Law and Race Commons^™

Multiracial Malaise: Multiracial As A Legal Racial Category, Taunya L. Banks

Faculty Scholarship

One byproduct of increased interracial marriages post Loving is a growing number of multiracial children. This cohort of multiracials tends to overshadow older and larger generations of multiracial people whose genealogical mixture is more distant. Some interracial couples, their multiracial children and others support a multiracial category on the U.S. Census. Proponents argued that multiracial individuals experience a unique type of discrimination that warrants treating them as a separate racial category. This article concedes that multiracial individuals should enjoy the freedom to self-identify as they wish, and like others, be protected by anti-discrimination law. It concludes, however, that current arguments …

The Consensus Myth In Criminal Justice Reform, Benjamin Levin

Publications

It has become popular to identify a “consensus” on criminal justice reform, but how deep is that consensus, actually? This Article argues that the purported consensus is much more limited than it initially appears. Despite shared reformist vocabulary, the consensus rests on distinct critiques that identify different flaws and justify distinct policy solutions. The underlying disagreements transcend traditional left/right political divides and speak to deeper disputes about the state and the role of criminal law in society.

The Article maps two prevailing, but fundamentally distinct, critiques of criminal law: (1) the quantitative approach (what I call the “over” frame); and …

The Perpetuation Of Mass Incarceration: Analyzing Systemic Effects Of The U.S. Penal System, Lillian Barreto

Theses

This paper is divided into four parts, Part I. Perpetuation of a Disparate System , Part II. Perpetual Marginalization , Part III. My Personal Research and Part IV. Moving Forward . Part I serves to show the pervasive racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system and how these disparities portray a system which discriminates primarily against poor men of color. Part II shows how this community is disadvantaged in various parts of their social, economic and political lives because of the extent of punitivity and criminalization. It explains the way these disadvantages translate to men of color being discriminated against …

Removing Race From The Jury Deliberation Room: The Shortcomings Of Pena-Rodriguez V. Colorado And How To Address Them, Lauren Crump

Law Student Publications

This comment explores ways in which racial bias undermines the American jury system and argues that simply having a racial bias exception to the no-impeachment rule does not go far enough to guard against racially motivated jury verdicts. In order to guarantee the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury, defendants must always be able to question potential jurors about racial bias, and universal court policies need to be adopted across the country that allow for a consistent approach for investigating claims of racial bias in jury deliberations. Part I of this comment examines the history of American juries and …

Crossing The Thin Blue Line: Protecting Law Enforcement Officers Who Blow The Whistle, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

Law enforcement makes headline news for shootings of unarmed civilians, departmental corruption, and abuse of suspects and witnesses. Also well-documented is the code of silence, the thin blue line, which discourages officers from reporting improper and unlawful conduct by fellow officers. Accordingly, accountability is challenging and mistrust of law enforcement abounds. There is much work to be done in changing the culture of police departments and many recommendations for change. One barrier to transparency that has been largely ignored could be eliminated by reversal of the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos. Criticism of the decision has …

Building A Fair And Just New York: Decriminalize Transactional Sex, Frankie Herrmann

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Moving Forward After Daca: Student Stories And Town Hall, Hastings Race And Poverty Law Journal

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Complicated Landscape Of Civil War Monuments, Jessica Owley, Jess Phelps

Indiana Law Journal

This essay examines the controversy regarding confederate monuments and attempts to contextualize this debate within the current preservation framework. While much attention has been paid to this topic over the past year, particularly with regard to “public” monuments, such discussion has generally failed to recognize the varied and complicated property law layers involved—which can fundamentally change the legal requirements for modification or removal. We propose a spectrum or framework for assessing these resources ranging from public to private, and we explore the messy space in-between these poles where most monuments actually fall. By highlighting these categories, we provide an initial …

On The Permanence Of Racial Injustice And The Possibility Of Deracialization, Steven A. Ramirez, Neil G. Williams

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

A Reflection On The Ethics Of Movement Lawyering, Susan Carle, Scott L. Cummings

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay takes a new look at legal ethics issues salient to "movement lawyers" who maintain a sustained commitment to social movement goals and collaborate with social movement organizations over time to achieve them. The essay provides a historical overview of movement lawyering, tracing its development to current practice in which movement lawyers work in collaboration with mobilized social movement groups, though not always in traditional lawyer-client relationships. As this analysis reveals, contemporary movements employ a sophisticated array of strategies, which may pull lawyers away from traditional representation paradigms. We argue that the legal ethics literature on movement lawyering must …

Illuminating Black Data Policing, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The future of policing will be driven by data. Crime, criminals, and patterns of criminal activity will be reduced to data to be studied, crunched, and predicted. The benefits of big data policing involve smarter policing, faster investigation, predictive deterrence, and the ability to visualize crime problems in new ways. Not surprisingly then, police administrators have been seeking out new partnerships with sophisticated private data companies and experimenting with new surveillance technologies. This potential future, however, has a very present limitation. It is a limitation largely ignored by adopting jurisdictions and could, if left unaddressed, delegitimize the adoption and use …

The Technologies Of Race: Big Data, Privacy And The New Racial Bioethics, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Advancements in genetic technology have resurrected long discarded conceptualizations of “race” as a biological reality. The rise of modern biological race thinking – as evidenced in health disparity research, personal genomics, DNA criminal forensics, and bio-databanking - not only is scientifically unsound but portends the future normalization of racial inequality. This Article articulates a constitutional theory of shared humanity, rooted in the substantive due process doctrine and Ninth Amendment, to counter the socio-legal acceptance of modern genetic racial differentiation. It argues that state actions that rely on biological racial distinctions undermine the essential personhood of individuals subjected to such taxonomies, …

"When They Enter, We All Enter": Opening The Door To Intersectional Discrimination Claims Based On Race And Disability, Alice Abrokwa

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article explores the intersection of race and disability in the context of employment discrimination, arguing that people of color with disabilities can and should obtain more robust relief for their harms by asserting intersectional discrimination claims. Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw first articulated the intersectionality framework by explaining that Black women can experience a form of discrimination distinct from that experienced by White women or Black men, that is, they may face discrimination as Black women due to the intersection of their race and gender. Likewise, people of color with disabilities can experience discrimination distinct from that felt by people of …

Charter Schools And School Desegregation Law, Will Stancil

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justiciability Of State Law School Segregation Claims, Will Stancil, Jim Hilbert

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Awaiting The Rebirth Of An Icon: Brown V. Board Of Education, R. Lawrence Purdy

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Defendant Characteristics Affect Sentencing And Conviction In The Us, Payton Kuenzli

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research study analyzes whether or not there is any relationship between sentencing and conviction and certain defendant characteristics in the US legal system. In the midst of a time where the nation is strongly divided politically, the topic is often the center of research projects and discussions in academic journals. Specifically, this research explores the 3 characteristics- race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Within this article, multiple case studies from other journals are cited in which research and experiments have suggested that these factors do have influence on both whether or not a defendant gets convicted or for how long …

Writer Re-Written: What Really (Might Have) Happened To Atticus And Scout, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Public Lands, Conservation, And The Possibility Of Justice, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

On December 28, 2016, President Obama issued a proclamation designating the Bears Ears National Monument pursuant to his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which allows the President to create monuments on federal public lands. Bears Ears, which is located in the heart of Utah’s dramatic red rock country, contains a surfeit of ancient Puebloan cliff-dwellings, petroglyphs, pictographs, and archeological artifacts. The area is also famous for its paleontological finds and its desert biodiversity. Like other national monuments, Bears Ears therefore readily meets the statutory objective of preserving “historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific …

Criminal Employment Law, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Article diagnoses a phenomenon, “criminal employment law,” which exists at the nexus of employment law and the criminal justice system. Courts and legislatures discourage employers from hiring workers with criminal records and encourage employers to discipline workers for non-work-related criminal misconduct. In analyzing this phenomenon, my goals are threefold: (1) to examine how criminal employment law works; (2) to hypothesize why criminal employment law has proliferated; and (3) to assess what is wrong with criminal employment law. This Article examines the ways in which the laws that govern the workplace create incentives for employers not to hire individuals with …