Law and Race Commons^™

Integrating Doctrine And Diversity Speaker Series: Making Space, Taking Space 11-16-2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

New Federalism And Civil Rights Enforcement, Alexander Reinert, Joanna C. Schwartz, James E. Pfander

Northwestern University Law Review

Calls for change to the infrastructure of civil rights enforcement have grown more insistent in the past several years, attracting support from a wide range of advocates, scholars, and federal, state, and local officials. Much of the attention has focused on federal-level reforms, including proposals to overrule Supreme Court doctrines that stop many civil rights lawsuits in their tracks. But state and local officials share responsibility for the enforcement of civil rights and have underappreciated powers to adopt reforms of their own. This Article evaluates a range of state and local interventions, including the adoption of state law causes of …

The Washington Post Interviews Vinay Harpalani: The Courts Have Served As An Anti-Democratic Force For Much Of U.S. History, Vinay Harpalani, David A. Love

Faculty Scholarship

Certainly there are examples in which the high court has upheld the rights of the marginalized and disadvantaged. However, as Vinay Harpalani, associate professor of law at the University of New Mexico, has noted, “even when the U.S. Supreme Court makes rulings that seem to favor people of color, those rulings usually serve the interests of wealthy, elite White Americans.”

Harpalani cited how the Brown decision stemmed in part from Cold War strategy and the need for the United States to appeal to people in African, Asian and Latin American countries. “Racial segregation at home did not bode well …

Testing Privilege: Coaching Bar Takers Towards “Minimum Competency” During The 2020 Pandemic, Benjamin Afton Cavanaugh

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Justice For Venezuela: The Human Rights Violations That Are Isolating An Entire Country, Andrea Matos

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Black On Black Representation, Alexis Hoag

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On Time, (In)Equality, And Death, Fred O. Smith Jr.

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, American institutions have inadvertently encountered the bodies of former slaves with increasing frequency. Pledges of respect are common features of these discoveries, accompanied by cultural debates about what “respect” means. Often embedded in these debates is an intuition that there is something special about respecting the dead bodies, burial sites, and images of victims of mass, systemic horrors. This Article employs legal doctrine, philosophical insights, and American history to both interrogate and anchor this intuition.

Law can inform these debates because we regularly turn to legal settings to resolve disputes about the dead. Yet the passage of …

Municipal Reparations: Considerations And Constitutionality, Brooke Simone

Michigan Law Review

Demands for racial justice are resounding, and in turn, various localities have considered issuing reparations to Black residents. Municipalities may be effective venues in the struggle for reparations, but they face a variety of questions when crafting legislation. This Note walks through key considerations using proposed and enacted reparations plans as examples. It then presents a hypothetical city resolution addressing Philadelphia’s discriminatory police practices. Next, it turns to a constitutional analysis of reparations policies under current Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, discussing both race-neutral and race-conscious plans. This Note argues that an antisubordination understanding of the Equal Protection Clause would better allow …

Racial Captialism And Race Massacres: Tulsa's Black Wall Street And Elaine's Sharecroppers, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Kalvin Graham

Law Faculty Scholarship

United States history is marked and checkered with grievous race massacres dating back to the end of slavery. These race “riots,” as they are benignly referred to in some quarters, occurred infamously in Tulsa, Elaine, Rosewood, Chicago, Detroit, and so many other lesser remembered cities. The starkest period of race massacres in the United States, including each of those just mentioned, occurred in the early 1900s, between 1919 and 1923 when Black Americans, newly empowered by service in a world war and having gained available land grants in territories where indigenous peoples were forced to abandon, began finding economic and …

Integrating Doctrine And Diversity Speaker Series: When Law School Classroom Discussions Of Diversity Issues Go Wrong, Roger Williams University School Of Law, City University Of New York School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Overcoming Obstacles To Reentry Panel, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Rose Lecture, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Mentorship, Leadership And Being An Indigenous Woman, Ernestine Chaco

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

An Uncomfortable Truth: Indigenous Communities And Law In New England: Roger Williams University Law Review Symposium 10/22/2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

A Human Rights Crisis Under Our Roof, Aglae Eufracio

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Model Rule 8.4(G) And The Profession’S Core Values Problem, Michael Ariens

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Model Rule 8.4(g) declares it misconduct for a lawyer to “engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law.” The American Bar Association (ABA) adopted the rule in 2016 in large part to effectuate the third of its four mission goals: Eliminate Bias and Enhance Diversity. The ABA adopted these goals in 2008, and they continue to serve as ABA’s statement of its mission.

A …

Maternity Rights: A Comparative View Of Mexico And The United States, Roberto Rosas

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Women play a large role in the workplace and require additional protection during pregnancy, childbirth, and while raising children. This article compares how Mexico and the United States have approached the issue of maternity rights and benefits. First, Mexico provides eighty-four days of paid leave to mothers, while the United States provides unpaid leave for up to twelve weeks. Second, Mexico allows two thirty-minute breaks a day for breastfeeding, while the United States allows a reasonable amount of time per day to breastfeed. Third, Mexico provides childcare to most federal employees, while the United States provides daycares to a small …

Setting The Health Justice Agenda: Addressing Health Inequity And Injustice In The Post-Pandemic Clinic, Emily Benfer, James Bhandary-Alexander, Yael Cannon, Medha D. Makhlouf, Tomar Pierson-Brown

Faculty Scholarly Works

The COVID-19 pandemic surfaced and deepened entrenched preexisting health injustice in the United States. Racialized, marginalized, poor, and hyper-exploited populations suffered disproportionately negative outcomes due to the pandemic. The structures that generate and sustain health inequity in the United States—including in access to justice, housing, health care, employment, and education—have produced predictably disparate results. The authors, law school clinicians and professors involved with medical-legal partnerships, discuss the lessons learned by employing a health justice framework in teaching students to address issues of health inequity during the pandemic. The goal of health justice is to eliminate health disparities that are linked …

Unmasking The Nineteenth Amendment Centennial Through The Pandemic Lenses Of Liberty, Loss, Masculinity, And Leadership [Comments], Jamie Abrams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Celebrating the Centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment in this political, economic, and social moment was a tale of two extremes. On the one hand, the Centennial occurred contemporaneously with the election of Kamala Harris as the nation's first woman Vice President offering a tremendous celebratory bookend of political success. On the other hand, we celebrated the Centennial amid a global pandemic that has taken over 740,000 American lives2 and in a crescendo of searingly painful calls for racial justice. In reflecting on the Centennial in this political, social, and economic moment, this article unmasks the lenses of loss, liberty, masculinity, …

Beyond Binary Thinking: Addressing The Biases That Threaten The Progressive Prosecution Movement, Olwyn Conway

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

A society that regularly and systematically dehumanizes citizens of color will continue to wield the most punitive aspects of its criminal system against those citizens, so long as they are legally available. The racial discrimination that pervades the American criminal system drives its punitiveness and fosters excessive punishments that increase harm and criminal wrongdoing.

Removing Police From Schools Using State Law Heightened Scrutiny, Christina Payne-Tsoupros

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article argues that school police, often called school resource officers, interfere with the state law right to education and proposes using the constitutional right to education under state law as a mechanism to remove police from schools.

Disparities in school discipline for Black and brown children are well-known. After discussing the legal structures of school policing, this Article uses the Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) theoretical framework developed by Subini Annamma, David Connor, and Beth Ferri to explain why police are unacceptable in schools. Operating under the premise that school police are unacceptable, this Article then analyzes mechanisms to …

As Muddy As The Mississippi River: An Examination Of Louisiana Jury Venire Creation Procedures, Kristen M. Vicknair

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

Americans expect their constitutional rights to be respected by the federal, state, and local governments, but a lack of transparency on a government’s behalf prevents Americans from being able to trust their governments fully. This Note demonstrates the astounding lack of transparency in Louisiana parishes’ jury venire creation procedures, which prevent Louisianans from trusting that their communities are represented by a fair cross-section on jury venires. The same lack of transparency restricts any constitutional challenges of the representation on appeal, as the major test for the fair cross-section, the Duren test, requires a showing of systematic exclusion on the government’s …

How The Gun Control Act Disarms Black Firearm Owners, Maya Itah

Washington Law Review

Through 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), the Gun Control Act (GCA) outlaws the possession of a firearm “in furtherance of” a drug trafficking crime. The statute’s language is broad, and federal courts have interpreted it expansively. By giving prosecutors wide discretion in charging individuals with § 924(c) violations, the language enables the disproportionate incarceration of Black firearm owners.

This Comment addresses this issue in three parts. Part I discusses the ways early gun control laws overtly disarmed Black firearm owners. Additionally, Part I provides context for the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which coincided with the backlash to …

A Way Forward: Uf Race Scholars On Support, Obstacles, And The Need For Institutional Engagement, Katheryn Russell-Brown, Ryan Morini

UF Law Faculty Publications

This research project was designed to identify strategies and steps the University of Florida (UF) can take to more effectively support faculty whose work focuses on race or anti-racism. These steps can considerably strengthen UF’s foundations for scholarship on race, an imperative for a top-five public university that is also the state’s flagship academic institution. This report is based on interviews with and survey responses from UF faculty members whose scholarship focuses on issues of race or anti-racism. The 39 faculty members who participated in the study represent a broad range of disciplines and colleges, spanning arts, humanities, social sciences, …

The Euclid Proviso, Ezra Rosser

Washington Law Review

This Article argues that the Euclid Proviso, which allows regional concerns to trump local zoning when required by the general welfare, should play a larger role in zoning’s second century. Traditional zoning operates to severely limit the construction of additional housing. This locks in the advantages of homeowners but at tremendous cost, primarily in the form of unaffordable housing, to those who would like to join the community. State preemption of local zoning defies traditional categorization; it is at once both radically destabilizing and market responsive. But, given the ways in which zoning is a foundational part of the racial …

"Send Freedom House!": A Study In Police Abolition, Tiffany Yang

Washington Law Review

Sparked by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the 2020 uprisings accelerated a momentum of abolitionist organizing that demands the defunding and dismantling of policing infrastructures. Although a growing body of legal scholarship recognizes abolitionist frameworks when examining conventional proposals for reform, critics mistakenly continue to disregard police abolition as an unrealistic solution. This Essay helps dispel this myth of “impracticality” and illustrates the pragmatism of abolition by identifying a community-driven effort that achieved a meaningful reduction in policing we now take for granted. I detail the history of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, a Black civilian …

Incentivizing Fair Housing, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

Restrictive land use regulation has thwarted the upward mobility of many Americans, particularly Americans of color. Local restrictions imposed by affluent municipalities have limited access to safe neighborhoods, better housing, and good schools. Racism and economic self-interest have both played a role in exclusionary practices which have contributed to high housing costs that place a strain on the entire economy.

Fair Housing Act litigation has been one weapon in the fight against these practices. Despite the Supreme Court's decision in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. , disparate impact litigation faces significant obstacles that …

Working On The Other Side Of The Fence: Relief For Incarcerated Individuals After Employment Discrimination, Hannah C. Merrill

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

One of America’s largest workforces, comprised of 1.5 million incarcerated workers, remains unprotected by employment discrimination statutes and vulnerable to abuse from a system designed to exploit their labor. This Note highlights the effects of the lack of protection against employment discrimination for incarcerated workers. This Note will analyze the circuit split regarding the application of employment discrimination statutes to prisoners based on varying understandings of the term “employee” and explain why both approaches fail incarcerated workers. Although one approach bars suit from incarcerated employees altogether, the other only allows suit when the incarcerated individual is working in an “optional” …

Breathing Room For The Right Of Assembly, Tabatha Abu El-Haj

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

This Article explores the legal and political fault lines that the wave of protests highlighting police violence and systemic racism in the summer of 2020 reveal. It focuses in depth on Detroit, Michigan, as a window into the ways that the First Amendment, as currently construed, under-protects those seeking political change and racial reckoning by demonstrating in the streets.