Law and Race Commons^™

The Resurgence Of Massive Resistance, Danielle Wingfield

Washington and Lee Law Review

“Massive Resistance” to equal access to good quality public education is resurging across the nation. First employed by segregationists in Virginia, Massive Resistance spread across the South to oppose school desegregation. This extreme push to suppress equitable education occurred most notably post-Brown. Although 2024 marked Brown’s seventieth anniversary, Massive Resistance is again surging. In fact, the last few years have witnessed increasing resistance to publicly funded education. Some areas where anti-public education resistance strategies have manifested include political rhetoric around Critical Race Theory, library censorship, and renewed parental rights debates.

To devise the most effective response to …

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

Scholarly Articles

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 Excluded: Where Did Our Rights Come From, Who Paid The Price Trying To Establish Them, And Who Is Trying To Take Them Away? The Centuries-Long Struggle For Inclusion, Jim Brosnahan

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hidden Verdict: Measuring Implicit Bias In Juror Decision-Making, Gina Dudley

Psychology | Senior Theses

This experiment examines the influence of implicit bias awareness on juror decision-making in cases involving Hispanic defendants. Explicitly, it tests three hypotheses: (1) bias-educated jurors will demonstrate lower conviction rates for Hispanic defendants, (2) these jurors will report higher confidence in their verdicts, and (3) they will show greater awareness of how their previous experiences influence their decision-making. This experiment uses a mock jury paradigm to investigate whether bias awareness interventions affect verdict decisions and juror confidence levels in cases with Hispanic defendants. Ninety participants were randomly assigned to receive or not receive implicit bias education before reviewing a case …

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Lecture January 24, 2025, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

How Not To Democratize Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe

Faculty Scholarship

A growing set of jurisdictions has embraced “consultative algorithmic governance,” the idea that community members, particularly racially and otherwise politically marginalized ones, should be involved in the processes by which state institutions procure, construct, implement, and oversee artificially intelligent algorithms employed in public sector decision-making. Consultative processes range from public hearings that provide communities with an opportunity to comment about anticipated algorithmic use to community advisory boards that help public officials evaluate the impact of current or future algorithmic use.

This Article argues that consultative algorithmic governance is critically flawed and then builds upon this critique to point toward a …

Masthead

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Targeted And Ticketed: Student Ticketing And The Perpetuation Of The School-To- Prison Pipeline, Jasmine Richardson-Rushin, Angelica Jimenez, Gwendolyn Walker, Hannah Benton Eidsath

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) is a non-profit organization working to end the harms of the juvenile, municipal and criminal legal systems, including by decriminalizing normal adolescent behavior, ending financial consequences, and improving children’s access to adequate developmentally appropriate treatment. Our work prioritizes eradicating the school-to-prison pipeline, and abolishing harmful fines, fees and economic sanctions through the Debt Free Justice Campaign (DFJ).

In school districts across the nation, students receive fees and fines as consequences for school-based behavior. Students are policed and ticketed for age-appropriate behaviors and disciplinary matters such as littering, truancy, and underage drinking and smoking. …

Taking The Name Brown In Vain: Separate But Equal, Brown And The Harvard Case, Matthew Coles

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Remedies For Decades Of Hbcu Underfunding: Can Coalition V. Maryland Serve As A Model, Or Is Government “Persuasion” Needed?, John K. Pierre, Gail S. Stephenson

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Black Migrants And Black Lives Matter: Voices Of Tension, Racism, Pan- Africanism, And Prospects For Collaboration, Bill Ong Hing

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Racial Capitalism And The Proliferation Of Charter Schools In Oakland, Julie Mendoza

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Over the last thirty years, charter schools have flooded the American public education system. The publicly funded and privately operated alternative to neighborhood district schools is often celebrated as a means for under-resourced students to receive a quality education. However, the effect of charter school growth on districts themselves and the students who remain at traditional district schools requires greater scrutiny. A case study of Oakland reveals that intermingling private enterprise with public education has led to a disparate impact on low-income families of color and students with disabilities.

Under theories of racial capitalism, racial exploitation is central to the …

“Prisoners Of The Union”: Emporium Capwell And The Decline Of Concerted Activity Against Racial Discrimination, Andrew Hull

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

This paper tracks the development of judicial understanding of labor unions’ status under Section 9 of the National Labor Relations Act as the “exclusive representative” of employees for the purposes of bargaining with the employer, focusing on the how the Supreme Court case Emporium Capwell v. Western Community Addition has led to a gradual restriction of the scope of protected concerted activity by workers suffering discrimination. This ossification reveals how rigid, overly theoretical understanding of the law that is divorced from practical contexts often leads to reinforcing racial disparities in a capitalist mode of production. I further argue Emporium Capwell …

Redefining The Scope Of Anti-Discrimination Law: Illuminating Colorism As A Basis For Discrimination Claims By Black Entertainers, Tolulope Odunsi-Nelson

Faculty Scholarship

This Article critically examines the pervasive issue of colorism within the entertainment industry and its profound impact on dark-skinned Black entertainers. Anti-Black colorism is discrimination against Black people with darker skin tones and Afrocentric features (i.e. darker eye color, kinkier hair, broader nose, fuller lips). Tracing the historical roots of colorism from the colonial era to contemporary times, the Article emphasizes how societal preferences for Eurocentric features and anti-Black racism have created and perpetuated a hierarchy that disadvantages darker-skinned individuals. It analyzes the underrepresentation and pay disparities faced by dark-skinned Black actors and actresses. It details the industry’s preference for …

Ten Years And Ten Miles: Reflecting On "Ferguson", Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Essay serves as the introduction to a symposium on the ten-year anniversary of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri and the subsequent protests and uprisings across the country. The authors look back on the past decade—their own experiences and our experiences as a nation—to consider the impacts of the Ferguson uprisings and the landscape of criminal justice and racial justice advocacy, scholarship, and teaching today. In this Essay, I provide a brief introduction to the Volume and essays that follow. In Part I, I situate the Ferguson uprisings in the broader context of activism responsive to racial injustice in …

The Carceral State(S), Esther K. Hong

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The carceral state is everywhere. Legal and social science scholars are increasingly using the carceral state concept to criticize various aspects, or even the entirety, of the United States. But despite how popular and common this term has become in writings about mass incarceration, criminal processes and punishments, and other forms of social control, the definition, conceptualization, and theorization of the carceral state are far from settled. This Article analyzes and contributes to this discussion by highlighting the diversity and fluidity of ideas surrounding the carceral state.

Although the term often appears without an express definition, the limited ones that …

Reformed But Not Repaired, Nia Johnson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Traditionally, scholars and policymakers concerned with making improvements to health care systems and structures have focused on insurance reform. The ACA— the United States’ most recent and substantial healthcare reform—was hoped to be an intervention that would help provide equity to all Americans. Indeed, scholars and policymakers viewed increasing access to health care through insurance coverage as a victory. And yet, despite these interventions, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed a number of policy gaps that disproportionately impacted racial minorities. Specifically, racially marginalized Americans still experienced the starkest disparities in COVID-19 complications and mortality. This has left scholars and policymakers to answer …

Rectifying The Rome Statute And Draft Articles On Prevention And Punishment Of Crimes Against Humanity To Include The Slave Trade, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Articles

The slave trade is commonly misperceived as a historical crime. Yet, the scourge of the slave trade is present throughout the world today. Combatting these ongoing atrocity crimes is essential to ensure that human rights are upheld by the international community. The crime of the slave trade fills an impunity gap, especially in light of recentharms perpetuated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) against the Yazidi in Iraq. Revitalization of the conceptualization of the slave trade as a crime under international law might ensure greater enforcement of one of the oldest core international crimes. Critical proposed amendments …

Prosecuting Families, Anna Arons

Faculty Publications

Hundreds of thousands of parents are prosecuted in the family regulation system each year. Their cases are investigated by family regulation agencies and prosecuted by lawyers employed by the government—family regulation prosecutors. Like police and prosecutors in the criminal legal system, this family regulation prosecutorial team wields immense power, particularly over race–class subjugated communities. Yet even as scholarship on criminal prosecutors and on the family regulation system has proliferated, the role of family regulation prosecutors has gone underexamined and undertheorized.

This Article offers a critical examination of the role of these family regulation prosecutors. Drawing on a variety of primary …

Recognition Policies, Self-Determination, And Access To Legal Redress For Indigenous Peoples In The United States, Australia, And Canada: A Comparative Study, Christian Zavardino

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note examines recognition policies and self-determination frameworks for Indigenous Peoples in the United States, Australia, and Canada, arguing that the U.S. federalist system of tribal recognition offers a potential model for addressing Indigenous rights in other countries, particularly Australia. It emphasizes the importance of international law, such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), in guiding domestic policies and promoting Indigenous sovereignty.