Law and Race Commons^™

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.

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 …

Radical Restorative Justice: Reflections On Conflict, Trauma, And Hope In Chicagoland Schools, Amy J. Cohen, Uma Blanchard

Cardozo Law Review

This Article tracks how abolitionist and reformist debates are unfolding within urban schools’ attempts to smash the school-to-prison pipeline. We document how Chicago-area public school teachers are grappling with new restorative justice programs and their complex and divergent sociopolitical and institutional meanings. Drawing on over forty qualitative interviews with teachers, we illustrate how difficult widespread implementation of new conflict resolution mechanisms, in the name of restorative justice, are turning out to be. We analyze how teachers are interpreting restorative justice practices and the challenges they involve for students, educators, and school administrators who learn and teach and work in hierarchical …

Gen Y More Black Corporate Directors, Chaz D. Brooks

University of Richmond Law Review

Corporate diversity has been in the spotlight for decades. Recent efforts have followed years of legal scholarship, arguments on the business rationale for greater diversity, and, more recently, the racial unrest during the summer of 2020. Called by some, a “racial reckoning,” the summer of 2020 catalyzed many corporate declarations on the importance of diversity, and more to the point of this article, the necessity of righting the economic disadvantages of Black Americans. This article looks specifically at one intervention by a corporate player following summer 2020, Nasdaq’s volley to increase corporate diversity through required disclosure. This article reviews the …

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 …

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 …

Fine-Tuning Llms: Structural Fluency And Augmentation For The Great And Powerful Wizard Of Ai, Verónica C. Gonzales

Duke Law & Technology Review

The civil legal tradition carries assumptions, biases, and attitudes rooted in racism and ideologies intended to protect the (im)balance of power. This moment in history offers new versions of the same challenges with the integration of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and large language models (“LLMs”) into legal frameworks, and those critiques are being addressed in the legal discourse. Building on these perspectives, this moment also offers civil legal professionals a chance to engage in machine learning frameworks informed by social justice principles and accountable to measures of “equal justice for all.” The perception of fairness in the use of these tools …

Infiltrating The Black Box: Expanding The No-Impeachment Rule To Protect Defendants From Pervasive Juror Bias, Jordan Whitfield

Arkansas Law Review

In the United States, a criminal defendant is entitled to “a fair trial but not a perfect one, for there are no perfect trials.” However, defendants are also guaranteed the right to an impartial jury. While perfection within a jury is “an untenable goal,” a system that allows for juror bias during deliberations to go undetected threatens a defendant’s most crucial constitutional rights. Thus, when juror bias threatens to interfere with a defendant’s rights to a fair trial and impartial jury, there is a prevalent need for the judicial system to step in and mitigate the effects of juror bias. …

Insurrection And Black Political Participation, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

The Reconstruction Congress envisioned a comprehensive set of rights and structural protections in the Fourteenth Amendment to establish and preserve a multiracial democracy. The Fourteenth Amendment’s third section, the Insurrection Clause, may seldom have been enforced in recent memory, but it remains a vital part of the Amendment’s framework. The Insurrection Clause bars any state or federal government official who participates in a rebellion or insurrection after taking an oath to support the Constitution from serving in such a position again. In Trump v. Anderson, the Supreme Court was given a choice to either enforce the Insurrection Clause’s protection …

For Whom Is International Law?, E. Tendayi Achiume

American University International Law Review

Grotius Lecturer E. Tendayi Achiume and Distinguished Discussant Jamil Dakwar provided the Twenty-Seventh Annual Grotius Lecture on Wednesday, April 16, 2025 at 5:00 p.m.

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

Forward Progress: The Rooney Rule And Its Post-Sffa Relevance, N. Jeremi Duru

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In 2003, the National Football League (NFL), which had long struggled with racial inequity both on and off the field, implemented a policy known as the Rooney Rule, requiring that any league club searching for a head coach interview at least one person of color before making a hire. In the over two decades since, employers of all sorts seeking to increase opportunities for people of color and women have adopted a form of the Rule. Indeed, it has gained traction from coast to coast. Hundreds of American employers utilize the Rooney Rule or a policy derived therefrom. In the …

Discussant Commentary On The Twenty-Seventh Annual Grotius Lecture, Jamil Dakwar

American University International Law Review

27^th Annual Grotius Lecture on International Law: April 2025

Editorial Forward, Emily C. Taing

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

A Legal Analysis Of Wisconsin’S Disturbing History Of Unpunished Lynchings, 1848–1910, Steven M. Biskupic

Marquette Law Review

“Wisconsin is getting a reputation for lynching.” So reported the Manitowoc Pilot in 1881, after an enraged mob stormed a courtroom in Pepin County and, in the midst of legal proceedings, brutally lynched Ed Maxwell, who had been charged with killing two law enforcement officers. Between 1848 and 1910, Wisconsin had dozens of similar lynching attempts, undertaken by hundreds of otherwise law-abiding citizens and witnessed by thousands more. Nineteen resulted in violent death. Yet with only one exception, an outlier involving a battered wife, no one was ever criminally punished for engaging in lynchings in Wisconsin. This record is even …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …