Law and Race Commons^™

Police Terror And Officer Indemnification, Allyssa Villanueva

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Police accountability has quickly pressed to the forefront of national conversations and subsequently, the national political agenda. Increasing prevalence of excessive and lethal use of force by police officers induced this attention. President Obama convened a Task Force on 21st Century Policing, after the Department of Justice conducted several pattern and practice investigation of misconduct following the high‐profile deaths of unarmed Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Their deaths both resulted in no criminal charges against responsible officers. Civil suit was the only option left for officer accountability. This Note addresses the use of 42 U.S.C. §1983 as the common civil …

The Obergefell Marriage Equality Decision, With Its Emphasis On Human Dignity, And A Fundamental Right To Food Security, Maxine D. Goodman

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Today, the welfare rights movement has faltered. However, the Supreme Court’s recent marriage equality decision, with its emphasis on human dignity, lends hope to the notion that the Court should also acknowledge a right to food security. This Article identifies the role human dignity has served in the Court’s constitutional analysis to acknowledge and protect, for example, rights to privacy, to travel, to be heard, to self‐representation, to marry, to speak freely, and to preserve bodily integrity. According to the Court, these rights are all a part of liberty. Arguably, and as FDR said, “[i]f, as our Constitution tells us, …

Integrate And Reactivate The 1968 Fair Housing Mandate, Courtney L. Anderson

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 (“FHA”) was created to eliminate discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing, and to mandate affirmative actions be taken to develop fair housing throughout the United States. Numerous scholars and practitioners have lamented both the failure of the FHA to enforce its sections calling for government entities to affirmatively further fair housing, and the narrow interpretation of the FHA. This narrow interpretation has effectively rendered the FHA useless when a plaintiff claims that environmental ills have reduced the value and livability of homes, because these “non‐housing” claims are too far removed from …

La Gran Lucha: Latina And Latino Lawyers, Breaking The Law On Principle, And Confronting The Risks Of Representation, Marc‐Tizoc González

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

In a time when people in the United States have been taking to the streets en masse to protest unjust socio‐legal conditions like police brutality and the draconian enforcement of immigration laws, the time is ripe to reconceptualize what it means to break the law on principle. Twenty five years ago, Harvard Law Dean Martha L. Minow conceptualized “the risks of representation” for lawyers whose clients “entertain breaking the law as one of their strategies for achieving social change.” Responding substantively to Minow’s ideas, Houston Law Professor Michael A. Olivas presented three case studies to illuminate the risks of nonrepresentation, …

Challenging Boardroom Homogeneity, Cheryl L. Wade

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Over the past two years, US citizens have heard a great deal about diversity as it relates to race in general, and African Americans in particular. A string of deaths of unarmed African American men at the hands of white police officers has galvanized the nation’s attention. When Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri in August, 2014, there was a considerable amount of discussion about the gross underrepresentation of African Americans on the police force and among local politicians. Many observers believed that a racially-homogenous police force and the homogeneity among political leaders partially explained the …

Recovering Forgotten Struggles Over The Constitutional Meaning Of Equality, Helen Norton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Further Thoughts On Race, American Law, And The State Of Nature: Advancing The Multiracial Paradigm Shift And Seeking Patterns In The Area Of Race And Law, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In his article, the author seeks to use philosophical theory - state of nature theory - as a way to understand American law and issues of race. This project, consistent with a recent trend in legal scholarship, seeks to uncover hidden meanings in law through historical analysis, cultural critique, or philosophical contemplation.

The author argues that there is a tendency for the dominant group to relate to racial minorities as if they were in the state of nature - i.e., a tendency to act as if they were in a situation without legal or moral constraints. The article examines this …

Adjudicating Risk: Aids, Crime, And Culpability, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

The AIDS epidemic continues to pose significant public health challenges, especially given that the spread of the virus outpaces the AIDS response.¹ Importantly, HIV continues to disproportionately impact socially and economically marginalized communities. In countries with concentrated epidemics,² it is racial minorities, sex workers, men who have sex with men, and drug users who face the brunt of the epidemic.³ In the United States, the data is startling⁴ : 44% of new infections were among African-Americans, and among African-Americans contracting HIV, 57% were among gay and bisexual men.⁵ In 2016, the CDC found that one …

Black Contemporary Social Movements, Resource Mobilization, And Black Musical Activism, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

In the last few years a grassroots social movement has emerged from the Black community. This movement aims to eliminate police and vigilante violence against Blacks nationwide. Blacks in America have long been subjected to this violence, and the issue has recently captured the country’s attention. Multiple groups are pressing for change, including Ferguson Action, Black Lives Matter, Say Her Name, and the leaderless social media effort organized by DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, to name a few. These fledgling activist groups have already experienced some success, garnering public attention and government response. As it currently stands, this nascent civil-rights …

The Effect Of Victim Religion On Juror Perceptions Of Hate Crimes, Casey Magyarics

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

The present study investigated mock juror perceptions of hate crimes in the courtroom, specifically whether a victim’s religion (Atheist, Christian, Jewish, or Muslim) influenced the likelihood that a mock juror would render a hate crime verdict. I employed a mock juror methodology where participants read an assault trial summary, rendered a verdict, and answered a series of rating questions about the victim and defendant. Two theoretical explanations were proposed to explain the main effect of victim religion on participant verdict decisions; that participants would be most likely to render a guilty verdict when the victim is considered an in-group member …

Transforming The System, India Thusi, Robert L. Carter

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

Our criminal justice system must keep all communities safe, foster prevention and rehabilitation, and ensure fair and equal justice. But in too many places, and in too many ways, our system is falling short of that mandate and with devastating consequences. The United States is saddled with an outdated, unfair, and bloated criminal justice system that drains resources and disrupts communities.

The U.S. prison population has swelled to unprecedented levels and unequal, unjustified treatment based on race and ethnicity is well documented. People of color, particularly Native American, African American, and Latino people, have felt the impact of discrimination within …

My Hair Is Not Like Yours: Workplace Hair Grooming Policies For African American Women As Racial Stereotyping In Violation Of Title Vii, Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, Linda F. Harrison

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

This article argues that workplace discrimination based on hair grooming policies disproportionately impacts African American women. The article seeks to establish that natural hair is an immutable characteristic, as is all hair, made mutable by social policies that impose an "acceptable" standard of beauty that was never meant to include or reflect black women. Often placed under workplace or other institutional grooming policies, the article posits that these policies are no more than a continuation of race-based policies that reflect unlawful stereotyping under Title VII and should be eliminated. Lastly, the article proposes a set of questions that test the …

A New Proposal To Address Local Voting Discrimination, Cody Gray

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

"The More Things Change . . .": New Moves For Legitimizing Racial Discrimination In A "Post-Race" World, Mario L. Barnes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Australians' "Right" To Be Bigoted: Protecting Minorities' Rights From The Tyranny Of The Majority, Jillian Rudge

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) is a federal statute prohibiting behavior that offends, insults, humiliates, or intimidates people based on their race, nationality, ethnicity, or immigration status. It appropriately limits the right to freedom of expression where the exercise of that right encroaches on other, equally fundamental rights to equality and freedom from discrimination. The RDA is one of Australia’s few human rights laws focused on fighting racism. It is especially important for protecting the rights of minorities since Australia lacks a constitutional or federal bill of rights. Unfortunately, in 2014 and 2015, conservative politicians called for a repulsion of …

Inclusion, Exclusion, And The "New" Economic Inequality, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Is racial inequality an unwelcome intruder to the new discourse on economic inequality? The present discourse on economic inequality emphasizes decades-long trends that have increased economic inequality, whether as a result of reoccurring features in the structure of capitalist economies or more recent changes in institutional, structural, and economic conditions. Researchers direct us to the rising fortunes of the top earners and asset holders relative to the rest, the declining fortunes of the middle class harmed by stagnating wages, and the declining share of industries (like manufacturing) in the economy. This new economic inequality discourse has preoccupied economists, garnered its …

Stops And Stares: Street Stops, Surveillance, And Race In The New Policing, Jeffrey Fagan, Anthony A. Braga, Rod K. Brunson, April Pattavina

Faculty Scholarship

The use of proactive tactics to disrupt criminal activities, such as Terry street stops and concentrated misdemeanor arrests, are essential to the "new policing." This model applies complex metrics, strong management, and aggressive enforcement and surveillance to focus policing on high crime risk persons and places. The tactics endemic to the "newpolicing"gave rise in the 1990s to popular, legal, political, and social science concerns about disparate treatment of minority groups in their everyday encounters with law enforcement. Empirical evidence showed that minorities were indeed stopped and arrested more frequently than similarly situated Whites, even when controlling for local social and …

Race And Reform In Twenty-First Century America: Foreword, Trina Jones, Guy-Uriel Charles, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

In November 2015, approximately two hundred activists, academics, and students from across the United States convened at Duke University School of Law for a conference entitled The Present and Future of Civil Rights Movements: Race and Reform in 21st Century America. Planning for the conference had commenced a year earlier, in the fall of 2014. At that time, the nation was reeling from the deaths of Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, and Michael Brown, among others. In addition to the killing of these unarmed Black men and women by law enforcement personnel, many people, particularly within the civil …

What Once Was Lost Must Now Be Found: Rediscovering An Affirmative Action Jurisprudence Informed By The Reality Of Race In America, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

This academic year has seen college and university students across America calling on their institutions to do more to create campus cultures supportive of African American students and other underrepresented minorities. There have been demands to increase faculty and student diversity, change curricular requirements, and adopt mandatory cultural sensitivity trainings. There have been efforts to rename buildings, remove images, and abandon symbols associating schools with major historic figures who were also proponents of slavery, segregation, or other forms of racism. As in all tumultuous periods for higher education, these events have provoked useful discussions about fundamental principles and brought to …

We Built It And They Did Not Come: Using Governance Theory In The Fight For Food Justice In Low-Income Communities Of Color, Deborah N. Archer, Tamara Belinfanti

Articles & Chapters

Food deserts and food insecurity have received considerable attention from various stakeholders, such as state and local governments, community organizations, and private sector institutions. These stakeholders have sought to overcome food insecurity by turning food deserts into oases by providing “access” to fresh, healthy food. However, many of their solutions—building supermarkets and sponsoring farmers markets—have missed the mark. Residents of food deserts did not flock to grocery stores to purchase fruits andvegetables. As a result, many stakeholders blame the residents of food deserts for their own predicament, lamenting, to paraphrase Field of Dreams, “we built it but they did not …