Law and Race Commons^™

The Role Of The Courts And The Bar In Implementing Social Change, Hubert H. Humphrey

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Test Case Litigation As A Source Of Significant Social Change, Richard A. Daynard

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Tackling The Social Determinants Of Health: A Central Role For Providers, Jessica Mantel

Georgia State University Law Review

Americans’ poor health and high health care costs largely stem from social, environmental, and behavioral factors that adversely impact health. Yet, health care providers traditionally have neglected the social determinants of health, focusing instead on medically treating patients’ symptoms. As a result, addressing the social determinants of health has primarily been the domain of government and community groups. Unfortunately, the efforts of the public health and social services sectors are stymied by chronic underfunding, a situation unlikely to change in the current political environment. This article identifies a potential solution to this problem: recent health care reforms that encourage health …

Race And Wrongful Convictions In The United States, Samuel R. Gross, Maurice Possley, Klara Stephens

Other Publications

African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in “group exonerations.” We see this racial disparity for all major crime categories, but we examine it in this report in the context of the three types of crime that produce the largest numbers …

Race Relations In The Post-Obama Era, Ron Miller

Jerry Falwell Library Events

No abstract provided.

Executive Disorder: The Muslim Ban, Emergency Advocacy, And The Fires Next Time, Abed Ayoub, Khaled Beydoun

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

On January 27, 2017, one week into his presidency, Donald Trump enacted Executive Order No. 13769, popularly known as the “Muslim Ban.” The Order named seven Muslim-majority nations and restricted, effective immediately, the reentry into the United States of visa and green card holders from these states. With the Muslim Ban, President Trump delivered on a central campaign promise, and as a result, injected Islamophobia into American immigration law and policy.

The Muslim Ban had an immediate impact on tens of thousands of Muslims, directly affecting U.S. visa and green card holders currently outside of the country, while exacerbating fear …

Legacy In Paradise: Analyzing The Obama Administration’S Efforts Of Reconciliation With Native Hawaiians, Troy J.H. Andrade

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article analyzes President Barack Obama’s legacy for an indigenous people—nearly 125 years in the making—and how that legacy is now in considerable jeopardy with the election of Donald J. Trump. This Article is the first to specifically critique the hallmark of Obama’s reconciliatory legacy for Native Hawaiians: an administrative rule that establishes a process in which the United States would reestablish a government-to-government relationship with Native Hawaiians, the only indigenous people in America without a path toward federal recognition. In the Article, Obama’s rule—an attempt to provide Native Hawaiians with recognition and greater control over their own affairs to …

Concealed Motives: Rethinking Fourteenth Amendment And Voting Rights Challenges To Felon Disenfranchisement, Lauren Latterell Powell

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Felon disenfranchisement provisions are justified by many Americans under the principle that voting is a privilege to be enjoyed only by upstanding citizens. The provisions are intimately tied, however, to the country’s legacy of racism and systemic disenfranchisement and are at odds with the values of American democracy. In virtually every state, felon disenfranchisement provisions affect the poor and communities of color on a grossly disproportionate scale. Yet to date, most challenges to the provisions under the Equal Protection Clause and Voting Rights Act have been unsuccessful, frustrating proponents of re-enfranchisement and the disenfranchised alike.

In light of those failures, …

Bail Nullification, Jocelyn Simonson

Michigan Law Review

This Article explores the possibility of community nullification beyond the jury by analyzing the growing and unstudied phenomenon of community bail funds, which post bail for strangers based on broader beliefs regarding the overuse of pretrial detention. When a community bail fund posts bail, it can serve the function of nullifying a judge’s determination that a certain amount of the defendant’s personal or family money was necessary to ensure public safety and prevent flight. This growing practice—what this Article calls “bail nullification”—is powerful because it exposes publicly what many within the system already know to be true: that although bail …

A Modest Memo, Yxta Maya Murray

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

A Modest Memo is a satire in the form of a legal memo written for President-Elect Donald Trump circa November 2016. It counsels Mr. Trump to obtain Mexican funding for a United States-Mexico “Wall” via United Nations Security Council sanctions. These sanctions would freeze remittances (that is, “hold them hostage”) until Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto wired the United States sufficient monies for construction. The memo, which is entirely the product of my imagination and legal study, contemplates one of the many possible worst case scenarios threatened by the Trump presidency. Through the arts of law and literature, I aim …

Policing The Boundaries Of Whiteness: The Tragedy Of Being “Out Of Place” From Emmett Till To Trayvon Martin, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

This Article takes what many view as an extraordinary case about racial hatred from 1955, the Emmett Till murder and trial, and analyzes it against the Trayvon Martin killing and trial outcome in 2012 and 2013. Specifically, this Article exposes one important, but not yet explored similarity between the two cases: their shared role in policing the boundaries of whiteness as a means of preserving the material and the psychological benefits of whiteness. This policing occurred in a variety of forms, including: (1) maintaining white racial separation; (2) facilitating cross-class, white racial solidarity; (3) articulating blackness, and specifically black maleness, …

Reconstructing Local Government, Daniel Farbman

Vanderbilt Law Review

After the Civil War, the South faced a problem that was almost entirely new in the United States: a racially diverse and geographically integrated citizenry. In one fell swoop with emancipation, millions of former slaves were now citizens. The old system of plantation localism, built largely on the feudal control of the black population by wealthy white planters, was no longer viable. The urgent question facing both those who sought to reform and those who sought to preserve the "Old South" was: What should local government look like after emancipation? This Article tells the story of the struggle over the …

Newroom: Do Lord Remember Me: Black Church In Ri 02-21-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Increased Franchising Opportunities For Minorities: Some Legal Options, Philip Harris, Frank J. Macchiarola

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Discrimination In Employment, Housing, And Education: Constitutional Concepts And Social Theories, Frederick D. Braid

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Forgotten Youth: Homeless Lgbt Youth Of Color And The Runaway And Homeless Youth Act, Michelle Page

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Over the years, the rate of youth homelessness in America has steadily risen, prompting the creation and subsequent revision of corrective policies. One such policy is the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act of 1974. The Act is not a cure-all for homelessness but it does provide services and programs specifically designed to aid homeless youth. It has had some success, but not all homeless youth benefit from it equally.

Obviously, the youth population is not a homogenous one. Youth are of varying ages, races, genders, and sexualities. Unfortunately, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act does not specifically account for these …

Ideology, Race, And The Death Penalty: "Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics" In Advocacy Research, Anthony Walsh, Virginia Hatch

Journal of Ideology

We use the literature on race in death penalty to illustrate the hold that ideology has on researchers and journalists alike when a social issue is charged with emotional content. We note particularly how statistical evidence become misinterpreted in ways that support a particular ideology, either because of innumeracy or because—subconsciously or otherwise—one’s ideology precludes a critical analysis. We note that because white defendants are now proportionately more likely to receive the death penalty and to be executed than black defendants that the argument has shifted from a defendant-based to a victim-based one. We examine studies based on identical data …

Trending @ Rwu Law: Deborah Gonzalez's Post: Why I Marched... 1-25-2017, Deborah Gonzalez

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Poverty, The Great Unequalizer: Improving The Delivery System For Civil Legal Aid, Latonia Haney Keith

Catholic University Law Review

When individuals in the United States face civil justice issues, they are not entitled to legal counsel and therefore must secure paid counsel, proceed pro se or qualify for free legal assistance. As a result of the economic downturn, the number of Americans who are unable to afford legal counsel is now at an all-time high. In response to this ever-widening justice gap, the public interest community has launched multiple initiatives to supplement the underfunded legal aid system. Though valiant, this article argues that this approach has unfortunately created a complex, fragmented and overlapping delivery system for legal aid. This …

Trending @ Rwu Law: David Logan's Post: Reliving The Civil Rights Movement With Rep. John Lewis 1-17-2017, David Logan

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.