Law and Race Commons^™

No Black Names On The Letterhead? Efficient Discrimination And The South African Legal Profession, Lisa R. Pruitt

Michigan Journal of International Law

Although there have long been black lawyers in South Africa, during apartheid only a handful joined the ranks of the country's large commercial firms. Now, in the post-apartheid period, these firms are keenly aware of a range of economic and political incentives to hire black attorneys, and most are doing so at a record pace. Very few black attorneys, however, are enduring the path to partnership in these firms. Based on more than seventy-five interviews conducted in South Africa in 1999 and 2000, this Article both documents and critically examines the reasons for black attrition. While firms' incentives to integrate …

Purchasing While Black: How Courts Condone Discrimination In The Marketplace, Matt Graves

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Given the sweeping language of § 1981 and 1982, it cannot be that sellers of goods can engage in intentional discrimination, so long as they make relatively minor attempts to cover it up. By exploring the interaction between substantive law, procedural law, legal culture, and real-world context, Graves seeks to demonstrate that judges cannot offer any legal or practical justification for heightened pleading requirements in § 1981 and 1982 actions. Through this argument, a conclusion is reached that § 1981 and 1982 plaintiffs must be given the same opportunity to litigate their claims that virtually all other plaintiffs are given. …

Puerto Rico: Cultural Nation, American Colony, Pedro A. Malavet

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article articulates a theory of Puerto Rican cultural nationhood that is largely based on ethnicity. In linking ethnicity and citizenship, it is imperative, however, to avoid the evils of ethnic strife and balkanization, while celebrating rather than imposing difference; community consciousness cannot degenerate into fascism.

Facing History, Facing Ourselves: Eric Yamamoto And The Quest For Justice, Robert S. Change

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Review of Interracial Justice: Conflict and Reconciliation in Post-Civil Rights America by Eric Yamamoto

Ua Mau Ke Ea O Ka Aina I Ka Pono:Voting Rights And The Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Plebiscite, Troy M. Yoshino

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Using the Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Plebiscite to investigate the complex interplay between race, nationalism, and the special purpose district exception, this Note chronicles the development of relevant legal doctrines and the history of the Native Hawaiians' quest for self-government in an attempt to untangle those issues. In doing so, this Note concludes that the Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Plebiscite was an unconstitutional method of securing sovereign rights for Native Hawaiians, but that a Native Hawaiian claim to at least some form of self-government is justified. As a result, this Note searches for a method that will guarantee self-government as well as …

Affirmative Action: Where Is It Coming From And Where Is It Going?, Denise Page Hood

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

A review of We Wont Go Back: Making the Case for Affirmative Action by Charles R. Lawrence III & Mari J. Matsuda

Chicana/Chicano Land Tenure In The Agrarian Domain: On The Edge Of A "Naked Knife", Guadalupe T. Lunda

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Neither sovereignty nor property rights could forestall American geopolitical expansion in the first half of the nineteenth century. The conflicts that resulted from this clash of doctrine with desire are perhaps most evident in the history of the Chicanas/Chicanos of Texas, California, and the Southwest, who sought to maintain their land and property, as guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in the aftermath of the U.S.- Mexico War. Integrating an exploration of case law with political and social histories of the period, the Author explores the sociolegal significance of Chicana/Chicano land dispossession; exposes the racial, economic, and political motivations …

In Sisterhood, Lisa C. Ikemoto

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

A review of Where Is Your Body? by Mari Matsuda

A New Image Of The Slave Auction: An Empirical Look At The Role Of Law In Slave Sales And A Conceptual Reevaluation Of The Nature Of Slave Property, Thomas D. Russell

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This legal history article presents a new understanding of the nature of slave property. Slave property was divided and fragmented into many different interests including those with application to real property such life estates, remainders, shifting and spring interests, and leasehold interests. With regard to these interests, the article overlays the first-year, law-school property course onto slaves as property. Property interests in slaves were also divided by credit mechanisms including mortgages and secured credit transactions. Warranties are another example of divided property interests in slaves.

The fragmented, Hohfeldian nature of slave property distributed the stake that southerners had in the …

The Color Of Truth: Race And The Assessment Of Credibility, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article will address specifically the relationship between race and credibility in legal cases, while acknowledging that broader bias issues are often, though sometimes imperceptibly, intertwined in racially biased credibility determinations. Part I will survey race and credibility issues that have arisen in courts, with particular focus on two modern habeas corpus cases. Part II will summarize the legal rules that presently regulate racially influenced assessments of credibility; it may surprise some readers to realize that there is no established mechanism for challenging racially biased credibility determinations. Part I will propose some standards for determining when race is permissibly used …

The Dangers Of Misappropriation: Misusing Martin Luther King, Jr.'S Legacy To Prove The Colorblind Thesis, Ronald Turner

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article focuses on one particular aspect of the colorblind thesis: the misuse of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s image and legacy by liberals, neoliberals, conservatives, and neoconservatives "who cheaply invoke Dr. King's words even as they kill the substance and spirit of his radical message." The campaign supporting the adoption of Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative ("CCRI"), directly illustrates the misappropriation of King's legacy. Supporters of this anti-affirmative action proposal which calls for racial neutrality and a colorblind America, regularly invoked King's name, suggesting that he would have embraced such a measure. The California Republican Party prepared a …

History's Stories, Stephan Landsman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman

Extremist Threats To Fragile Democracies: A Proposal For An East European Marshall Plan, Victor Williams

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia by Walter Laquer, and Free to Hate: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia by Paul Hockenos

Civil Liberties And Civil War: The Great Emancipator As Civil Libertarian, Paul Finkelman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr.

Repossession: Of History, Poverty, And Dissent, Martha Minow

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Dispossessed: America's Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present by Jacqueline Jones

Land Of Fire, Land Of Conquest: The Colorado Plateau And Some Questions For Its Future, Charles F. Wilkinson

Publications

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An Interpretive History Of Modern Equal Protection, Michael Klarman

Michigan Law Review

My enterprise here is to write a limited history of modem equal protection - one that will facilitate understanding of the important conceptual shifts that have occurred over time. By "modem" I mean the period following the switch-in-time in 1937 that signaled the demise of the Lochner era. By "limited" I mean an account that falls substantially short of a full-scale history of equal protection, which would, for example, necessarily encompass a good deal of political and social history. My aim here, rather, is to tell a story about the evolution of equal protection as a legal concept; I shall, …

Difference Made Legal: The Court And Dr. King, David Luban

Michigan Law Review

My aim in this essay is to contrast two legal retellings of the same event: a set of demonstrations sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 that led to the arrest and incarceration of Martin Luther King, Jr. One is the Supreme Court majority opinion in Walker v. City of Birmingham, sustaining King's conviction; the other, King's own defense of his actions in his Letter from Birmingham Jail I wish to show how the self-same event entails radically different legal consequences when it appears in different narratives, one the Supreme Court's official voice, the …

Protection Of Civil Rights: A Constitutional Mandate For The Federal Government, Julius Chambers

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Federal Law and Southern Order: Racial Violence and Constitutional Conflict in the Post-Brown South by Michal Belknap

The Naacp's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, Robert L. Carter

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 by Mark Tushnet

In Re Radical Interpretations Of American Law: The Relation Of Law And History, A. E. Keir Nash

Michigan Law Review

This Article centers instead upon assessing two types of legal analysis - non-Marxist radical interpretation and "non-reductionist" Marxist theory - which, despite conspicuous differences, share the belief that understanding the American historical experience is a prerequisite to understanding American law. Both approaches also share two other important convictions. One is that a "consensual" or "liberal pluralist" version of American history has little explanatory validity, at least in regard to such major problems as the political and legal breakdown represented by the Civil War, and the law's role in American economic development. They also agree that historical explanations which downplay discussion …

Anatomy Of Racism, Damon J. Keith

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Hearts and Minds: The Anatomy of Racism From Roosevelt to Reagan by Harry S. Ashmore

To Set The Law In Motion: The Freedmen's Bureau And The Legal Rights Of Blacks, 1865-1868, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of To Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865-1868 by Donald G. Nieman

South Africa: Using The Law To Establish And Maintain A Pigmentocracy, Rex S. Heinke

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Human Rights and the South African Legal Order by John Dugard