indian Trust Obligation, Marley Forest

Washington Law Review

Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people go missing and are murdered at rates nearly ten times the national average in the United States. This disproportionate epidemic of violence has been labeled the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S) crisis. Several factors exacerbate this crisis. First, European colonizers used violence against Native people, especially women and Two-Spirit people, as a tactic of control and domination since first contact in the 1600s. Second, nearly two hundred years of legislative actions and case law have effectively stripped Native Nations of all criminal jurisdictional power over crimes committed on their land …

Fairer Public Benefit In Copyright Law, Amanda Levendowski Tepski

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 1966, a court considered expressly whether a secondary use of copyrighted works served a public benefit. While public benefit has become a subfactor of the fair use doctrine, it remains undefined, uncodified, and undertheorized. Courts often invoked public benefit in pivotal cases involving novel technologies, from home video recorders to digital libraries to algorithms--but they did not need to. After the recent Supreme Court decision in Google v. Oracle, however, public benefit is unavoidable: The Court stated that “we must take into account the public benefits the copying will likely produce.” A qualitative analysis of key public benefit cases …

The Deferential Asian American: Low Racial Status And The Invisibility Of Asian Americans In Leadership And The American Narrative, Reginald Oh

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article will proceed in five parts. First, an important caveat. When the Article refers to Asian Americans, it refers to all Asian American subgroups except for South Asian Americans, because South Asian Americans are not perceived to be deferential in the same way as other Asian American subgroups. Consequently, their experience with leadership is unique among Asian Americans, and much of the analysis in this Article does not apply to them.

With that caveat, Part I will discuss the invisibility of Asian Americans generally, but particularly in leadership positions. Part II will discuss the concept of social status …

The Containment, Floersheimer Center For Constitutional Democracy, Black Law Students Association (Blsa), Alexander Reinert, Michellle Adams, James Forman Jr.

2025–2026 Flyers

Join us for a special evening with Michelle Adams, the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, and former Cardozo Professor, as she discusses her acclaimed new book The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for School Desegregation.

Michelle Adams On Detroit, The Supreme Court, And School Segregation, Floersheimer Center For Constitutional Democracy, Black Law Students Association (Blsa), Alexander A. Reinert, Michelle Adams, James Foreman Jr.

2025 Event Invitations

Join us for a special evening with Michelle Adams, the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, and former Cardozo Professor, as she discusses her acclaimed new book The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for School Desegregation.

Tribal Sovereign Immunity: Absolute Authority Or Accountability, Kekek Jason Stark

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In the wake of the recent United States Supreme Court decision of Trump v. United States, the Court determined that the President as Chief Executive is immune from conduct associated with official acts.3 The question that emanates from this opinion is how will this decision affect Indian Country and tribal court determinations of tribal sovereign immunity? This article will attempt to address this question. I begin with the Anishinaabe story of Bebaamosed miinawaa Gawigoshko’iweshiinh (The Trickster and the Little Scary Bird)5 in an attempt to understand the complicated nature of tribal sovereign immunity.

Discovering The Doctrine Of Discovery, Douglas Lind

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The doctrine of discovery is a concept in crisis. A principle of public international law associated with the so-called Age of Discovery, the doctrine of discovery is commonly said to have authorized European nations to claim the lands of indigenous peoples and establish settlements on the basis of “discovery” alone. Today, with good reason, the doctrine is widely condemned. The United Nations has denounced it as “the very foundation of genocide.” Describing its manifest injustices against indigenous cultures, dominion, and sovereignty as “devastating, far-reaching and intergenerational,” the UN Economic and Social Council has called for the doctrine to be categorically …

Uses And Abuses Of Johnson V. M’Intosh In Native American Land Rights Cases: Investigative Insights From The Indian Law Justice Files, John P. Lavelle

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The 200th anniversary of the foundational Indian law decision Johnson v. M’Intosh has come and gone, with many scholars contributing criticism and commentary. The dominant focus has been the case’s notorious embrace of the so-called “doctrine of discovery,” an odious theory for rationalizing European nations’ claims of superior rights to lands occupied by Indigenous Native American peoples. Commanding less attention, however, is the Johnson decision’s core protective legal feature, i.e., its reinforcing the United States government’s duty to guard against the alienation of Indian lands through private, unauthorized acquisitions.

Indian Casinos Under The Big Sky: Why Tribes In Other States Have Been More Successful With Gaming And The Path Forward For Montana’S Tribes, Trevor Funseth

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The most successful method of economic development for many Indian tribes in the United States has been gaming. Tribes across the country have risen out of poverty through their casino operations and have been able to use the profits to diversify their investments and improve tribal infrastructure, education, and social programs.

Damned If You Do, Dammed If You Don’T: Solutions For The Snake River And The Nez Perce Tribe, Meridian S. Wappett

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Indian Water Rights Settlements And The Animas-La Plata Project: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Of Dependency, Sidney Paulina Williams

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prosecutor Transparency Project: Racial Disparities Study (Washtenaw County, Michigan), Grady Bridges, J. J. Prescott

Law & Economics Working Papers

This report investigates and estimates racial disparities in prosecutorial decision-making in the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office (WCPO) from 2017 to 2022. The analysis relies on currently available data resources at the WCPO and examines decision-making at four different junctures in the prosecutorial process: 1) case approval (i.e., warrant authorization) and charge selection, 2) habitual-offender designation (under Michigan law), 3) plea bargaining, and 4) diversion and deferral opportunities. Racial disparities appear most visibly at the earliest stages of the criminal justice process, with People of Color substantially overrepresented in the warrant requests the WCPO receives from law enforcement. The data further …

Law School News: New Book On Race And Law Gives Context, Fills Gaps 9-6-2025, Suzi Morales

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Reasoning From Injustice, Robert L. Tsai

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In a series of lectures at Yale Law School, the Harvard political theorist Judith Shklar critiqued leading models of justice as overly abstract and lacking a realistic account of the social dynamics that perpetuate injustice. In this essay, Professor Tsai builds on Shklar’s account of injustice as a social phenomenon by offering a structural reading of key literary texts that explore the nature of legal injustice—from the Book of Job to Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave. A close reading of these texts permits us to flesh out Shklar’s observations and “give injustice …

(Re)Birth Of A Nation: Reconstruction’S Unfinished Business, Zanita E. Fenton

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The irony, alluding to the title of the 1915 silent movie Birth of a Nation, seeks to make conspicuous the counter-stories that more authentically account for the “birth” and development of American society. Ku Klux Klan-sponsored propaganda designed to evoke hyper-racist fearmongering and perpetuate sexual paternalism over White women, the plot from Birth of a Nation reflects the paradigmatic race-bait: relentless pursuit of a White woman by a Black man. This storyline was fictionalized, culturally unrealistic and deliberately omitted the very real sexual exploitation of Black women and girls. Birth of a Nation parallels Constitutional history that marginalizes supplemental …

An In-Depth Criticism Of Shaw V. Reno, Katherine M. Perez-Oviedo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

If I have learned one thing from my semester taking Critical Race Theory, it is that the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly issued decisions that directly impede on remedial efforts to address past racial discrimination. When the question of “how can we use the law to instill social change?” is proposed in class discussion, it is difficult to imagine a world in which the Court would support the progressive measures suggested.