Law and Race Commons^™

Beyond Best Practices For Legal Education: Reflections On Cultural Awareness - Exploring The Issues In Creating A Law School And Classroom Culture, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

If law schools are to prepare students for the reality of practice, it is useful to help students become aware of cultural issues that can affect client representation by examining the culture that the law school creates. The culture created by faculty, students, administration, and staff will affect the law student's acculturation as a legal professional as well as the law student's psychological well-being. This issue was addressed briefly in Best Practices for Legal Education (Best Practices), but not developed. This essay explores some of the challenges and opportunities of bringing cross-cultural issues into a law school classroom and some …

Brief For Thirteenth Amendment Scholars, United States V. Hatch As Amicus Curiae, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

Like the district court, we conclude that Congress has power under the Thirteenth Amendment to enact § 249(a)(1). Although the Thirteenth Amendment by its terms applies to slavery and involuntary servitude, Supreme Court precedent confirms Congress’s authority to legislate against slavery’s “badges and incidents” as well. In particular, the Supreme Court held in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968)—a case permitting a federal private right of action against private individuals for housing discrimination—that Congress itself has power to determine those badges and incidents.

Legal Education, Social Justice And The Law School Dean: Latinas At The Center, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

The opening of LatCrit XVI in San Diego, CA, on October 9, 2011, coincided with the events that are identified as the start of the global expression of the Occupy Movement. The Occupy Movement began to gain media attention on September 17, 2011, in Zuccotti Park in New York City. By October 9, protests had taken place or were ongoing in eighty-two countries and over 600 communities in the United States. The broad theme for LatCrit XVI was "Global Justice" and the conference was billed as "an opportunity to explore theories, histories, and futures of global justice. Of particular importance …

Remarks, James Anaya

Publications

These remarks were delivered at the Closing Plenary--Indigenous Peoples and International Law: A Conversation with UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya and Inter-American Commission Rapporteur Dinah Shelton.

"Other Spaces" In Legal Pedagogy, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

There is an increasing focus upon the material and metaphoric spatial dimensions of various academic disciplines, including law. This essay considers the spatial dimensions of legal pedagogy, focusing on Critical Race Theory (CRT). The essay first explains the "critical program" in law and how CRT grows out of it. The essay then suggests that the critical program, and especially CRT, is as much a human geographic or spatial construct as it is a social, political or historic one, and briefly describes the nature of human geography and legal geography. It next considers how metaphors for understanding CRT's position in legal …

Inextricably Political: Race, Membership, And Tribal Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Courts address equal protection questions about the distinct legal treatment of American Indian tribes in the following dichotomous way: are classifications concerning American Indians "racial or political?" If the classification is political (i.e., based on federally recognized tribal status or membership in a federally recognized tribe) then courts will not subject it to heightened scrutiny. If the classification is racial rather than political, then courts may apply heightened scrutiny. This Article challenges the dichotomy itself. The legal categories "tribe" and "tribal member" are themselves political, and reflect the ways in which tribes and tribal members have been racialized by U.S. …

Tiger Cub Strikes Back: Memoirs Of An Ex-Child Prodigy About Legal Education And Parenting, Peter H. Huang

Publications

I am a Chinese American who at 14 enrolled at Princeton and at 17 began my applied mathematics Ph.D. at Harvard. I was a first-year law student at the University of Chicago before transferring to Stanford, preferring the latter's pedagogical culture. This Article offers a complementary account to Amy Chua's parenting memoir. The Article discusses how mainstream legal education and tiger parenting are similar and how they can be improved by fostering life-long learning about character strengths, emotions, and ethics. I also recount how a senior professor at the University of Pennsylvania law school claimed to have gamed the U.S. …

From Tiger Mom To Panda Parent, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This response to Yale Law Professor Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, complements a much longer and related article that is also in part a response to Chua’s book: Tiger Cub Strikes Back: Memoirs of an Ex-Child Prodigy About Legal Education and Parenting, 1 British Journal of American Legal Studies 297 (2012). This brief essay discusses the cultural differences between Chinese and Western views about education, learning, and parenting. This editorial draws on research in social psychology to analyze the stereotype of Asians and Asian Americans as being competent yet unsociable. Finally, this reflection draws …

Race As A Legal Concept, Justin Deystone

Publications

Race is a legal concept, and like all legal concepts, it is a matrix of rules. Although the legal conception of race has shifted over time, up from slavery and to the present, one element in the matrix has remained the same: the background rules of race have always taken a view of racial identity as a natural aspect of human biology. To be sure, characterizations of the rule have oftentimes kept pace with developments in race science, and the original invention of race as a rationale for the subordination of certain human populations is now a rationale with little …

Democrats At Doj: Why Partisan Use Of The Voting Rights Act Might Not Be So Bad After All, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

In notable ways, the ongoing dispute over redistricting in Texas offers a mirror image to one of the major redistricting battles of the last decade, only with Democratic and Republican roles reversed. In both Texas v. United States and Georgia v. Ashcroft, a state attorney general (AG) decided he would not ask the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to approve new redistricting plans enacted in his state. In both cases, the state AGs were well aware that the Voting Rights Act (VRA) required them to obtain federal approval, known as preclearance, before changing any aspect of their state's election …

L3cs: An Innovative Choice For Urban Entrepreneurs And Urban Revitalization, Dana Thompson

Articles

Social enterprises offer fresh ways of addressing seemingly intractable social problems, such as high levels of unemployment and poverty in economically distressed urban areas in the United States. Indeed, although social enterprises have deep and longstanding roots, the recent iteration of the social enterprise movement is gaining momentum in the United States and globally. Though there is not a singularly accepted legal definition of social enterprises, they are popularly known as businesses that use forprofit business practices, principles, and discipline to accomplish socially beneficial goals. Social entrepreneurs, those who operate social enterprises, eschew a traditional notion of charity, which primarily …

What A Load Of Hope: The Post-Racial Mixtape, Jeremiah Chin

Articles

This Comment analyzes how Supreme Court decisions and recent legislation have used the language of post-racialism to re-center whiteness through the law. Rather than using explicit racist language, the post-racial project exploits the language of historical antiracist efforts to negate experiences with discrimination while continuing a hostile environment for racial groups and promoting white supremacy in the United States.

Beginning with Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger, and school desegregation in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, this Comment analyzes …

A Fresh Cut In An Old Wound–A Critical Analysis Of The Trayvon Martin Killing: The Public Outcry, The Prosecutors’ Discretion, And The Stand Your Ground Law, Tamara F. Lawson

Articles

If the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case is to have value beyond its immediate facts, it is important to consider the case through a broad lens that encompasses law, politics, and culture and the relevant intersectionality of each. This essay gives a contextualized historical perspective with which to view the Black community’s reaction to the initial lack of criminal charges in the case. It explains why the circumstances surrounding Trayvon’s death were experienced as a fresh cut in an old, but deep, collective wound, for many Blacks. It addresses the exacerbation African Americans felt regarding law enforcement’s perceived indifference towards Trayvon, …

Rebellious State Crimmigration Enforcement And The Foreign Affairs Power, Mary Fan

Articles

The propriety of a new breed of state laws interfering in immigration enforcement is pending before the Supreme Court and the lower courts. These laws typically incorporate federal standards related to the criminalization of immigration ("crimmigration'), but diverge aggressively from federal enforcement policy. Enacting states argue that the legislation is merely a species of "cooperative federalism" that does not trespass upon the federal power over foreign affairs, foreign commerce, and nationality rules since the laws mirror federal standards. This Article challenges the formalist mirror theory assumptions behind the new laws and argues that inconsistent state crimmigration enforcement policy and resulting …

Salmon People In An Era Of Depleting Salmon: The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’S Climate Adaptation Action Plan As A Manifestation Of Tribal Sovereignty, Kelly Davis

Tribal Law Journal

Climate change presents novel challenges to indigenous peoples striving to maintain their place-based subsistence cultures. Climate change is altering physical environments, tribes are experiencing detrimental impacts, and adaptation is necessary to preserve indigenous lifestyles. The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, a Coast Salish tribe in northwestern Washington State, has taken the initiative in tribal climate change adaptation efforts.

In 2010, the Swinomish Office of Planning and Community Development issued a thorough Climate Adaptation Action Plan, which delineates strategies the vulnerable coastal, salmon-dependent tribe must take. Resilient social systems, like American Indian tribes, are capable of anticipating and planning for the future. …

The War On Women's Fundamental Rights: Connecting U.S. Supreme Court Originalism To Rightwing, Conservative Extremism In American Politics, Donna J. King

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause, intended to protect fundamental rights for all citizens, including women, has been systematically undermined by the U.S. Supreme Court's originalist interpretations. This erosion, exemplified by cases like SlaughterHouse, has emboldened right-wing extremism and threatens women's rights, particularly in the context of unenumerated fundamental rights. The article contends that the Court's narrow constructions and disregard for legislative history have perpetuated inequality and stripped the Clause of its intended protective power.

Ain't I A Victim? The Intersectionality Of Race, Class, And Gender In Domestic Violence And The Courtroom, Geneva Brown

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The legal system systematically fails to protect marginalized groups, particularly African American women, from intimate-partner violence due to entrenched race, gender, and class biases. These biases manifest in the courts' disregard for the unique experiences of African American women, as highlighted by Kimberlé Crenshaw's intersectionality theory. The article examines how systemic discrimination and the courts' failure to enforce protective orders perpetuate violence against this vulnerable population, emphasizing the lethal consequences of these failures. The analysis also critiques the Supreme Court's narrowing of constitutional protections in cases like DeShaney v. Winnebago County and Castle Rock v. Gonzales, which further erode …

Bridging The Great Divide--A Response To Linda Greenhouse And Reva B. Siegel's Before (And After) Roe V. Wade: New Questions About Backlash, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

This essay discusses the history of Roe v. Wade as recently addressed by Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel. Going beyond their assertions, I suggest that an additional, more encompassing inquiry focuses on what factors are implicated in the politics of abortion and how these factors relate to larger social, political, and cultural conflicts both before and after Roe. By naming party politics and the Catholic Church, Greenhouse and Siegel posit two crucial elements that shaped the abortion debate. I assert, however, that what is not discussed in their Article is the way numerous other factors have figured into …

From Private Violence To Mass Incarceration: Thinking Intersectionally About Women, Race, And Social Control, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

The structural and political dimensions of gender violence and mass incarceration are linked in multiple ways. The myriad causes and consequences of mass incarceration discussed herein call for increased attention to the interface between the dynamics that constitute race, gender, and class power, as well as to the way these dynamics converge and rearticulate themselves within institutional settings to manufacture social punishment and human suffering. Beyond addressing the convergences between private and public power that constitute the intersectional dimensions of social control, this Article addresses political failures within the antiracism and antiviolence movements that may contribute to the legitimacy of …

Race And Selective Enforcement In Public Housing, Jeffrey Fagan, Garth Davies, Adam Carlis

Faculty Scholarship

Drugs, crime and public housing are closely linked in policy and politics, and their nexus has animated several intensive drug enforcement programs targeted at public housing residents. In New York City, police systematically conduct “vertical patrols” in public housing buildings, making tens of thousands of Terry stops each year. During these patrols, both uniformed and undercover officers systematically move through the buildings, temporarily detaining and questioning residents and visitors, often at a low threshold of suspicion, and usually alleging trespass to justify the stop. We use a case-control design to identify the effects of living in one of New York …