Law and Race Commons^™

"To Help, Not To Hurt": Justice Thomas's Equality Canon, Nicole Stelle Garnett, William S. Consovoy

Journal Articles

To comprehend Justice Thomas’s views on racial equality requires an understanding of how his life experiences influence his approach to questions of race and the law. Recurring themes in his opinions about racial equality include his belief that racial preferences stigmatize their beneficiaries, his concern that the prevailing notion that racial integration is necessary to black achievement is rooted in a presumption of racial inferiority, his worry that affirmative action efforts provide cover for the failure to address the urgent needs of disadvantaged Americans, and his knowledge that seemingly benign policies can mask illicit motives. Finally, Justice Thomas contends that …

Race And The New Policing, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Several observers credit nearly 25 years of declining crime rates to the “New Policing” and its emphasis on advanced statistical metrics, new forms of organizational accountability, and aggressive tactical enforcement of minor crimes. This model has been adopted in large and small cities, and has been institutionalized in everyday police-citizen interactions, especially among residents of poorer, often minority, and higher crime areas. Citizens exposed to these regimes have frequent contact with police through investigative stops, arrests for minor misdemeanors, and non-custody citations or summons for code violations or vehicle infractions. Two case studies show surprising and troubling similarities in the …

Aggressive Encounters & White Fragility: Deconstructing The Trope Of The Angry Black Woman, Kimberly Jade Norwood, Trina Jones

Scholarship@WashULaw

Black women in the United States are the frequent targets of bias-filled interactions in which aggressors: (1) denigrate Black women; and (2) blame those women who elect to challenge the aggressor’s acts and the bias that fuels them. This Article seeks to raise awareness of these “aggressive encounters” and to challenge a prevailing narrative about Black women and anger. It examines the myriad circumstances (both professional and social) in which aggressive encounters occur and the ways in which these encounters expose gender and racial hierarchies. It then explores how the intersectional nature of Black women’s identities triggers a particularized stereotype …

New Policing, New Segregation: From Ferguson To New York, Jeffrey Fagan, Elliott Ash

Faculty Scholarship

In popular and political culture, many observers credit nearly twenty-five years of declining crime rates to the “New Policing.” Breaking with a past tradition of “reactive policing,” the New Policing emphasizes advanced statistical metrics, new forms of organizational accountability, and aggressive tactical enforcement of minor crimes. The existing research and scholarship on these developments have focused mostly on the nation’s major cities, where concentrated populations and elevated crime rates provide pressurized laboratories for police experimentation, often in the spotlight of political scrutiny. An additional line of scholarship has looked more closely at how the tactics of the New Policing have …

A Different Class Of Care: The Benefits Crisis And Low-Wage Workers, Trina Jones

Faculty Scholarship

When compared to other developed nations, the United States fares poorly with regard to benefits for workers. While the situation is grim for most U.S. workers, it is worse for low-wage workers. Data show a significant benefits gap between low-wage and high-wage in terms of flexible work arrangements (FWAs), paid leave, pensions, and employer-sponsored health-care insurance, among other things. This gap exists notwithstanding the fact that FWAs and employment benefits produce positive returns for employees, employers, and society in general. Despite these returns, this Article contends that employers will be loath to extend FWAs and greater employment benefits to low-wage …

Aggressive Encounters & White Fragility: Deconstructing The Trope Of The Angry Black Woman, Trina Jones, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Faculty Scholarship

Black women in the United States are the frequent targets of bias-filled interactions in which aggressors: (1) denigrate Black women; and (2) blame those women who elect to challenge the aggressor’s acts and the bias that fuels them. This Article seeks to raise awareness of these “aggressive encounters” and to challenge a prevailing narrative about Black women and anger. It examines the myriad circumstances (both professional and social) in which aggressive encounters occur and the ways in which these encounters expose gender and racial hierarchies. It then explores how the intersectional nature of Black women’s identities triggers a particularized stereotype …

Disparate Impact In Big Data Policing, Andrew D. Selbst

Georgia Law Review

Data-driven decision systems are taking over. No
institution in society seems immune from the
enthusiasm that automated decision-making generates,
including-and perhaps especially-the police. Police
departments are increasingly deploying data mining
techniques to predict, prevent, and investigate crime.
But all data mining systems have the potential for
adverse impacts on vulnerable communities, and
predictive policing is no different. Determining
individuals' threat levels by reference to commercial
and social data can improperly link dark skin to higher
threat levels or to greater suspicion of having
committed a particularcrime. Crime mapping based
on historical data can lead to more arrests for nuisance
crimes …

School Segregation And History Revisited, Alfred Avins

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Gift Supports Diversity Programming 12-15-2016, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Social Facts, Legal Fictions, And The Attribution Of Slave Status: The Puzzle Of Prescription, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

In case after case, prosecutors, judges and juries therefore still struggle to come up with a definition of slavery, looking for some set of criteria or indicia that will enable them to discern whether the phenomenon they are observing constitutes enslavement. In this definitional effort, contemporary jurists may imagine that in the past, surely the question was simpler: someone either was or was not a slave. However, the existence of a set of laws declaring that persons could be owned as property did not, even in the nineteenth century, answer by itself the question of whether a given person was …

Newsroom: Logan On Judicial Diversity 12-09-2016, Kate Nagle, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Identity Entrepreneurs, Nancy Leong

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In my previous article, Racial Capitalism, I examined the ways in which white individuals and predominantly white institutions derive value from non-white racial identity. This process of deriving value from identity results from intense social and legal preoccupation with diversity. And it results in the commodification of nonwhite racial identity, with negative implications for both individuals and society.

This Article builds on Racial Capitalism in three ways. First, as a foundation, it expands the concept of racial capitalism to identity categories more generally, explaining that individual in-group members and predominantly in-group institutions—usually individuals or institutions that are white, male, straight, …

Deported By Marriage: Americans Forced To Choose Between Love And Country, Beth Caldwell

Brooklyn Law Review

As the fiftieth anniversary of Loving v. Virginia approaches, de jure prohibitions against interracial marriages are history. However, marriages between people of different national origins continue to be undermined by the law. The Constitution does not protect the marital rights of citizens who marry noncitizens in the same way that it protects all other marriages. Courts have consistently held that a spouse’s deportation does not implicate the rights of American citizens, and the Constitution has long been held inapplicable in protecting the substantive due process rights of noncitizens facing deportation. Given the spike in deportations over the past decade, hundreds …

The Constitutionality Of Racially Integrative Purpose, Elise C. Boddie

Cardozo Law Review

The article explores the constitutionality of policies that are race-neutral on their face but are designed to include historically marginalized racial groups, arguing that such policies are presumptively constitutional. The author suggests that the Supreme Court, influenced by Justice Kennedy's opinions, is increasingly accepting these policies as constitutional if they promote racial integration without using race-specific means.

Race And Criminal Justice In Canada, Charles E. Reasons, Shereen Hassan, Melinda Bige, Christianne Paras, Simranjit Arora

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

The relationship between race and crime has long been a subject of study in the United States; however, such analysis is more recent in Canada. A major factor impeding such study is the fact that racial/ethnic data are not routinely collected and available in Canada, unlike the United States. The collection of such data would arguably undermine the multi-cultural mosaic of Canada as a place of acceptance and tolerance. However, the lack of such data bellies research suggesting that race plays a role in the Canadian criminal justice system. Using available, albeit, limited research studies and their data, the role …

Pulse: Finding Meaning In A Massacre Through Gay Latinx Intersectional Justice, Judith E. Koons

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

Abstract forthcoming.

The Dynamic Relationship Between Freedom Of Speech And Equality, Timothy Zick

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the dynamic intersection between freedom of speech and equal protection, with a particular focus on the race and LGBT equality movements. Unlike other works on expression and/or equality, the Article emphasizes the relational and bi-directional connections between freedom of speech and equal protection. Freedom of speech has played a critical role in terms of advancing constitutional equality. However, with regard to both race and LGBT equality, free speech rights also failed in important respects to facilitate equality claims and movements. Advocacy and agitation on behalf of equality rights have also left indelible positive and negative marks on …

When Giving Birth Becomes A Liability: The Intersection Of Reproductive Oppression And The Motherhood Wage Penalty For Latinas In Texas, Dania Y. Pulido

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

Abstract forthcoming.

Newsroom: Horwitz On The Trump Effect 12-1-2016, Amanda Milkovits, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Deborah Johnson's Post: Now "Defamation" Matters More Than Ever 11-16-2016, Deborah Johnson

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.