Law and Race Commons^™

Decent Work, Human Rights, And The Millennium Development Goals, Gillian Macnaughton, Diane F. Frey

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The Millennium Development Goals ("MDGs") have provided the global framework for international development and poverty elimination policy for almost a decade. This framework includes time-bound targets and indicators to monitor progress toward the Goals. Initially, full employment and decent work for all was not part of the MDG framework. In 2007, however, the UN General Assembly approved four new MDG targets, including the achievement of "full and productive employment and decent work for all." This article discusses this new MDG target and its indicators from social justice and human rights perspectives. It argues that uniting the overlapping agendas of the …

Can These Bones Live - A Look At The Impacts Of The War On Drugs On Poor African-American Children And Families, Nekima Levy-Pounds

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The war on drugs has resulted in sharp increases in prison sentences for many drug-related crimes. Due to the structure of the federal sentencing guidelines and the disparity in sentences relating to power cocaine and crack, the primary burden of these increased sentences has disproportionately affected poor African Americans. The war on drugs legislation has also had a marked impact on another population - the families and children of the incarcerated. This article discusses the rationales behind the war on drugs legislation, addressing both the initial enactments and subsequent statutes and cases that have changed the landscape of drug-related sentencing. …

Harming Vulnerable Children: The Injustice Of California's Kinship Foster Care Policy, Meredith L. Alexander

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

California denies state foster care benefits to nonfederally eligible foster children when they are placed with relative caregivers (a placement known as "kinship foster care"). This note explores the unique benefits and needs of kinship foster care, and analyzes the current legal framework regarding kinship foster care, including the justifications for California's policy. The author argues that this California policy fails to embrace the unique benefits and needs of kinship foster care. Furthermore, the policy is contradictory to the state mandated placement priority with relatives. By not properly supporting kinship foster care, California is harming the state's most vulnerable children …

Beyond The Squabble: Putting The Tenderloin Community Justice Center In Context, Michael Cobden, Ron Albers

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The Tenderloin Community Justice Center ("CJC") began operation in May 2009 amid a tense political and economic climate. Although it employs an innovative approach to alleviating crime, the CJC is not a novel concept, but rather modeled after successful community courts already in existence. As a product of community efforts, the CJC aims to address the shortcomings of the traditional court system, which has been ineffective in reducing crime and recidivism rates, by offering alternatives to incarceration. By coordinating service providers intimately with the court, the CJC provides a centralized system that allows it to comprehensively examine an offender's problems …

Interrogation Is Not Ethnography: The Irrational Admission Of Gang Cops As Experts In The Field Of Sociology, Christopher Mcginnis, Sarah Eisenhart

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Courts regularly qualify police officers as "gang experts" in prosecutions under California's Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act. This note argues that absent independent, scientifically-verifiable expertise, the use of police officers as gang experts violates even California courts' low standard for admitting expert evidence. The note begins by analyzing the language and the legislative intent of the Act, including its substantive offense components, sentence enhancement and alternative penalty sections. The note next discusses the evidentiary power of police officers when testifying as gang experts, focusing on the substantial risk of prejudice resulting from such testimony and the officers' ability to …

Reconceptualizing Restorative Justice, Kate E. Bloch

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

We've Been Waiting A Long Time - The Struggle To Pass The Filipino Veterans Equity Act And A Bittersweet Ending To A Sixty-Three-Year Battle, Paul Daniel Rivera

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into effect the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Buried amidst the hundreds of pages and the billions of dollars given out by the bill was Title X, Section 1002, a diminutive two pages of text authorizing the federal government to give "Payments to Eligible Persons Who Served in the United States Armed Forces in the Far East During World War II." However, Section 1002 was neither designed nor included to create jobs or stimulate the economy. In reality, Section 1002 was included to authorize a long-deserved $198 million payout to …

Engineering The Endgame, Ellen D. Katz

Michigan Law Review

This Article explores what happens to longstanding remedies for past racial discrimination as conditions change. It shows that Congress and the Supreme Court have responded quite differently to changed conditions when they evaluate such remedies. Congress has generally opted to stay the course, while the Court has been more inclined to view change as cause to terminate a remedy. The Article argues that these very different responses share a defining flaw, namely, they treat existing remedies as fixed until they are terminated. As a result, remedies are either scrapped prematurely or left stagnant despite dramatically changed conditions. The Article seeks …

Cochiti Pueblo Tribal Court Handbook (2010), Tribal Law Journal Staff

Tribal Law Journal

This handbook helps take some of the mystery out of practicing in tribal courts. Without the necessary information to learn new rules and protocols many attorneys are understandably reluctant to practice in a new jurisdiction. As a result, tribal courts are underused or misused. This handbook is intended to help attorneys and advocates become more aware of the various individual tribal court systems and to learn their rules and protocol.

Tesuque Pueblo Tribal Court Handbook (2010), Tribal Law Journal Staff

Tribal Law Journal

This handbook helps take some of the mystery out of practicing in tribal courts. Without the necessary information to learn new rules and protocols many attorneys are understandably reluctant to practice in a new jurisdiction. As a result, tribal courts are underused or misused. This handbook is intended to help attorneys and advocates become more aware of the various individual tribal court systems and to learn their rules and protocol.

Zia Pueblo Tribal Court Handbook (2010), Tribal Law Journal Staff

Tribal Law Journal

This handbook helps take some of the mystery out of practicing in tribal courts. Without the necessary information to learn new rules and protocols many attorneys are understandably reluctant to practice in a new jurisdiction. As a result, tribal courts are underused or misused. This handbook is intended to help attorneys and advocates become more aware of the various individual tribal court systems and to learn their rules and protocol.

Forced Sale Risk: Class, Race, And The "Double Discount", Thomas W. Mitchell, Stephen Malpezzi, Richard K. Green

Faculty Scholarship

What impact does a forced sale have upon a property owner's wealth? And do certain characteristics of a property owner such as whether they are rich or poor or whether they are black or white, tend to affect the price yielded at a forced sale? This Article addresses arguments made by some courts and legal scholars who have claimed that certain types of forced sales result in wealth maximizing, economic efficiencies. The Article addresses such economic arguments by returning to first principles and reviewing the distinction between sales conducted under fair market value conditions and sales conducted under forced sale …

Blues Lives: Promise And Perils Of Musical Copyright, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Sustaining Tiered Personhood: Jim Crow And Anti-Immigrant Laws, Karla M. Mckanders

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Latino immigrants are moving to areas of the country that have not seen a major influx of immigrants. As a result of this influx, citizens of these formerly homogenous communities have become increasingly critical of federal immigration law. State and local legislatures are responding by passing their own laws targeting immigrants. While many legislators and city council members state that the purpose of the anti-immigrant laws is to restrict illegal immigration where the federal government has failed to do so, opponents claim that the laws are passed to enable discrimination and exclusion of all Latinos, regardless of their immigration status. …

A Critical Legal Rhetoric Approach To In Re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

In this paper I apply critical legal rhetoric to the judicial opinion rendered in response to the Defendants' Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs' Second Amended and Consolidated Complaint in 'In Re African American Slave Descendants', a case concerning the efforts of a group of modern-day descendants of enslaved African-Americans to obtain redress for the harms of slavery. The chief methodological framework for performing critical legal rhetorical analysis comes from the work of Marouf Hasian, Jr. particularly his schema for analysis which he calls substantive units in critical legal rhetoric. Critical legal rhetoric is a potent tool for exposing the …

The Supreme Court's Post-Racial Turn Towards A Zero-Sum Understanding Of Equality, Helen Norton

Publications

The Supreme Court--along with the rest of the country--has long divided over the question whether the United States has yet achieved a 'post-racial" society in which race no longer matters in significant ways. How, if at all, this debate is resolved carries enormous implications for constitutional and statutory antidiscrimination law. Indeed, a post-racial discomfort with noticing and acting upon race supports a zero-sum approach to equality: if race no longer matters to the distribution of life opportunities, a decision maker's concern for the disparities experienced by members of one racial group may be seen as inextricable from its intent to …

A Defensible Defense?: Reexamining Castle Doctrine Statutes, Benjamin Levin

Publications

Recent years have seen a proliferation of so-called “castle doctrine” statutes – laws that provide home dwellers with more expansive self-defense protections if they resort to lethal force in confrontations with intruders. The passage of such laws and subsequent uses of the defense have captured the public imagination, prompting significant media attention, as well as skeptical and critical scholarship from the legal academic community.

Considering the current prevalence of castle laws and the often polarized nature of the debate concerning their application, this Article argues that it is important to excavate the doctrine from the culture wars rhetoric in which …

Alienated: A Reworking Of The Racialization Thesis After September 11, Ming H. Chen

Publications

This article revises widespread application of the racialization thesis to Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians following September 11. It suggests in its place an “alienation thesis” to describe the formation of an alien identity for those perceived and treated as noncitizens. This thesis draws on Asian American and critical race scholarship to re-interpret sociological understandings of the post-September 11 response to Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians. The article concludes that shifting conceptions of this phenomenon is critical to reforming “alienating” practices that function not only to cause harm to their intended targets, but also to distort the legal requirements of …

The Story Of Bob Jones University V. United States: Race, Religion, And Congress' Extraordinary Acquiescence, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

On May 25, 1983, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had authority to deny tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University, Goldsboro Christian School, and other private and religious schools with racially discriminatory educational policies. The Court relied on the statute’s broad purpose and placed significant weight on Congress’ failure to enact legislation to overturn the IRS policy. A complete account of the legislative history, provided here, both supports and undercuts the Court’s opinion. More importantly, this story provides an account of the dynamic interaction among a Supreme Court critical of racial integration, a …

Judicial Erasure Of Mixed-Race Discrimination, Nancy Leong

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.