Law and Race Commons^™

Corporate Employment And The First Amendment Shield Against Anti-Dei Legislation, W. Mary Blee

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No one would have thought that a Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action in higher education would affect private employment. However, the ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard did exactly that. Corporate employers’ efforts to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) were immediately pushed to the forefront of the political battlefield. In the eyes of Republican lawmakers and politicians, DEI efforts were akin to affirmative action, and therefore unconstitutional in the wake of Harvard. Their solution to this problem involved passing anti-DEI legislation and policies which restricted or eliminated employer’s DEI efforts under the guise of upholding …

Dealing With The Wrongs And The Rights: Lessons On Lethal Self-Defense From Durham, North Carolina, Emily Bass

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

The tragic loss of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin and the lack of accountability that George Zimmerman faced for fatally shooting him in their Florida neighborhood inspired countless calls for politicians to reexamine self-defense laws. Still, long before stand-your-ground laws, the same racist undertones that plagued Zimmerman’s trial prevented other state courts from holding accountable those who use excessive force in proclaimed “self-defense” and killed Black teenagers.

In 1993, then fifteen-year-old Jamal Elliott and several of his friends broke into the garage of Durham, North Carolina resident Michael Seagroves, hoping to steal a motorcycle. As Jamal ran from the garage, Seagroves shot …

Incorporating Principles And Wisdom From Hospital Chaplaincy And Pastoral Ministry To Create A Ministry Model To Address Social Isolation And Loneliness In Black Churches, Albert A. Kemp

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

To address the growing and widespread epidemic of social isolation and loneliness, with special focus on Black churches, this dissertation developed a program with the following areas of application: 1) how healthcare trained chaplains can coordinate with churches to positively impact individuals identified as lonely and socially isolated with better social and physical health, 2) how principles of chaplaincy and pastoral care can mitigate and intervene competently when such people are identified, and 3) how the project’s model can be organized, taught, and incorporated into existing arenas of church ministry.

The purpose of the project was to create a ministry …

U.S. V. Washington: Considering The Continuing Injunction Of The Boldt Decision, Nicholas Brown

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Judge George Hugo Boldt’s 1974 opinion in United States v. Washington was a landmark decision in the recognition of treaty fishing rights for tribes in western Washington. Not only did it recognize the entitlement to 50% of harvestable yields of fish within the tribes’ usual and accustomed fishing sites, but it also provided a permanent injunction to protect future fishing rights for generations to come. Now, over fifty years since the original “Boldt decision” was made, judges in the Ninth Circuit are debating whether the continued injunction to litigate intertribal disputes over treaty fishing rights is proper. This article considers …

Western Watersheds Project V. Schultz, Cv 22-149-M-Dlc-Kld, 2025 Lx 449507, 2025 Wl 2410283 (D. Mont. Mar. 27, 2025), Luke A. Zagar

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Western Watersheds Project v. Schultz delineates what the Forest Service is required to consider for revising Allotment Management Plans as prescribed by NEPA. Environmental plaintiffs sued, arguing that the Forest Service’s reliance on an older baseline assessment was arbitrary and capricious and that the revised AMP failed to consider major impacts on the grizzly bear population. The District of Montana held that the reliance on an older baseline assessment was acceptable but simultaneously found the AMP to be arbitrary and capricious under the “hard look” standard.

San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper V. Cnty. Of San Luis Obispo, 161 F.4th 590 (9th Cir. 2025), Erika C. Rader

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper v. Cnty. of San Luis Obispo, the Ninth Circuit addressed how to consider a mandatory preliminary injunction for an Endangered Species Act claim when multiple listed species may be affected by the requested relief. The Plaintiffs brought ESA and state law claims to compel the County of San Luis Obispo to change its operation of the Lopez Dam on Arroyo Grande Creek, which they claimed adversely affected South-Central California Coast steelhead trout. The tidewater goby and California red-legged frog, both listed species, are also present in Arroyo Grande Creek. The Ninth Circuit determined the …

Unleashing Consultation: Tohono O’Odham Nation V. Department Of Interior And The Case For Reforming The National Historic Preservation Act, Elizabeth Tobey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Ninth Circuit’s 2025 decision in Tohono O’odham Nation v. Department of Interior highlights an ongoing failure by federal land management agencies to consult meaningfully with tribal nations as mandated by the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act. This article argues that the NHPA’s framework for tribal consultation enables federal land management agencies to sidestep meaningful engagement with tribes, undermining both cultural resource protection and the federal Indian trust responsibility. To address these deficiencies—particularly in the context of renewable energy development on federal public lands, directly at issue in Tohono O’odham Nation—this article proposes amendments to the NHPA informed by …

Wilderness Watch V. U.S. Forest Service, No. Cv 23-133-M-Dwm, 2025 Wl 2985292 (D. Mont. Oct. 23, 2025)., Gardner Dee

Public Land & Resources Law Review

This comment argues that the District of Montana’s decision in Wilderness Watch v. U.S. Forest Service correctly applied the Ninth Circuit’s Kofa framework to strike down a multi-agency native trout restoration project in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, holding that the Forest Service unlawfully prioritized Yellowstone cutthroat trout conservation over the Wilderness Act’s mandate to preserve wilderness character. Dee further contends that while large wilderness watersheds offer valuable climate refugia for native coldwater fish, watershed-scale restoration projects will continue to conflict with the Act’s prohibitions on motorized and mechanized intrusions so long as agencies rely on helicopter transport and rotenone application at …

The Legacy Of Lead: Lead Exposure's Harmful Effects And Its Concentration In Poc Communities, Layla Sophronia Barber

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis examines the disproportionate burden of lead exposure carried by low income, POC communities. The systemic nature of this problem is a symptom of a longstanding legacy of environmental injustice in the United States. Decades of federal neglect are reflected in the higher statistics of lead exposure and poisoning in predominantly black communities. While it is understood that lead exposure poses a serious threat to physical health and early cognitive development, there is a discouraging lack of urgency to remove the toxin from non-wealthy communities. The material covered by this thesis aims to identify and correct the discriminatory social …

Black Labor Matters, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

Black and organized workers increasingly find themselves threatened by two key outside forces: one seeking to stop anti-racism efforts via diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices and the other curtailing employees’ union organizing. This Article argues that a response must be grounded in uniquely local strategies by two specific worker coalitions. One coalition–the New Black Workers Movement (NBWM)–arose from Black Lives Matter civil rights protests in 2020 that captivated the workplace and heightened awareness about anti-Blackness and concerns of systemic racism. The other coalition–the New Labor Workers Movement (NLWM)–developed in 2020 as a workplace response to a global pandemic that …

Arrest Rates And Police Presence In East Bay Area Counties Of Northern California, Christiana M. Tyler

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In this research study, we discuss the social phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States. Previous research has evidenced clear racial disparities within this social issue, but has yet to make a connection between high incarceration rates and the sheer volume of police officers in many communities. This descriptive study sets out to discover whether there is a difference in incarceration rates based on the level of police presence in select counties in Northern California. The study will measure police presence by the number of police officers, using secondary data from U.S. government and nonprofit agencies. The researcher hypothesizes …

Antidiscrimination, Not Anti-Dei: The Real Story Of The Supreme Court's Recent Title Vii Precedent, Madeline H. Meth

Faculty Scholarship

For several years, my colleague and I had been litigating employment discrimination cases with facts that shocked our friends and family. For example, we fought Dallas County over a women-work-the-weekend policy that required women detention officers to work weekends while male colleagues took the weekends off. Likewise, we challenged the City of Cleveland when it moved our client, an emergency medical services supervisor, from the day shift to the night shift explicitly because he is Black. Then, in April 2024, in one of our client’s cases, Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overruled the …

Trust In Government: How Sex, Race, And Ideology Shape Confidence In State And National Officials, Holden A. Mattison

Honors Theses

This research examines how sex, race, and political ideology shape individual trust in state and national government officials, with a particular focus on Mississippi as a case study. Drawing on data from the Mississippi Poll (2010-2014) and the 2024 American National Election Study (ANES), the research analyzes both bivariate and multivariate relationships to assess how demographic and ideological factors influence political trust across institutional levels. The findings reveal that race and ideology are significant predictors of trust at the state level, while sex has little effect. Whites and conservatives are generally more likely to express trust in state officials, whereas …

Front Matter And Table Of Contents

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

You Can Be Innocent—Or You Can Be Free: Prosecutorial Power And Dark Pleas In Innocence Litigation, Tori Simkovic, Craig Trocino

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

This Article examines the phenomenon Justice Michael P. Donnelly has termed the “dark plea.” A dark plea is a post-conviction guilty plea extracted from defendants who maintain their innocence but accept freedom over exoneration. Through the lens of State of Florida v. Lawrence K. Johnson, this Article exposes how dark pleas operate at the precise moment when newly discovered evidence threatens to unravel a conviction and expose actual innocence in a nearly two decades old wrongful conviction. Johnson’s case illustrates the coercive dynamics of this type postconviction “bargaining.” After eighteen years of incarceration, compelling DNA recantation evidence, and an appellate …

Qualified Immunity: Emerging Fault Lines In The Eleventh Circuit, Ricky J. Marc

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

Qualified immunity operates as a central doctrine in federal civil rights litigation, defining the threshold between government accountability and official protection from suit. Within the Eleventh Circuit, this doctrine has developed into a highly structured yet fact-dependent framework that shapes litigation strategy and judicial outcomes. This article offers a comprehensive analysis of qualified immunity in the Eleventh Circuit from 2022 to 2025, drawing on recent precedents involving law enforcement officers and correctional officials. It examines the Circuit’s treatment of clearly established rights, the role of objective reasonableness in determining constitutional violations, and the evidentiary dynamics that influence summary judgment and …

Unsettling Settled Science: The Perils Of And Rationale Behind Blind Faith In Forensic Evidence, Jaclyn Marra

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

Science—a seemingly compelling and infallible adjudicative element—plays a pivotal role in criminal trials, serving as a cornerstone for evidence interpretation and decision-making. However, the perceived infallibility of scientific evidence often masks its inherent limitations and vulnerabilities. Forensic methods, widely regarded as objective and precise, can suffer from a plethora of inconspicuous constraints—including flawed methodologies, human error, and biases—which undermine their reliability. The American public and legal system frequently place undue trust in forensic evidence and experts, influenced by portrayals of their certainty in media and popular culture. This phenomenon has been referred to as the “Reverse CSI Effect.” This note …

Presumed Guilty By Proximity: How Geofence Warrants Undermine The Fourteenth Amendment, Radha Patel

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

Geofence warrants are utilized as a surveillance tool to gather location data on every user within a specific area and are being integrated into policing without a stable legal framework. This integration threatens individual rights and disproportionately impacts people and communities of color. While these warrants are often scrutinized under the Fourth Amendment, this note argues that they significantly undermine the Fourteenth Amendment by granting law enforcement excessive discretion. This unchecked discretion allows systemic bias and racial profiling to influence criminal investigations, creating the potential for wrongful convictions. The analysis in this note details the three-step execution process of geofence …

On The “Storied” History And Sustained Impact Of A Thriving Social Justice Journal, Mario L. Barnes

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Separate But Equal In The Bold New City Of The South: A Shadow Of What Remains, Charity Dera

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

This project undertakes the task of analyzing the historical and contemporary landscape of Jacksonville, Florida, the “Bold New City of the South,”1 from a multidisciplinary vantage point. It argues that the spirit of the overturned “separate but equal” holding of Plessy v. Ferguson2 and its bold segregationist ideologies reverberate today in both subtle and overt ways. Yet, that reality has not come without the resilience and perseverance of pioneering natives who have resisted such ideals in bold ways. While segregation is deeply rooted in U.S. history and scholars have readily addressed the contemporary effects of landmark cases such as Plessy …

Institutional Timidity: Reading Len Rubinowitz Toward A Structural Theory Of Civil Rights Enforcement, Sheldon Bernard Lyke

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article first documents institutional timidity in fair housing enforcement through Rubinowitz’s empirical account of HUD and then extends the analysis to higher education admissions. It shows that universities defending affirmative action uniformly adopted the diversity rationale while declining to argue that race-conscious admissions correct for bias embedded in their own criteria. These choices did not merely weaken outcomes; they also helped produce the doctrinal frameworks that later constrained them. In identifying institutional timidity as a mechanism of doctrinal production, this Article extends Rubinowitz’s insights across domains and into constitutional law. It concludes by proposing strategies that shift civil rights …

Hbcus And Disparate Law School Rankings, Michael Conklin

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article measures the difference between perceptions of HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) law schools and their objective performance. This is conducted by comparing the disparities between each law school’s U.S. News & World Report subjective peer ranking and objective overall ranking. This novel methodology provides valuable insight into the role race plays in legal education and the practice of law. This comes at a critical juncture where issues such as the Supreme Court’s banning of race-conscious admissions, new findings regarding law school mismatch, the racially motivated rankings boycott, and the Trump administration’s aggressive targeting of colleges are all …

Alaska Dep’T Of Fish And Game V. Federal Subsistence Bd., Mj Fiedler

Public Land & Resources Law Review

A subsistence hunt in Kake, Alaska, during the COVID-19

pandemic sparked a lawsuit from the State of Alaska Department of Fish

and Game challenging the authority of the Federal Subsistence Board to

open the hunt. This lawsuit is a recent addition to a long history of the

State of Alaska’s resistance to federal enforcement of the Alaska National

Interest Lands Conservation Act provision establishing priority for rural

subsistence users. The Ninth Circuit ultimately affirmed the Federal

Subsistence Board’s authority to open the subsistence hunt.

America Has A Problem: How The Student Criminalization Nexus Helps Maintain America's Modern Caste System, Kaela Allen

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

Impurity And Immigration: The Case Of Pro-Biafran Igbo Activists In Japan, Nnamdi M. Jogwe

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

The Case Of Antonio Beaver, Logan D. Barron

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

The case of Antonio Beaver, a 31-year-old African American man that was affected by the collapse of the suspects identification by the detectives with the composite sketch, the Eyewitness Misidentification, and the lack of fingerprint and DNA identification technology. Antonio Beaver was convicted of First-degree Robbery in 1997 and was in Missouri prisons until 2007 when he was exonerated by DNA and fingerprint evidence, that was taken from crime scene.

False Conflict: Colorblindness And Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act, W. Kerrel Murray

Fordham Law Review

If friends and foes of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 agree on one thing, it is the irrepressible conflict between section 2’s attention to race and constitutional colorblindness. They’re wrong. Rightly understood, section 2’s design is remarkably compatible with colorblind constitutionalism’s letter and spirit.

To show how, this Article first returns to section 2’s origins and the preexisting approach its text codifies. That approach had an underappreciated ethos: When intentional discrimination’s effects sufficiently distort a political system, an electoral rule’s results might impugn its unconstitutionality, even if the rule had been adopted without discriminatory purpose. Drawing …

Rethinking Objectivity: The Problem Of Pretext In The Fourth Amendment, Monu S. Bedi

Indiana Law Journal

Pretextual encounters continue to erode the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Simply put, a police officer can act on personal bias or animus as long as the search or seizure is deemed “objectively reasonable.” Numerous scholars (e.g., Bennett Capers, Gabriel Chin, and David Harris) have critiqued this objective standard, contending it perpetuates discriminatory practices, particularly against communities of color. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself suggested that the Court might need to reconsider the legal precedent she helped establish. More recently, Orin Kerr has also argued that the Court’s reliance on objective determinations is inconsistent with …

Backlash: How Racial Justice In Higher Education Is Being Trumped By Politics, Aaron N. Taylor

AccessLex Institute Research

This article discusses contemporary social and political backlash to racial justice and how it has overshadowed and flouted higher education antidiscrimination law and principles of racial justice. The first three parts chart the evolution of U.S. Supreme Court precedent in higher education affirmative action cases. Part I interrogates the Court’s fallacious detachment of affirmative action from its racial justice origins in Defunis and Bakke. Part II discusses how the Grutter majority tacitly departed from Bakke, using the vague concept of critical mass to seemingly empower schools to engage in affirmative action as a racial justice tool. Part III explains how …

Child Support Factory: Racist History, Harm, And Unconstitutionality Of The Child Support System's Contractual Operations, Daniel L. Hatcher

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

Within America’s justice institutions, the child support system has become a business. The intended mission of aid has been traded and abdicated through contractual deals to churn vulnerable families into factory-like revenue operations. Juvenile and family courts across the country have partnered through countless intertwined interagency contracts with human service agencies, prosecutors, attorneys general’s offices, probation departments, and policing offices—all aimed at generating revenue from impoverished children and parents rather than serving their best interests. The resulting child support factory is vast, harmful, unconstitutional, unethical, and grew from a racist history that devastated Black families, and still operates with starkly …