Law and Race Commons^™

Strangers And Brothers: A Homily On Transracial Adoption, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The common law speaks to us in parables. Ours is Drummond v. Fulton County Department of Family and Children's Services. Just before Christmas 1973, a boy named Timmy was born to a white mother and a black father. A month later, his mother was declared unfit, and the Department of Family and Children Services placed Timmy with white foster parents - Robert and Mildred Drummond. The Drummonds were "excellent" and "loving" parents, and Timmy grew into "an extremely bright, highly verbal, outgoing 15-month baby boy." Then the Drummonds asked to adopt Timmy. The Department's reviews of the Drummonds' devotion …

How Much Do We Really Know About Race And Juries? A Review Of Social Science Theory And Research, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

The past decade has witnessed numerous high-profile criminal trials in which controversial verdicts have been attributed to racethe race of the defendant, the racial composition of a jury, an attorney "playing the race card," and so on. A predominantly Black jury's acquittal of O.J. Simpson and White jurors' leniency in the police brutality cases of Rodney King and Amadou Diallo not only sparked public debate, but also led to rioting and violence. In the wake of trials such as these, many have questioned the viability of the American jury system.' More specific questions regarding the influence of race on jury …

Se Battre Our Ses Droits Écritures, Litiges Et Discrimination Raciale En Louisiane (1888-1899), Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

Title in English: Fighting for public rights: writing, lawsuits and racial segregation in Louisiana (1888-1889).

This article explores the links between the fight against compulsory racial segregation and the day–to–day operation of the law in nineteenth century Louisiana. Using the figure of Louis A. Martinet, one of the organizers of the test case that yielded the U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, the essay argues that Martinet’s role as notary reflects the central importance to the community of color of questions of public standing and written records. The article also identifies the concepts of "public rights" and "public liberties" …

Cultural Context Matters: Terry's "Seesaw Effect", Frank Rudy Cooper

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Emotional Segregation: Huckleberry Finn In The Modern Classroom, Sharon E. Rush

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this article, I explore emotional segregation and how it functions in the context of Huckleberry Finn for both personal and academic reasons. Recently, I read Huckleberry Finn because it had been assigned to my daughter's middle school class. I was concerned for her welfare because she is Black and worried how the book would affect her. To understand her reactions, I had to understand the controversy surrounding the book, particularly as a White mother I have reflected quite deeply on the question whether the book is racist. I define "racism" as a belief in the myth of White superiority …

Immigration, Civil Rights, And Coalitions For Social Justice, Kevin R. Johnson

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The treatment of "aliens," particularly noncitizens of color, under the U.S. immigration laws reveals volumes about domestic race relations in the nation. A deeply complicated, often volatile, relationship exists between racism directed toward U.S. citizens and that aimed at noncitizens. The United States has a long history of treating racial minorities in the United States harshly, at times savagely. Noncitizen racial minorities, as foreigners not part of the national community, generally have been subject to similar, although not identical, cruelties but also have suffered deportation, indefinite detention, and more. One need look to further than the treatment of Arab and …

Foreword: Expanding The Debate On Race, Poverty, Social Justice, And The Law, Margaret M. Russell

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Beyond Reparations: Accommodating Wrongs Or Honoring Resistance, Natsu Taylor Saito

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Reparations for historic wrongs, particularly those done to large groups of people on the basis of their racially constructed identity, is a topic of much current debate. Because the harm caused by such injustices can never really be repaired, the question becomes one of what kind of acknowledgement and direct compensation to victims is appropriate and, more fundamentally, whether the institutional structures that perpetuate such wrongs have been changed to ensure that the injuries are not perpetuated or repeated. Applying some lessons learned from redress to Japanese Americans interned during World War I, this essay suggests that movements for reparations …

Officer, Where's My Stuff - The Constitutional Implications Of A De Facto Property Disability For Homeless People, Kevin Bundy

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

As municipalities across the nation employ increasingly aggressive anti-homeless policies, homeless people are suffering seizure and destruction of their personal belongings without due process or compensation. Courts generally have not proven receptive to homeless people's claims based on loss of personal property, in some instances refusing to recognize that the homeless can exercise any legally protected property interest at all. Homeless existence itself-a lack of private, defensible space in which to perform basic life functions and secure ownership over personal belongings-leaves homeless people with no legally sanctioned place in which to dwell, and exposes them to arbitrary deprivations of whatever …

Refugee Policy And Cultural Identity: In The Voice Of Hmong And Iu Mien Young Adults, Bill Ong Hing

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

U.S. refugee admission and resettlement policies have helped to shape the cultural identities of refugees in America in unanticipated ways. In this article, the author examines the effects of these policies on the young adult members of two small Laotian refugee groups-the Hmong and the Iu Mien. After reviewing the ad hoc admission and resettlement programs of the federal government, the author reviews a collection of interviews of young college students and discovers a range of attitudes on identity, mainstream culture, religion, and the desire to maintain ethnic culture. The cultural identity being developed by Ju Mien and Hmong young …

Class And Status In American Law: Race, Interest, And The Anti-Transformation Cases, Martha R. Mahoney

Articles

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action In The Workplace: The Significance Of Grutter?, Rebecca Hanner White

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae On Behalf Of A Committee Of Concerned Black Graduates Of Aba Accredited Law Schools: Vicky L. Beasley, Devon W. Carbado, Tasha L. Cooper, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Shavar Jeffries, Sidney Majalya, Wanda R. Stansbury, Jory Steele, Et Al., In Support Of Respondents, Mary Mack Adu Esq.

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the Supreme Court of the United States. Barbara Grutter V. Lee Bollinger

"The Implicit Association Test": A Measure Of Unconscious Racism In Legislative Decision-Making, Reshma M. Saujani

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article argues that the Court will not fulfill the promise of the Equal Protection Clause unless the Court adapts its vision of antidiscrimination to account for the complex nature of discrimination. Imagine that we could measure unconscious discrimination. If so, then we could broaden the concept of purposeful discrimination to include the measurement of a legislator's reliance on unconscious racial stereotypes. Such a measuring device may already exist: The Implicit Association Test (IAT), a computer-based test developed by Yale and University of Washington psychologists. Researchers do not yet know how well the IAT can uncover racial stereotypes; however, if …

Locked In Inequality: The Persistence Of Discrimination, Daria Roithmayr

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In this Article, the author argues that the practice of charging school fees to attend public school is an example of locked-in discrimination that persists over time, even in the absence of intentional discrimination. Exploring the lock-in model of discrimination in the unique context of South Africa, Roithmayr makes two central points. First, discriminatory practices often become locked into institutional structures because high switching costs-the costs of moving from a discriminatory practice to an inclusive one—make it too difficult for an institution to discontinue discriminating. Even when institutional actors are fully committed to eradicating racial disparity, they may be constrained …

Constitutional Sunsetting?: Justice O'Connor's Closing Comments On Grutter, Vikram David Amar, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

Most Supreme Court watchers were unsurprised that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's vote proved pivotal in resolving the University of Michigan affirmative action cases; indeed, Justice O'Connor has been in the majority in almost every case involving race over the past decade, and was in the majority in each and every one of the 5-4 decisions the Court handed down across a broad range of difficult issues last Term. Some smaller number of observers were unsurprised that Justice O'Connor decided (along with the four Justices who in the past have voted to allow latitude with regard to race-based affirmative action programs) …

Reinforcing Representation: Enforcing The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

A large body of academic scholarship accuses the Rehnquist Court of "undoing the Second Reconstruction," just as the Waite Court has long been blamed for facilitating the end of the First. This critique captures much of what is meant by those generally charging the Rehnquist Court with "conservative judicial activism." It posits that the present Court wants to dismantle decades' worth of federal antidiscrimination measures that are aimed at the "reconstruction" of public and private relationships at the local level. It sees the Waite Court as having similarly nullified the civil-rights initiatives enacted by Congress following the Civil War to …

Democracy Realized One Classroom At A Time, Peter Goodrich

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article critiques the traditional hierarchy and exclusivity of legal academic publishing, particularly in law reviews, by exploring the radical potential of publishing student seminar contributions. It argues that such collective expression challenges the conventional norms of legal scholarship, democratizes the classroom, and reimagines the relationship between teachers and students. The symposium discussed in the article exemplifies this shift, showcasing diverse voices and experiences that disrupt the homogeneous style and substance of traditional legal publishing.

A Moving Violation? Hypercriminalized Spaces And Fortuitous Presence In Drug Free School Zones, L. Buckner Inniss

Publications

No abstract provided.

Victim Wrongs: The Case For A General Criminal Defense Based On Wrongful Victim Behavior In An Era Of Victims' Rights, Aya Gruber

Publications

Criminal law scholarship is rife with analysis of the victims' rights movement. Many articles identify with the outrage of victims harmed by deviant criminal elements. Other scholarly pieces criticize the movement's denuding of defendants' constitutional trial rights. The point upon which proponents and opponents of the movement tend to agree, however, is that the victim should never be blamed for the crime. The helpless, harmed, innocent victim is someone with whom we can all identify and someone to whom we can all express sympathy. Victim blaming, by all accounts, is an act of legal heresy to feminists, victim advocates, and …

Explaining Grutter V. Bollinger, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection And Disparate Impact: Round Three, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Prior inquiries into the relationship between equal protection and disparate impact have focused on whether equal protection entails a disparate impact standard and whether laws prohibiting disparate impacts can qualify as legislation enforcing equal rotection. In this Article, Professor Primus focuses on a third question: whether equal protection affirmatively forbids the use of statutory disparate impact standards. Like affirmative action, a statute restricting racially disparate impacts is a race-conscious mechanism designed to reallocate opportunities from some racial groups to others. Accordingly, the same individualist view of equal protection that has constrained the operation of affirmative action might also raise questions …

Placing The Adoptive Self, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

[A]doption law and practices are guided by enormous cultural changes in the composition and the meaning of family. As families become increasingly blended outside the context of adoption – with combinations of blood relatives, step-relatives, de facto relatives, and ex-relatives sitting down together for Thanksgiving dinner as a matter of course – birth families and adoptive families knowing one another may not seem so very strange or threatening at all. There will simply be an expectation across communities that ordinary families will be mixed and multiple. With that in mind, we should hesitate before establishing embeddedness as the source of …

Slavery And The Roots Of Sexual Harassment, Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

In recent years, feminist scholars and activists have demonstrated the ways that U.S. slavery functioned as a system of gender supremacy. It entailed the dominance of men over women as well as whites over blacks. Adding the gender lens has shed immense light on the ways that sex, law, and power operated in the racially supremacist enslaving South. In recent years, this literature has emphasized the ways that slavery's sexual and racial subordination converged around the bodies of enslaved black women. One project within this literature characterizes slavery as a "sexual political economy" to make explicit the connections between its …

What Indian Tribes Can Do To Combat Child Sexual Abuse (Issue Paper), Larry Echohawk, Pawnee Indian Tribe, Tessa Meyer Santiago

Tribal Law Journal

One of the most destructive problems affecting children in "Indian country" today is sexual abuse. Increasing reports of child sexual abuse and the severe impact this type of crime has on Indian youth and their families have prompted tribal leaders to voice great concern about the impact of this crime on Indian communities.

Law Enforcement Authority In Indian Country, Melissa L. Tatum

Tribal Law Journal

The protection order has proven to be an effective tool in the war against domestic violence. A protection order, however, is good only so long as it can be enforced, and enforcement has proven to be a problem when a person travels with a protection order to a different jurisdiction.

Expanding The Network Of Safety: Tribal Protection Orders For Survivors Of Sexual Assault, Sara Deer

Tribal Law Journal

The right to exist in a world free from violence is a basic tenet in many indigenous cultures and governments. The epidemic of sexual violence perpetrated against Native American women in the United States reflects a fundamental breakdown in the cultural and legal norms that have served to provide protection to Native women from time immemorial.

What Exactly Is Racial Diversity?, Devon W. Carbado, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Diversity In Legal Education: A Broader View, A Deeper Commitment, Cruz Reynoso, Cory Amron

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Road Work: Racial Profiling And Drug Interdiction On The Highway, Samuel R. Gross, Katherine Y. Barnes

Michigan Law Review

Hypocrisy about race is hardly new in America, but the content changes. Recently the spotlight has been on racial profiling. The story of Colonel Carl Williams of the New Jersey State Police is a wellknown example. On Sunday, February 28, 1999, the Newark Star Ledger published a lengthy interview with Williams in which he talked about race and drugs: "Today . . . the drug problem is cocaine or marijuana. It is most likely a minority group that's involved with that. " Williams condemned racial profiling - "As far as racial profiling is concerned, that is absolutely not right. It …