Law and Race Commons^™

Law And Literature—Centering Counternarratives: The Need For Enhanced Law And Literature Curriculum In Arkansas Law Schools To Remedy A History Of Dispossession, Michelle Smith

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Doing Justice With Empathy: Black Prosecutors In The Age Of Mass Incarceration, Kevin Woodson

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deputization And Privileged White Violence, Ekow N. Yankah

Articles

A number of high-profile and racially charged killings, such as Trayvon Martin’s, Kenneth Herring’s, Ahmaud Arbery’s, and Jordan Neely’s, have been at the hands of civilians declaring themselves the law. These deaths stemmed from a phenomenon best described as “deputization.” Deputization describes a latent legal power that has empowered White people throughout American history to claim authority to enforce the law, as they see it, upon racial minorities generally and Black people in particular. This power turned the ancient common law duty to police all felons in England into a specific American common law duty to police Blacks. From the …

Picking Through The Remnants Of Brown V. Board To Realize The Ideal Of Quality Public Education For All Children In The Post Covid-19 Era, Tiffani Darden

William & Mary Law Review

Brown, above and beyond eliminating the “separate but equal” doctrine, presented many socio-legal principles that were abdicated or diluted during the government’s COVID-19 response. This Article will address several strands recognized throughout the opinion’s seventy-year history by the courts and legal commentators that were illuminated during this period. First, the pursuit of quality education remains elusive for people of color and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Second, public education continues to be an aspirational pathway to upward social mobility and building a democracy composed of educated citizens. Third, the anti-subordination construction, as opposed to the anti-classification interpretation, of the …

The Right To A Nuisance-Free Public Education, Jamel K. Donnor

William & Mary Law Review

The aim of this Article is to discuss how Florida’s Individual Freedom Act infringes upon Black students’ constitutional right to learn about non-white supremacist ideas, their freedom to think, and a public school’s ability to offer Black-centered curricula content.

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This Article explains that the Individual Freedom Act’s racially encoded wording establishes an academic environment for a racial nuisance to exist because its criteria authorize public education officials to label curricula content under the auspices of indoctrination, divisiveness, or educational value. While the term “nuisance” is typically reserved for determining reasonableness of an “interference with a right common to the …

Brown Now: The Surprising Possibility Of Progressive Reform, Louis Michael Seidman

William & Mary Law Review

For four decades, the Supreme Court has engaged in a determined, systematic, and successful effort to transform and tame Brown v. Board of Education. But there is a surprising counterweight to this standard narrative. If one takes modern doctrine seriously, the Supreme Court’s refashioning of Brown has the potential to support some progressive goals. The modern Court’s decisions provide a basis for upholding race-conscious but facially neutral measures that promote racial diversity, striking down legacy admission standards in colleges and universities, and strictly scrutinizing laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation. The last Part of this Article speculates about …

A Comparative Financial Analysis Of Louisiana's Land-Grant Universities: The Morrill Acts And Brown Revisited, William F. Tate Iv, Keena N. Arbuthnot

William & Mary Law Review

Despite a federal legislative mandate on states to support land-grant HBCUs in a fair and equitable fashion, the funding disparities [between land-grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and non-HBCU land-grant universities] accrued for decades and ostensibly for more than a century. Our purpose in this review is to explain the history, nature, and scope of this funding disparity. We are particularly interested in how Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I and Brown II) and related litigation and desegregation policy shaped this history. To narrow the scope of the review, we localize the problem to Louisiana. A …

Race Without Racism: Religious School Curricula And The Race-Neutral Legacy Of Brown, Vania Blaiklock

William & Mary Law Review

Current conversations about race and equity curricula in primary and secondary education exclude examining religious curricula because of their private classification. Yet, this omission prevents us from exploring how religious curricula might mirror the legal transformation of Brown’s racial equality legacy to constitutional race neutrality. This Article brings religious curricula into these conversations by specifically linking the Court’s race-neutral transformation of Brown to the way religious curricula frame discussions about race without racism. Throughout the Article, I argue that the Court’s transformation of Brown is not just a top-down legal framework but also a bottom-up educational ideology. By making …

The Dormant Power Of State Agencies To Fight Environmental Racism, David Handelman-Holmes

Michigan Law Review

Despite repeated promises by Democratic presidents to address environmental justice (EJ), meaningful federal action on the issue remains elusive. The EJ obligations that have been imposed on federal agencies are all purely procedural, not substantive. Such procedural obligations—like filing environmental impact statements and providing forums for community feedback—may facilitate greater transparency and accountability from industry and government agencies. But in the absence of more substantive obligations—like stricter emissions caps in highly burdened communities of color—these procedural requirements are often satisfied through mere box-checking. Meanwhile, litigants pursuing relief through the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause face closed courthouse doors unless they …

Doing More, Doing Better? A Critique Of The Criminalization Of Coercive Control, Janet Mosher, Shushanna Harris, Jennifer Koshan, Wanda Wiegers

All Papers

Canada recently stood on the verge of ushering in a new criminal offence related to coercive control in the context of intimate relationships. In this paper, we critically evaluate this development, drawing out lessons from past criminalization efforts (particularly their impact on Black women and communities). Our analysis raises significant questions about the potential of the proposed offence to deliver on the promises held out by politicians and frontline advocates. We argue that not only will these promises go largely unrealized, but the ongoing harms of criminalization will be intensified. Marginalized women and communities are the least likely to benefit, …

Town Hall On The Sustainable Development Goals And Racial Justice In Miami–Dade County, Tamar Ezer, Denisse Córdova Montes, Abigail L. Fleming, Lily Arslanian, Kristina Bergman, Jordan Brooks, Alexis Burns, Cassandra Hacker, Zoe Henderson, Estefania Hernandez, Alyssa Huffman, Photini Kamvisseli Suarez, Brianna Sanchez, Lakshmi Sanmuganathan, Gabrielle Thomas, Abigail Wettstein

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Restoring The Soul To Birthing In Miami: A Call For Justice For Obstetric Racism In Miami–Dade County, Jordan Brooks, Jamarah Amani, Sannisha Dale, Dr. Karen A. Scott

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

For far too many Black mothers and birthing people, U.S. hospitals are dangerous and fail to keep our Black mothers and birthing people and their babies safe, alive, and thriving during and after childbirth. The confluence of medical racism and obstetric violence—obstetric racism—leads to a disproportionate rate of predictable, preventable, and unfair death, sickness, and trauma for Black birthing people and babies in the afterlife of slavery. Obstetric racism, as defined by Davis, is both an analytic and phenomenon that describes mechanisms of subordination, control, and dominance to which Black mothers and birthing people are subjected by health systems and …

An Examination Of The Standard Of Judgment For Court–Ordered Electroshock Therapy, Anna Irving

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights V The First Amendment, And The Erosion Of The Belief–Action Dichotomy, Elena Lacorte

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Medicaid Unwinding: Due Process Violations And Impacts In Florida, Emma Page

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Enlightenment In Early America, Annette Gordon-Reed

William & Mary Law Review

The founding of the United States of America is often said to have been the product of Enlightenment ideals that emphasized reason, individual liberty, and notions of progress. During this same era, however, racially based slavery, which confounded reason, denied individual liberty to millions, and challenged ideas about progress, existed in all of the colonies of North America.

The third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, embodied this seeming contradiction at the heart of the American founding. The principal author of the American Declaration of Independence enslaved hundreds of people over the course of his long life.

This Article …

The Wellness Connection February 2025, Roger Williams University School Of Law Office Of Student Life

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

My Wings Are Not Broken: Black Males, Carcerality, And Education, Crystal M. Welch-Scott

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Historically, educational spaces have been sites of racialized inequality for Black youth, creating disparate educational outcomes. The disproportionate divide between young Black and White men continues throughout the life of their academic journey, and this research seeks to examine its impact on dropping out of school. The experience of Black young men being “othered” – compared to their White counterparts – coupled with the myriad ways Black youth must navigate normalcy creates additional challenges they must carry. This dissertation employs critical race theory and ecological systems theory as theoretical frameworks. It utilizes hierarchical regression modeling of the High School Longitudinal …

Quantifying Educational Impacts Under The Nypd's Stop-And-Frisk Era, Matthew T. Stanton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project examines the educational and economic impacts of the New York Police Department's "Stop, Question, and Frisk" (SQF) program, implemented predominantly under "Operation Impact" from 2003 to 2022. Using data from the NYPD and the American Community Survey, the study explores correlations between high rates of stop-and-frisk encounters and reduced educational attainment among targeted demographics, primarily Black and Hispanic young men. It contextualizes the socioeconomic consequences of SQF policies, including their effect on lifetime earnings and community trust. The project highlights the limitations of data correlation, advocates for further longitudinal and qualitative studies, and suggests frameworks for mitigating inequities …

Retrenchment By Diversion: The New Politics Of Parental Rights, Mary Ziegler, Maxine Eichner, Naomi Cahn

Michigan Law Review

For the past century, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the importance of parents’ rights to direct their children’s upbringing and education. Yet suddenly the rhetoric of parental rights is being used to ground a broad range of claims on issues such as what can be taught in public schools, when minors can access gender-affirming care, or who will be punished for helping minors travel for abortion care. Why have parental-rights claims surged so visibly in contemporary law and politics? And are all the new arguments made under the banner of parental rights equally rooted in constitutional precedent?

This Article …