Law and Race Commons^™

Emphasizing Torts In Claims Of Discrimination Against Black Female Athletes, Alfred Dennis Mathewson

Faculty Scholarship

In Black Women, Gender Equity and the Function at the Junction, I argued that an equality-based legal regime does not provide an adequate remedy for African-American female athletes. Instead I suggested that a tort-based regime may be more appropriate. I did so knowing that gender and racial discrimination are torts and I did not intend to suggest otherwise. They are statutory torts founded upon equality principles. What I intended was to draw more upon the general tort principles involved in an antidiscrimination action. I specifically invoked the notion of using mass tort theories. I wish to sketch a brief but …

A Comparative Analysis Of Women's Issues: Toward A Contextualized Approach, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

"This Article proposes a methodology for comparative analysis of women's rights using insights from critical race theory and feminism. Comparative analysis by a Western scholar must reconcile a perspective developed in the United States with respect for another culture. In discussing women's rights, lawyers, judges, students and sociologists have justified certain women's situations as an inherent aspect of culture. For example, traditional "female genital surgery" has been defended as a "mere bodily mutilation" that is the "sine qua non of the whole teaching of tribal law, religion, and morality." In Mexico, "machismo" has been justified as an immutable characteristic of …

Tricky Magic: Blacks As Immigrants And The Paradox Of Foreignness, Lolita K. Buckner Inniss

Publications

Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the "outsider." Many whites could look at the social position of blacks and feel that color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not American. Perhaps that is why one of the first epithets that many …

Caste, Class, And Equal Citizenship, William E. Forbath

Michigan Law Review

There is a familiar egalitarian constitutional tradition and another we have largely forgotten. The familiar one springs from Brown v. Board of Education; its roots lie in the Reconstruction era. Court-centered and countermajoritarian, it takes aim at caste and racial subordination. The forgotten one also originated with Reconstruction, but it was a majoritarian tradition, addressing its arguments to lawmakers and citizens, not to courts. Aimed against harsh class inequalities, it centered on decent work and livelihoods, social provision, and a measure of economic independence and democracy. Borrowing a phrase from its Progressive Era proponents, I will call it the social …

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.

Chain Gangs, Boogeymen And Other Real Prisons Of The Imagination, Lisa Kelly

Articles

This narrative is a fictionalized account of real legal, historical, and interpersonal issues rooted in the social construction of race.

In The Wake Of Hopwood: An Update On Affirmative Action In The Education Arena, Carla Pratt

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

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, …

Revaluing Restitution: From The Talmud To Postsocialism, Michael A. Heller, Christopher Serkin

Faculty Scholarship

Whatever happened to the study of restitution? Once a core private law subject along with property, torts, and contracts, restitution has receded from American legal scholarship. Few law professors teach the material, fewer still write in the area, and no one even agrees what the field comprises anymore. Hanoch threatens to reverse the tide and make restitution interesting again. The book takes commonplace words such as "value" and "gain" and shows how they embody a society's underlying normative principles. Variations across cultures in the law of unjust enrichment reflect differences in national understandings of sharing, property, and even personhood. As …

Becoming A Citizen: Reconstruction Era Regulation Of African American Marriages, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

While many Black people regarded slavery as a form of social death, some nineteenth-century white policy-makers extolled the virtues of slavery as a tool to uplift the characters of Africans in America: "[Slavery in America] has been the lever by which five million human beings have been elevated from the degraded and benighted condition of savage life ... to a knowledge of their responsibilities to God and their relations to society," observed a Kentucky Congressman in 1860. These sentiments were echoed by abolitionist northern officers not three years later when the institution of marriage was lauded for its civilizing effect …

Home Grown Racism: Colorado's Historic Embrace-And Denial- Of Equal Opportunity In Higher Education, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law, Life And Literature: Using Literature And Life To Expose Transracial Adoption Laws As Adoption On A One-Way Street, Angela Mae Kupenda, Adam L. Thrash, Jennifer A. Riley-Collins, Lashonda Y. Dukes, Stephany J. Lewis, Rodney R. Dixon

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Targets Missed And Targets Hit: Critical Tax Studies And Effective Tax Reform, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

Medieval alchemy is popularly associated with attempts to become rich by transmuting base elements into gold. Such attempts were less than universally successful. Yet, alchemy yielded great benefits in other areas. For instance, alchemy was one of the sources of modern sciences such as pharmacology and metallurgy.' Also, the rich and profound symbology of alchemy has influenced modern psychology.

Something similar may be said of critical tax studies. Such studies have argued that the Internal Revenue Code as a whole, or significant features of it, disadvantage-intentionally or unintentionally-groups historically oppressed or ignored by American society. Some of these arguments have …

A Proposal To The Hanodaganyas To Decolonize Federal Indian Control Law, Robert B. Porter

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, cast in the form of a letter to President William Jefferson Clinton, Professor Porter argues for the decolonization of federal Indian control law. After detailing the religious and colonialist roots of early Supreme Court decisions dealing with the Indian nations and giving an overview of the evolution of federal Indian policy, Professor Porter argues for the decolonization of federal Indian control law on several grounds: 1. the world community has rejected colonialism policies; 2. federal Indian control law denies basic human rights of self-determination; 3. colonization has partially succeeded in destroying the Indian nations; and 4. decolonization …

Race, Rights, And Remedies In Criminal Adjudication, Pamela S. Karlan

Michigan Law Review

Once upon a time, back before the Warren Court, criminal procedure and racial justice were adjacent hinterlands in constitutional law's empire. In 1954, the fifth edition of Dowling's constitutional law casebook contained one chapter on "procedural due process" in which six of the eight cases were about criminal justice, and three of those - Powell v. Alabama, Moore v. Dempsey, and Bailey v. Alabama - were as much about race as they were about crime. A few pages later, two slender chapters on the "national protection of civil rights" and "equal protection of the laws" contained seven and nine decisions, …

The Color Line Of Punishment, Jerome H. Skolnick

Michigan Law Review

If "the color line," (in W.E.B. Du Bois's 1903 phrase and prophecy) was to be the twentieth century's greatest challenge for the domestic life and public policy of the United States, the law has had much to do with drawing its shape. No surprise, this. By now, legal theorists accept that law does not advance in preordained fashion, immune from the sway of political interest, belief systems and social structure. Still, it is hard to exaggerate how powerfully the law has shaped the life chances of Americans of African heritage, for good or ill, and in ways that we scarcely …

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 …

Against Common Sense: Why Title Vii Should. Protect Speakers Of Black English, Jill Gaulding

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The speech of many black Americans is marked by phrases such as 'we be writin"' or "we don't have no problems." Because most listeners consider such "Black English" speech patterns incorrect, these speakers face significant disadvantages in the job market. But common sense suggests that there is nothing discriminatory about employers' negative reactions to Black English because it makes sense to allow employers to insist that employees use correct grammar.

This article argues against this common sense understanding of Black English as bad grammar. The author first analyzes the extent of the job market disadvantages faced by Black English speakers …

Las Olvidadas -- Gendered In Justice/Gendered Injustice: Latinas, Fronteras And The Law, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article will study Latinas in the United States and develop a framework that aims to eradicate injustices Latinas experience by importing the voices of las olvidadas into the heart of rights-talk, thus placing Latinas in justice. First, the piece will identify who the olvidadas are-unseen, unheard, and virtually non-existent in the world of law as well as in the myriad other worlds they inhabit. Parts III and IV consider structural roadblocks-first external and then internal-that conspire to perpetuate Latina invisibility and disempowerment, keeping Latinas from justice. Part V presents the locations and positions of Latinas who suffer intimate violence …

Visible Minorities In The Multi-Racial State: When Are Preferential Policies Justifiable?, Anita Anand

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article outlines the circumstances in which the state is justified in implementing preferential policies in favour of visible minorities and describes an approach to policy formulation. The thesis is that visible minorities warrant preferential treatment in order to rectify past injustices and to redistribute advantages to visible minorities who are chronically poor. "Supply-side" over "demand-side" policies are favoured. Supply-side policies are preferable because they support substantive equality by ensuring that individuals have a minimum level of subsistence. If the goal of achieving substantive equality is to be achieved, the poor should also be entitled to benefit under preferential policies. …

Metropolitanism, Progressivism, And Race, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

Professor Zelinsky examines three books on local government. Two of these, Cities Without Suburbs, by David Rusk, and Citistates, by Neal Peirce, call for metropolitanizing the governance of urban areas. Our Town, by David L. Kirp, John P. Dwyer, and Larry A. Rosenthal, explores the Mt. Laurel litigation and its aftermath and suggests that the land use authority of local governments be diminished through court-ordered zoning for low-income housing.

Professor Zelinsky is skeptical of these well-intentioned proposals. The metropolitan governments advocated by Rusk and Peirce would be less responsive than the smaller localities they would replace and less likely to …

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, …

South Africa: Divided Or United By Color - A Detailed Look At The Legal Resources Centre, Lourdes M. Ventura

Circles: Buffalo Women's Journal of Law and Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Both Edges Of The Margin: Blacks And Asians In Mississippi Masala, Barriers To Coalition Building, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

Asians often take a middle position between White privilege and Black subordination and therefore participate in what Professor Banks calls "simultaneous racism," where one racially subordinated group subordinates another. She observes that the experience of Asian Indian immigrants in Mira Nair's film parallels a much earlier Chinese immigrant experience in Mississippi, indicating a pattern of how the dominant power uses law to enforce insularity among and thereby control different groups in a pluralistic society. However, Banks argues that the mere existence of such legal constraints does not excuse the behavior of White appeasement or group insularity among both Asians and …

Religious Rituals And Latcrit Theorizing, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

After the first annual LatCrit conference held at La Jolla, California, Professor Keith Aoki observed that "issues of religion and spirituality are submerged not far below the surface of emerging Latina/o Critical Theory." He proposed that LatCrits begin to "unbracket" religious affiliation and identity in the construction and representation of individual and group racial identities. Professor Aoki further posited that "[i]n a paradoxical way, religion simultaneously may be both more and less difficult to voluntarily discard than race, language or nationality as a constitutive element of one's individual and group identity.

Passenger Profiling: A Greater Terror Than Terrorism Itself, 32 J. Marshall L. Rev. 167 (1998), Donna Smith

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action Statements, Michigan Journal Of Gender & Law

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The student editors of the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law adopted a brief statement for release with other student statements and voted to publish a statement in the Journal. This is their statement in response to the anti-affirmative action lawsuits. Several other Law School student organizations have also provided their statements to publish.

Single-Parent Latinas On The Margin: Seeking A Room With A View, Meals, And Built-In Community, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers the unique challenges of single parent Latinas and and a different way of viewing concerns of single parents. This alternative paradigm uses a holistic approach to the problems I had been pondering, acknowledging their interconnectedness, rather than artificially segmenting them into disjointed issues. I visualized a multi-pronged approach to Latina mothers' many concerns, based on a cohousing model, as modified for the needs of a low-income, racially distinct population of single-parent Latinas. It describes co-housing and proposes that this housing model be more broadly accessible through land use changes and greater acceptance of housing beyond single family …

Back To Afrolantica: A Legacy Of (Black) Perseverance?, 24 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 447 (1998), Kevin Hopkins

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.