Law and Race Commons^™

Denial Of Housing To African Americans: Post-Slavery Reflections From A Civil Rights Advocate, Elaine Gross

Touro Law Review

In this article, I draw on two decades of experience as a civil rights advocate to reflect on the denial of housing to African Americans in post-slavery America. I do so as Founder and President of the civil rights organization, ERASE Racism. I undertake historical research and share insights from my own experience to create and reflect upon six lessons related to understanding the systematic discrimination and segregation of African Americans. The lessons encompass: (1) the role of the federal government, (2) the role of municipal governments, (3) White supremacy ideation and actions, (4) legislative advocacy and legal actions, (5) …

Returning Home And Restoring Trust: A Legal Framework For Federally Non- Recognized Tribal Nations To Acquire Ancestral Lands In Fee Simple, Taino J. Palermo

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Resisting Indigenous Erasure In Rhode Island: The Need For Compulsory Native American History In Rhode Island Schools, Whitney Saunders

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Changemakers: Master Of Studies In Law: 'Radical Imagination, Radical Listening', Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Affirmed Or Delegated? Finding Inherent Tribal Civil Power To Issue Protection Orders Against All Persons In Light Of Spurr V. Pope, Kelly Gaines Stoner, Cherokee Ancestry, Lauren Van Schilfgaarde, Cochiti Pueblo

Tribal Law Journal

Federal courts have wreaked havoc on tribal jurisdiction by injecting incertitude over their most basic authority, including the authority to issue and enforce civil protection orders. This jurisdictional incertitude causes not just legal disruption, but also further compromises the safety of Native people who are disproportionately victimized, especially by gender-based forms of violence. While Congress has been slow to remedy the onslaught of judicial limitations on tribal jurisdiction, Congress has at least remedied tribal authority to issue and enforce protection orders in 18 U.S.C. § 2265(e). However, even in this remedy, jurisdictional incertitude remains.

Whiteness As Contract, Marissa Jackson Sow

Law Faculty Publications

2020 forced scholars, policymakers, and activists alike to grapple with the impact of “twin pandemics”—the COVID-19 pandemic, which has devastated Black and Indigenous communities, and the scourge of structural and physical state violence against those same communities—on American society. As atrocious acts of anti-Black violence and harassment by law enforcement officers and white civilians are captured on recording devices, the gap between Black people’s human and civil rights and their living conditions has become readily  apparent. Less visible human rights abuses camouflaged as private commercial matters, and thus out of the reach of the state, are also increasingly exposed as …

Violence Everywhere: How The Current Spectacle Of Black Suffering, Police Violence, And The Violence Of Judicial Interpretation Undermine The Rule Of Law, David B. Owens

Articles

No abstract provided.

How Agencies Can Better Regulate For Racial Justice, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

On his first day in office, President Joseph R. Biden signed an executive order to advance racial equity throughout the federal government by taking a “systematic approach to embedding fairness in decision-making,” redressing inequities, and advancing equal opportunity in agency policies and programs.

This order is an important step. President Biden’s executive order promises new, proactive engagement by the administrative state to promote racial equity and other dimensions of inclusion in agency programs. But federal administrative agencies have played a key role in structuring racial segregation and sustaining racial inequality in housing, health care, access to transit, and wealth. President …

Unraveling The Web Of Legal Protection: Race, Police Misconduct, And The Favorable Termination Rule, Jasmine Gonzales Rose, Caitlin Glass, Neda Khoshkhoo

Faculty Scholarship

The murder of George Floyd raised greater awareness of the pervasiveness of racialized police violence in the United States. Advocates, activists, and concerned policymakers have drawn attention to legal barriers that prevent accountability for police who kill and abuse Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (“BIPOC”), such as qualified immunity. However, the true extent of the legal system’s protections regarding racialized police misconduct remains unrecognized. A key example of this is the favorable termination rule, which many jurisdictions have interpreted as imposing an “indications-of-innocence” standard. This standard, in numerous instances, serves as a procedural loophole that prevents civil rights …

E-Racing Tobacco & Nicotine-Related Health Disparities, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

In the past, tobacco companies used targeted advertising to integrate menthol cigarettes and addict the Black community, generating tobacco-related health disparities. As Juul has come under attack, they have utilized the tobacco playbook to protect itself and deflect criticism by donating to a historically Black medical school and recruiting leaders in the Black community. This helped to create a "Black shield" for menthol cigarettes, which are only now at risk of being regulated, and has the potential to do the same in the vape industry. If proactive steps are not undertaken, health tobacco-related health disparities will continue.

Bias And Biometrics: Regulating Corporate Responsibility And New Technologies To Protect Rights, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

A growing body of literature has documented the ways in which algorithms and new technology are being deployed in ways that discriminate and violate human rights. The regulatory environment is still evolving, but not as rapidly as new technologies are being introduced by private corporations and implemented in public settings. Governments are using AI in immigration and asylum determinations and law enforcement, arenas where racism and xenophobia can often arise. In the aftermath of the racial justice uprisings following the murder of George Floyd, some technology firms pledged to reconsider providing surveillance technology to police without protections in place. This …

Civil Rights Catch 22s, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

Civil rights advocates have long viewed litigation as a vital path to social change. In many ways, it is. But in key respects that remain underexplored in legal scholarship, even successful litigation can hinder remedial projects. This perverse effect stems from civil rights doctrines that incentivize litigants (or their attorneys) to foreground community plight—such as academic underachievement or overincarceration. Rational plaintiffs, responding in kind, deploy legal narratives that tend to track racial stereotypes and regressive theories of inequality. When this occurs, even successful lawsuits can harden the structural and behavioral forces that produce and perpetuate racial inequality.

I refer to …

Of Afrofuturism, Of Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe

Faculty Scholarship

Algorithms are proliferating in criminal legal structures. The predictions produced by these algorithms inform life-altering decisions around surveillance and incarceration. Their continued use poses a challenge to ongoing racial justice efforts. Contesting how algorithms of today maintain the racial status quo requires a fundamental rethinking of the algorithm project. This essay explores how Afrofuturism can facilitate such a rethinking. It imagines how applying an Afrofuturist paradigm to the adoption, construction, implementation, and oversight of algorithms could radically change the kind of algorithms developed and the purposes for which they are developed. Tapping into this potential offers the chance for members …

Filing While Black: The Casual Racism Of The Tax Law, Steven Dean

Faculty Scholarship

The tax law's race-blind approach produces bad tax policy.' This Essay uses three very different examples to show how failing to openly and honestly address race generates bias, and how devastating the results can be.² Ignoring race does not solve problems; it creates them. ProPublica has shown, for example, that because of the perils of filing income taxes while Black, the five most heavily audited counties in the United States are Black and poor.

The racial bias long tolerated-and sometimes exploited-by tax scholars and policymakers affects all aspects of the tax law. In 1986, Sam Gilliam was denied tax …

Cleaning Up Our Own Houses: Creating Anti-Racist Clinical Programs, Anne D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

A formidable body of research and scholarship describes the unique difficulties faced by various minoritized groups within our law schools. Women, people of color, those with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, and all those outside, overlapping, or in-between have powerfully described how their turn through legal academia was marked by discrimination, disconnection, and isolation. Law school has been described as a “white space,” and can also be viewed through the lens of white supremacy: a way to uphold and perpetuate a system of racial hierarchy. Clinics have largely been spared from these critiques and are often held up as solutions to the …

163 U.S. 537 Supreme Court Of The United States: Plessy V. Ferguson No. 210, Trina Jones

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A 385-Year Experiment To Erase A People: Intergenerational Acts Of Genocide Against The Narragansett Indian Tribe By The United States Of America And The State Of Rhode Island, Taylor A. Dumpson, Afro-Indigenous; Black, Narragansett, Nanticoke, And Mohawk Ancestry

Tribal Law Journal

Since Roger Williams’ arrival in Narragansett Territory in 1636, and his subsequent settlement of the Providence Plantations, the Narragansett Indian Tribe--the Indigenous people to this land--have faced a series of intergenerational atrocities, including attempted genocides. For generations, these heinous wrongs have not been corrected by state or federal courts, which have often compounded the harms against the Narragansett people. Although the American legal system has played a role in perpetuating the intergenerational harms experienced by the Narragansett people, these institutions also have the opportunity to be a part of the solution. The Article examines the existing domestic legal framework for …

Case Note: Federal Indian Law – Tribal Criminal Jurisdiction – Indian Civil Rights Act – Tribal Sovereignty – United States V. Cooley, Sarah A. Sadlier, Mnikȟówožu Lakȟóta

Tribal Law Journal

In United States v. Cooley, a Ninth Circuit panel denied a petition for rehearing en banc, holding that a tribal officer, who was not cross-deputized, could neither search nor detain a non-Indian on a federal or state highway right-of-way through the reservation unless that individual had committed an “apparent” crime in the officer’s presence. Narrowly defining tribal police authority, the panel ruled that the officer conducted an extra-jurisdictional search and seizure. In arriving at this conclusion, the panel refused to recognize that the Tribe’s sovereignty affords its law enforcement agencies the authority to investigate those who imperil public order on …

Bad Men Among The Whites Claims In The Mni Wiconi Age, Julie Combs, Cherokee Nation

Tribal Law Journal

In a series of nine treaties with Native Nations in the late 1860s, the United States promised to reimburse Indigenous people for wrongs committed by “bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States.” In the century and half that followed the signing of these nine treaties, “bad men among the whites” claims have been litigated in the Federal Circuit with some success by Indigenous plaintiffs, and courts have shaped the meaning of the clause and the remedies a successful plaintiff may receive. This comment explores the Bad Men clause in the …

Dedication To Professor Christine Zuni Cruz, Tribal Law Journal

Tribal Law Journal

No abstract provided.