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COMMENT: “In America, a Person is Presumed Innocent until Proved Guilty. Unless, that is, He Plays College Sports.”
By Kelly O’Donnell[2], Executive Production Editor, Volume 19 In college athletics, the violations that affect teams and player eligibility are analogous to criminal violations. Just as in criminal law,[3] the National Collegiate Athletics Association’s (“NCAA”) lack of due process in investigations and high penalties disproportionately…
The Race Card Project
MJR&L worked with Professor Martha Jones to bring NPR’s Michele Norris’ Race Card Project to Michigan Law. The Race Card Project invites participants to share a six-word description of their view of race, ethnicity, and cultural identity written on index cards or online forms in order to foster additional…
MRJ&L Brings Khalil Shabazz to Michigan Law to Speak About Solitary Confinement
MJR&L co-sponsored an event where Khalil Shabazz spoke to students at Michigan Law about his experience in solitary confinement. Read more about Mr. Shabazz’s story here.
LAW Breaks
Kelly O’Donnell, MJR&L’s Production Editor, lead a pro bono service trip over Michigan Law’s spring break. See the full story here.Protecting Intangible Cultural Resources: Alternatives to Intellectual Property Law
Cultural resources can be defined as "the tangible and intangible effects of an individual or group of people that define their existence, and place them temporally and geographically in relation to their belief systems and their familial and political groups, providing meaning to their lives." The field of cultural resources includes tangible items, such as land, sacred sites, and religious and finerary objects. The field also includes intangible knowledge and customs, such as tribal names, symbols, stories, and ecological, ethnopharmacological, religious, or other traditional knowledge. The tangible cultural resources of tribes can fall under the protection of statutes such as the Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 1990 (NAGPRA). The protection of intangible cultural resources, however, is less codified. The provision of legal protection for intangible cultural resources has focused almost entirely on either linking such protection to human rights or defining intangible culture as intellectual property (IP). Early work on defining intangible cultural resources as IP was conducted jointly by UNESCO and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which led to the Model Provisions for National Laws on the Protection of Expressions of Folklore Against Illicit Exploitation and Other Prejudicial Actions (1985). Work by WIPO continues today through its Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. This is complemented by a growing body of law, mostly in other countries, using property law to halt cultural appropriation from indigenous communities. However, as it stands, IP law, in general, may be a poor fit for tribes. This Comment explores alternatives that exist in the form of regulation of research and tort actions against researchers who violate these regulations. It is premised on the observation that one of the primary means by which culture has been appropriated from American Indian communities has been through social scientific research. Indians are among the most heavily studied groups in fields like medicine, public health, and, recently, genetics. Yet anthropology, more than any other discipline, has made American Indians the subjects of research.In Defense of the Indian Child Welfare Act In Aggravated Circumstances
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) affords various protections to Indian families throughout child welfare proceedings. Among them is the duty imposed upon the state to provide rehabilitative services to families prior to the outplacement of an Indian child, or termination of parental rights. An analogous provision for non-Indians in the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) excuses rehabilitative services in "aggravated circumstances" of child abuse. The ICWA contains no such exception, and that absence has been controversial. In 2002, the Alaska Supreme Court applied ASFA's aggravated circumstances exception to the ICWA, thereby excusing services when a father severely abused his three Native children. In 2005, the South Dakota Supreme Court addressed the same issue, but expressly refused to engraft such an exception into the ICWA. This Note defends South Dakota's position on policy grounds. It chiefly argues that an aggravated circumstances exception would do violence to the ICWA and its family preservation goals, and further that such an exception is unnecessary to protect Native children from dangerous parents.Is a Burrito a Sandwich? Exploring Race, Class, and Culture in Contracts
A superior court in Worcester, Massachusetts, recently determined that a burrito is not a sandwich. Surprisingly, the decision sparked a firestorm of media attention. Worcester, Massachusetts, is hardly the pinnacle of the culinary arts-so why all the interest in the musings of one lone judge on the nature of burritos and sandwiches? Closer inspection revealed the allure of this otherwise peculiar case: Potentially thousands of dollars turned on the interpretation of a single word in a single clause of a commercial contract. Judge Locke based his decision on "common sense" and a single definition of sandwich-"two thin pieces of bread, usually buttered, with a thin layer (as of meat, cheese, or savory mixture) spread between them." The only barrier to the burrito's entry into the sacred realm of sandwiches is an additional piece of bread? What about the one-slice, open-face sandwich? Or the club sandwich, typically served as a double-decker with three pieces of bread? What about wraps? The court's definition lacked subtlety, complexity or nuance; it was rigid, not allowing for the possibility of change and evolution. It was a decision couched in the "primitive formalism" Judge Cardozo derided nearly ninety years ago when he said "[t]he law has outgrown its primitive stage of formalism when the precise word was a sovereign talisman, and every slip was fatal. It takes a broader view to-day." Does it? Despite the title of this piece, the goal is not to determine with any legal, scientific or culinary specificity whether a burrito is a sandwich. Rather, the author explores what lies beneath the "primitive formalism" or somewhat smug determination of the court that common sense answers the question for us. This Article suggests Judge Locke's gut-level understanding that burritos are not sandwiches actually masks an unconscious bias. The author explores this bias by examining the determination of this case and the impact of race, class and culture on contract principles.From Habermas to “Get Rich or Die Tryin”: Hip Hop, The Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the Black Public Sphere
This Article explores the manner in which gangsta rappers, who are primarily young urban Black men, navigate the mass media and rap's commercialization of the gangsta image to continue to provide seeds of political expression and resistance to that image. While other scholars have considered the political nature of rap in the context of the First Amendment, this Article's approach is unique in that it is the first to explore such concepts through the lenses of Habermas' ideal public sphere and those of his critics. While many have written gangsta rap off as being commercially co-opted or useless given its misogyny, violence, and unbridled exhortation to material consumption, “political" expression, resistance and social commentary can still be found therein. This resistance and social commentary can be found when gangsta rap is analyzed within the broader framework of the public sphere, particularly given the invisibility and marginalization of Black men in much public space in America, and the entangled relationship between gangsta rappers, the market, and the mass media.Gitano Legal Codes: Social Change, NGO’s, and External Legal Systems’ Influence on Governance of Spanish Roma Communities
Gitanos are the Roma, otherwise known as Gypsies, of Spain that are predominantly concentrated in the southern province of Andaluda. Although the Roma are Europe's largest transnational minority, very little efforts have been made to understand their legal systems. Additionally, due to their long histories of oppression in Europe and internal legal codes that discourage sharing details of their legal systems with outsiders, their legal systems are particularly difficult to understand and for the most part, remain enigmatic and misunderstood. This Article analyzes the historical factors affecting the development of the Gitano legal system by using a horizontal axis metaphor, and the present-day effects of other legal jurisdictions and social factors on the Gitano legal system through a vertical axis metaphor. Through this analysis, the author offers suggestions as to how Gitanos may gain representation of their legal system without compromising tenets of their legal codes, and hopes that a similar mode of analysis may be applied to both Roma and other stateless communities. Critical analysis is crucial in brainstorming for solutions in dealing with the Roma's dire social situations, often described as "Europe's worst human rights abuse." Spain is in a unique position to lead efforts in this arena because of the relatively more assimilated social situations of Gitanos compared to other Roma. Also, as an established European Union member with the largest population of Roma in Western Europe, Spain also stands in a position to influence European Union policy towards all Roma of European Union states. This is particularly important as Eastern European states with high Roma populations are now slowly entering the European Union.