Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Innocent Until Proven Mentally Incompetent., Jade Smith

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

Abstract Forthcoming.

The Death Penalty Seals Racial Minorities’ Fate: The Unfortunate Realities Of Being A Racial Minority In America., Sarah Garcia

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

Abstract Forthcoming.

The Impact Of Government Sponsored Segregation On Health Inequities: Addressing Death Gaps Through Reparations, Mariya Denisenko

Washington and Lee Law Review

Government sponsored segregation of urban neighborhoods has detrimentally impacted the health of Black Americans. Over the last century, federal, state, and local governments have promulgated racist laws and policies that shaped the racial divide of communities in major metropolitan cities. This divide has contributed to poor health outcomes and large discrepancies in life expectancy for Black Americans when compared to their White counterparts. While health is impacted by various factors, segregation has been shown to impose various challenges that make it difficult for Black Americans to attain good health.

Segregated Black communities struggle with economic inequality, environmental racism, and face …

A Call For Effective Leniency: How The Circuit Split Regarding The Prison Mailbox Rule Fails To Properly Alleviate Issues For Prisoners, Shelby E. Parks

MC Law Review

The prison population has long been an overlooked segment of society. This is particularly true when it comes to pro se litigants within the federal prison system. A pro so litigant is someone involved in litigation, whether civil or criminal, and is representing themselves instead of being represented by an attorney. In other words, pro se prisoners do not have the aid of counsel at their disposal. Although it is an individual’s constitutional right to represent themselves, it can come at a cost, especially when it comes to understanding the nuances of civil or criminal court procedure. For pro se …

Inclusiveness: Advancing Environmental Justice In A Diverse Democracy, Irma S. Russell, Alexandra D. Dunn

Faculty Works

Today, environmental justice (EJ) is more than a significant and meaningful social movement. EJ has now emerged—after at least five decades—as a major initiative for the federal government and for many state governments. Since the beginnings of the EJ movement, its proponents have sought redress for the disproportionate and negative impacts of generations of environmental policy and siting decisions that resulted in adverse effects on the health, environment, economics, and climate of disadvantaged communities. Scientific research and “big data” programs now provide evidence supporting community EJ claims, and laws such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction …

Equity And Inclusion As Unifying Principles, Alena M. Allen

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

James Oakes's Treatment Of The First Confiscation Act In Freedom National: The Destruction Of Slavery In The United States, 1861-1865, Angi Porter

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In his work, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, James Oakes provides an overview of several Civil War era legal instruments regarding enslavement in the United States. One of the statutes he examines is An Act to Confiscate Property Used for Insurrectionary Purposes, passed by the Thirty Seventh Congress in August, 1861. This law, popularly known as the First Confiscation Act (FCA), is one of the several "Confiscation Acts" that contributed to the weakening of legal enslavement during the War. Fortunately, scholars have contextualized and deemphasized President Lincoln's role as the "Great Emancipator" by examining …

Misunderstanding Meriwether, Brian Soucek, Ryan Chen

Fordham Law Review

Meriwether v. Hartop is widely seen as one of the most important academic freedom and transgender rights cases of recent years. Whether praising it as a victory for free speech or condemning it as a threat to educational equality, commentators across the political spectrum have agreed on one thing: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit did something big when it held that professors at public universities have a First Amendment right to misgender their students in class. But contrary to popular belief, Meriwether held no such thing. In fact, the Sixth Circuit could not have held what …

Anything But Prideful: Free Speech And Conversion Therapy Bans, State-Federal Action Plans, And Rooting Out Medical Fraud, Jordan Hutt

Fordham Law Review

At a time when conversion therapy might seem archaic to many people, this practice remains prevalent across the United States and finds legal support in the halls of federal courthouses. In 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in Otto v. City of Boca Raton, held that two ordinances banning conversion therapy in Boca Raton and Palm Beach violated First Amendment free speech rights. Specifically, Otto held that conversion therapy bans were content-based restrictions subject to strict scrutiny. Conversely, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Ninth Circuits’ prior decisions upheld conversion therapy bans …

Bolstering New York’S Tenant Protection Law: Ensuring Retroactive Application Under The Heightened Regina Standard, Abigail Strange

Cardozo Law Review

Rent regulation laws have long been a cornerstone of the New York City and New York State housing markets, enacted to combat excessive rent increases that risked pricing out low- and middle-income tenants. On June 14, 2019, the New York State Legislature enacted the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA), which brought sweeping changes to New York’s rental laws, including regulated and unregulated buildings. The HSTPA significantly expanded tenant protections across New York State, and specifically in New York City, which currently has one of the highest monthly rent medians in the country. The passage of the HSTPA was …

Education And Democracy From Brown To Plyler, Nicholas Espíritu

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Judicial review has often been cast in terms of democratic legitimacy. Democratic legitimacy is often linked to whether it institutes the will of the people through majoritarian rule and whether it creates processes for reevaluation of these prior decisions by newly constituted majorities. Judicial review of majoritarian decisions has often been criticized as a overriding or circumventing of these democratic processes. Beginning with Brown v. Board of Education, the Warren Court adopted a resolution of the “counter-majoritarian difficulty” of judicial review by tacitly accepting Justice Stone’s formulation from footnote four of United States v. Carolene Products and engaging …

Thurgood Marshall Memorial Lecture 9-13-2023, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Racial Discrimination In Jury Selection: The Urgent Need For Sixth Amendment Protections For Black Capital Defendants, Claire Austin

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

In the U.S., death row is made up of a disproportionate number of black persons. In capital trials, black defendants often face all white juries. The deep-rooted racial discrimination in the justice system impacts jury selection because prosecutors use peremptory strikes to remove black jurors from the jury panel. As the law stands today, the Sixth Amendment guarantee of an impartial jury made up of a fair representation of the jury applies only to the pool of jurors called in for jury service, not those who are actually selected to hear the case.

This comment analyzes the Supreme Court decision, …

Rights And Remedies: Rental Housing For Low-Income Households In The United States, David Ray Papke, Mary Elise Papke

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

The state of rental housing for low-income households in the United States is deplorable. Unaffordable, unsanitary, and insecure, this housing violates the internationally recognized right of housing. While the United States has never formally recognized that right, the right guarantees not only a roof overhead but also affordability, habitability, and security of tenure. Policies and programs seeking to remedy the problems in rental housing might consciously address these aspects of rental housing. Policies and programs of this sort will not be enough to eliminate all problems, but they would alleviate a matter of great embarrassment, namely, the most affluent country …

Sexual Orientation At The Crossroads, Johan D. Van Der Vyver

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County that sexual orientation is included in the concept of “sex” in the non-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is historically indefensible. The Civil Rights Act was initiated by President John F. Kennedy to combat racial discrimination in the workplace and the word “sex” was included in the Act by a “claque of Southern Congressmen” as part of a filibuster attempt to prevent its enactment. It was accepted by proponents of the Act on the instructions of President Johnson merely to avoid the …

Persistent Impediments And The Geography Of “Affirmatively Furthering” Fair Housing: The Case Of Erie County, Ny, Jason Knight, Heather R. Abraham, Christopher Holtkamp, Russell Weaver

Journal Articles

Despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, segregation and discrimination remain key characteristics of the American housing system. The Act sought to reverse decades of private and public sector policies that contributed to segregated neighborhoods and the exclusion of protected classes from equal access to housing. Under the Act, communities receiving funds from US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are required to “affirmatively further fair housing” (AFFH). This paper examines the AFFH mandate as operationalized by HUD grantees in Erie County, NY, by evaluating six Analysis of Impediments (AI) to Fair Housing reports prepared from …

Regionalization And Access To Fair Housing In Erie County, Ny, Christopher Holtkamp, Russell Weaver, Heather R. Abraham, Jason Knight

Journal Articles

This paper examines how political fragmentation in Erie County, NY, USA impacts the availability of affordable housing and economic opportunity for residents. In the post-World War II era, employment rapidly migrated to the suburbs, resulting in spatial disconnections between extant residential geographies of the principal City of Buffalo and older, inner-ring suburbs, and the emerging economic geographies of second- and outer-ring municipalities. Stated alternatively, the typical distance between workers and workplace steadily increased. As jobs suburbanized, affordable housing opportunities did not, leaving many low-income residents either isolated from new employment opportunities altogether or paying higher transportation costs for employment farther …

On Fragmentation, Boundary Problems, And Movement Toward A Regional Fair Housing Regime In Erie County, Ny, Russell Weaver, Christopher Holtkamp, Jason Knight, Heather R. Abraham

Journal Articles

Prior to recent rule changes, which are still being deliberated as of this writing, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grantee communities charged with Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) have been required to perform regular analyses of impediments (AIs) that identify barriers to fair housing in their territories. A central element of the AI is the delineation of racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty (R/ECAPs). Traditionally, grantees identify R/ECAPs using data for their jurisdictions only, ignoring surrounding communities. Doing so provides local decision-makers with knowledge about spaces in their territories where housing security might be relatively problematic, and …

African Courts And International Human Rights Law, John Mukum Mbaku

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and since then, the international community, with the help of the United Nations, has adopted other international human rights instruments designed to recognize and protect human rights. Since international human rights instruments do not automatically confer rights that are justiciable in domestic courts, each African country must domesticate these instruments in order to create rights that are justiciable in its domestic courts. Given the fact that many African countries have not yet domesticated the core international human rights instruments, international human rights law’s ability to positively impact …

A Not-So Turkish Delight: The Implications Of Turkey’S Unprecedented Withdrawal From A Groundbreaking Women’S Rights Treaty And The Need For International Reform, Allyssa Myers

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Domestic violence against women is one of the most pervasive and pressing international issues of our time. There have been multiple international human rights treaties enacted to address this issue and move to end gender-based violence—the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combatting Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) being one. Created in 2011, the Istanbul Convention sought to provide an international legal framework for how states should work toward eradicating gender-based violence. Turkey, the first country to sign and to subsequently ratify the Istanbul Convention, unprecedently withdrew from the Convention in 2021. Turkish President Recep Tayyip …