Law and Race Commons^™

The Land Crisis In Zimbabwe: Getting Beyond The Myopic Focus Upon Black & White, Thomas W. Mitchell

Faculty Scholarship

This article deconstructs the role that race played in the land crisis in Zimbabwe that occurred in Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and earls 2000s. The article makes it clear that the government of Zimbabwe did not extend robust property rights to its black majority population for the most part even as it took land from large white landowners. This is revealing given that the government's primary justification for taking land from large white landowners was that the black majority unjustly owned little property in Zimbabwe as a result of colonialist and neocolonialist, discriminatory polices.

Re/Forming And Influencing Public Policy, Law And Religion: Missing From The Table, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

Taking a leap to be at a table from which Mexican American women have always been absent, and are still not invited, takes tremendous courage, knowing that much personal sacrifice will be required. This Essay addresses why Mexican American women have been absent from the tables of influence in the worlds of public policy, religion, and law, and how they can establish their presence as part of an anti-subordination agenda.

From Buchanan To Button: Legal Ethics And The Naacp (Part Ii), Susan Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Race Prosecutors, Race Defenders, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Teaching The Law Of Race (Book Review), Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

"But You're Not A Dirty Mexican": Internalized Oppression, Latinos & Law, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This article will describe internalized oppression and racism and expose the harms they cause. It will also dissect the reasons we engage in internalized oppression and racism and explain that once the reasons are exposed, it will be easier to engage in a conscious effort to reduce and ultimately eradicate internalized oppression and racism. Part II of this article defines internalized oppression and internalized racism and elaborates on ways that they are generally expressed in the Latino community. Part III explains how Latinos' internalized racism is reflected in some areas of the law by detailing both Latinos' support for a …

Taking Globalization Seriously: Towards General Jurisprudence (Book Review Of Globalization And Legal Theory By William Twining), Doron M. Kalir

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Part II provides an account of the jurisprudence of Globalization and Legal Theory. Due to the novelty of many of the issues discussed in the book, as well as their importance to the understanding of Twining's recommendations, I have provided a longer than usual account of several chapters. Part II touches upon one of the central jurisprudential dichotomies introduced by Twining—the distinction between general and particular jurisprudence. Twining compares different accounts of the distinction using pairs of canonical jurists. In particular, he compares H.L.A Hart's Postscript with Dworkin's Law's Empire. In this part, I juxtapose Twining's record of this …

Homogenized Law: Can The United States Learn From African Mistakes?, Beverly I. Moran

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For the last fifty years we have seen an outflow of United States laws to developing countries. This legal outflow has caused problems of enforcement in societies that do not share the values, needs or concerns of the law producing state. Using law reform in Eritrea as a case study, the article asks what will happen in the United States when we become the recipient, rather than the exporter, of maladapted laws that serve the purpose of others instead of serving the unique needs of the United States and its economy.

Race, Peremptories, And Capital Jury Deliberations, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

In Lonnie Weeks's capital murder trial in Virginia in 1993, the jury was instructed: If you find from the evidence that the Commonwealth has proved beyond a reasonable doubt, either of the two alternative aggravating factors], and as to that alternative you are unanimous, then you may fix the punishment of the defendant at death or if you believe from all the evidence that the death penalty is not justified, then you shall fix the punishment of the defendant at life imprisonment ... This instruction is plainly ambiguous, at least to a lay audience. Does it mean that if the …

Healing The Blind Goddess: Race And Criminal Justice, Mark D. Rosenbaum, Daniel P. Tokaji

Michigan Law Review

Once again, issues of race, ethnicity, and class within our criminal justice system have been thrust into the public spotlight. On both sides of the country, in our nation's two largest cities, police are being called to account for acts of violence directed toward poor people of color. In New York City, a West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo was killed by four white police officers, who fired forty-one bullets at the unarmed man as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building in a poor section of the Bronx. Did race influence the officers' decisions to fire the …

The Shape Of The Michigan River As Viewed From The Land Of Sweatt V. Painter And Hopwood: Comments On Lempert, Chambers, And Adam's Study Of The University Of Michigan Law School's Minority Graduates, Thomas D. Russell

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The piece considers the Lempert, Chambers, Adams study of Michigan's law graduates of color from the vantage point of the history of The University of Texas's law school's history.

Constructing Solidarity: Interest And White Workers, Martha R. Mahoney

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Secret Journal Of Sister Jess: A True Story In Honor Of Oliver W. Hill, Sr., Esq., Jonathan K. Stubbs

Law Faculty Publications

Oliver Hill places his finger squarely on a modem struggle, namely, the idea that human beings can be both one and many. Many humans seem to think that it is impossible to have more than one identity. For example, suppose a black person says ''I am a human being first and my color is secondary." Some people hearing this statement would interpret it as a (foolish) repudiation of one's "racial" identity. To some the statement means that he wants to be a human being rather than a black person. That means he must be bleached of his blackness. Thus, in …

Panel Two: Who's Minding The Baby?, Adrienne D. Davis, Catherine J. Ross, Marion Crain, Bonnie Thornton Dill

Scholarship@WashULaw

This publication is a transcript of remarks made by multiple law professors discussing the relationship between race, gender, and class and focusing on feminism and the challenges faced by working mothers.

Delgado, Hegel And The Rodrigo Chronicles, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Richard Delgado has made path-breaking contributions to the literature on race and American law. His Rodrigo Chronicles are already classics of the Critical Race Theory genre. It is, therefore, wholly appropriate that the Harvard Latino Law Review dedicated a symposium issue to an examination of the Rodrigo Chronicles and Delgado's other work. In this symposium essay, the author attempts to illuminate Delgado's project in the Chronicles through an examination of various aspects of Hegel's philosophy. Hegel's philosophy allows us to better understand Delgado's work in the Chronicles and elsewhere.

When Different Means The Same: Applying A Different Standard Of Proof To White Plaintiffs Under The Mcdonnell Douglas Prima Facie Case Test, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

The idea that Whites, in particular white males, are the new victims of discrimination is steadily gaining acceptance among white Americans. While only 16 percent of white individuals claim to know someone who has been the victim of reverse discrimination, more than 70 percent of Whites are convinced that reverse discrimination is a rampant problem. Additionally, although reverse discrimination cases generally constitute a small percentage of filed discrimination cases, usually about 1 to 3 percent, that number is beginning to grow. In particular, the percentage of reverse discrimination claims brought by federal workers, the very workers for whom affirmative action …

The Verdict On Roberts V. Texaco, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

When I first heard that Bari-Ellen Roberts had written a book about the race discrimination lawsuit against Texaco, I was ecstatic. I was eager to read about the legal strategies that had resulted in the highest settlement award ever given in a class action race discrimination lawsuit. After reading the first few pages of the book, however, I became somewhat disappointed. The first few chapters made it clear that Roberts's book was not about the actual details of the class action lawsuit against Texaco but about Roberts's personal experiences at home, in school, and in the corporate world. As I …

(Er)Race-Ing An Ethic Of Justice, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Gay Rights For Gay Whites: Race, Sexual Identity, And Equal Protection Discourse, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

My argument proceeds in four parts. Part I situates my discussion of the synergistic relationship among race, class, gender, and sexuality within a broader body of research on the "intersectionality'' of systems of oppression and of identity categories. Part I then examines how my scholarship attempts to advance this literature both substantively and conceptually. Part II expounds my claim that the comparative and essentialist treatment of race and sexuality within pro-gay and lesbian theory and politics marginalizes gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans­gendered persons of color and constructs and reinforces the notion that the gay and lesbian community is uniformly white …

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 …

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.

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, …

The Struggle Against Hate Crime: Movement At A Crossroads, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed an extraordinary amount of police, legislative, judicial, scholarly, and community activity around hate crime. Such activity was attributable to a new "anti-hate-crime movement," conditions for which were created by the convergence in previous decades of two very different social movements - civil rights and victims' rights. This anti-hate-crime movement has been radiply assimilated into the institutions of criminal justice, with the result that anti-hate-crime measures now reflect the culture and priorities of those institutions. The civil rights and victims' rights movements created collective beliefs, structural resources, and political opportunities that facilitated the emergence of a …

Race And The Fourth Amendment, Tracey Maclin

Vanderbilt Law Review

In Whren v. United States, the Supreme Court held that pretextual traffic stops do not raise Fourth Amendment concerns. In this Article, Professor Maclin contends that by requiring only probable cause of a traffic offense to justify pretextual seizures, the Court mistakenly ignores racial impact when marking the protective boundaries of the Fourth Amendment. Professor Maclin argues that race matters when measuring the dynamics and legitimacy of certain police-citizen encounters. Pretextual traffic stops unreasonably use racial targeting, therefore, the Court should make racial impact a factor in determining the constitutionality of the pretextual seizure.

Professor Maclin begins by examining objective, …

Prosecution And Race: The Power And Privilege Of Discretion, Angela J. Davis

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article examines prosecutorial discretion and argues it is a major cause of racial inequality in the criminal justice system. It asserts that prosecutorial discretion may instead be used to construct effective solutions to racial injustice. The article maintains that since prosecutors have more power than any other criminal justice officials, with practically no corresponding accountability to the public they serve, they have the responsibility to use their discretion to help eradicate the discriminatory treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system.

Part I of the Article explains the importance and impact of the prosecution function. Part II discusses …

Law, Life, And Literature: A Critical Reflection Of Life And Literature To Illuminate How Laws Of Domestic Violence, Race, And Class Bind Black Women Based On Alice Walker's Book The Third Life Of Grange Copeland, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

Consider Law, Life and Literature. Which of the three is the most real, honest, and inclusive? Many would answer the law because it takes into consideration all of the facts and circumstances to formulate a clear and consistent rule, and literature is the most unreal, the most fictional of the three. However, that is not accurate. Of the three, literature is actually the most real, honest, and inclusive. It is real because, with brutal honesty, it deals with all of our realities. It is more honest than life, for often in our outer (and even inner) lives we are afraid …

Striking The Rock: Confronting Gender Equality In South Africa, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

This Article analyzes the status of women's rights in the newly democratic South Africa. It examines rights guaranteed in the Constitution and conflicts between the principle of gender equality and the recognition of indigenous law and institutions. The Article focuses on the South African transition to democracy and theinfluence that feminist agitation at the international level has had on South African women's attempts at political organization. After dissecting the historical position of customary law in South Africa and questioning its place in the new democratic regime, the author argues that, although South African women have benefited from the global feminist …

Race Trials, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Not-So-Arbitrary Arbitration: Using Title Vii Disparate Impact Analysis To Invalidate Employment Contracts That Discriminate, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

On May 20, 1996, three women filed a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit against the Wall Street investment firm Smith Barney. Later joined by twenty additional women, the plaintiffs alleged that Smith Barney failed to hire and promote women, created a hostile work environment, and discriminated on the basis of pregnancy and marital status. The lawsuit quickly gained widespread publicity, most notably for its accusation that the former manager of the Garden City, New York, branch had established a fraternity-like "boom-boom room" in the office basement where female employees were either excluded or harassed if allowed to enter. On …