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Comparing the Goals of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program and Criminal Law Reform Project to Hillary Clinton’s Criminal Justice Reform Platform
By Claire Nagel Associate Editor, Vol. 22 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has made racial justice and criminal justice reform central issues in her campaign. During the first presidential debate on September 26th, Secretary Clinton responded to a question about how she would bridge racial divisions in the…How the E-Government Can Save Money by Building Bridges Across the Digital Divide
As government agencies and federal aid recipients begin to build a presence online, they must recognize that language accessibility is morally required, fiscally responsible, and compulsory under federal civil rights law. This Note explores statutes, federal policies, and case law that purport to protect the rights of limited English proficient (“LEP”) individuals in cyberspace. The Note suggests reforms, policies, and programs that should be adopted by federal aid recipients to ensure that LEP individuals have meaningful access to online services.Civil Rights Groups Call For New K-12 “Accountability System”
By Whitney Robinson, Associate Editor Vol. 20 On Tuesday, a coalition of eleven national civil rights groups sent a letter to President Obama urging him to drop the standardized test-based K-12 “accountability" system. According to these groups, the current standardized test-based “accountability system” for K-12 education is “overly focused on narrow measures of success” and “discourage[s] schools from providing a rich curriculum.” The current system ignores the diverse needs of the increasingly large number of children who are growing up in poverty, and/or in homes where English is not the first language. After the break, read the entire letter, signed by the Advancement Project, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Opportunity to Learn (OTL) Campaign, National Urban League (NUL), NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), National Council on Educating Black Children (NCEBC), National Indian Education Association (NIEA) and Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC):Reformed gangsters lead new NYC anti-violence initiative
In August of 2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to create the Gun Violence Crisis Management System, which will provide nearly $12.7 million to neighborhood-based anti-violence organizations. One such group, called Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Change (GMACC), consists of reformed gangsters who hit the streets with…Urgent Reform ‘in the Name of Our Children’: Revamping the Role of Disproportionate Minority Contact in Federal Juvenile Justice Legislation
Disproportionate minority contact ("DMC") has plagued the United States juvenile justice system for decades, but federal legislation has lacked the clarity and guidance to battle this affliction. A strong partnership must exist between state and federal entities in order to directly target DMC and thereby decrease the appallingly disproportionate number of minority children who come into contact with the juvenile justice system. This Note discusses the problem of DMC, identifies state and private efforts to combat the crisis, and indicates deficiencies in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act as well as its reauthorization bill, S. 678. The Note urges Congress to revisit the reauthorization bill and supplement it with stand-alone legislation that will address DMC more effectively. Such law reform is urgent and timely, because the needs of at risk minority children have never been more pronounced than they are today.Some Women’s Work: Domestic Work, Class, Race, Heteropatriarchy, and the Limits of Legal Reform
This Note employs Critical Race, feminist, Marxist, and queer theory to analyze the underlying reasons for the exclusion of domestic workers from legal and regulatory systems. The Note begins with a discussion of the role of legal and regulatory systems in upholding and replicating White supremacy within the employer and domestic worker relationship. The Note then goes on to argue that the White, feminist movement's emphasis on access to wage labor further subjugated Black and immigrant domestic workers. Finally, I end with an in-depth legal analysis of New York's Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the nation's first state law to specifically extend legal protections to domestic workers. The Note discusses many provisions of the bill and draws on the experiences of organizers involved in the passage of the bill to provide critical analysis of the limitations of legal reform. With this Note, I hope to provide organizers, activists, and legal practitioners with additional critical tools crafting solutions, legal reforms, and narratives in the struggle to end the oppression of domestic workers.Employee Free Choice or Employee Forged Choice? Race in the Mirror of Exclusionary Hierarchy
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is arguably the most transformative piece of labor legislation to come before Congress since the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA). One of the newest attempts to transform labor relations is the EFCA. The first to disappear under the EFCA would be a system of union democracy whereby unions could only obtain the rights of exclusive representation for firms if they could prevail in a secret-ballot election. Second, the EFCA would eliminate tile necessity of a freely negotiated collective bargaining agreement between management and labor and instead substitute compulsory arbitration. While some labor union advocates contend that law ought to be conceived of as a vehicle to democratize tile workplace by redistributing power in labor markets in favor of workers, while concurrently demolishing hierarchical command structures that entrench gender, race and class lines, this proposal would likely expand labor hierarchy, labor market cartelization and diminish the employment prospects of racial minorities. As such, the EFCA is marked by contradiction. This Article deploys Critical Race Reformist theory, economics and apartheid-era South African labor history in order to shot' that rather than embracing freedom for workers, eliminating, poverty, and expanding opportunities for all, this proposal would likely invert such goals and instead operate consistently with the record of exclusion and subordination tied to American Progressivism and the labor movement.Sliding Towards Educational Outcomes: A New Remedy for High-Stakes Education Lawsuits in a Post-NCLB World
Sheff v. O'Neill ushered in a new wave of education reform litigation that may challenge the constitutionality of de facto segregation under state education clauses, but its remedy has been inadequate. This Note proposes a new desegregation remedy-the sliding scale remedy-to address socioeconomic isolation in this unique constitutional context. The remedy employs varying degrees of equity power depending on students' academic outcomes. It balances concerns over local control and separation of powers with the court's need to effectuate right, establishes a clear remedial principle, and ensures that states and school districts focus on students as they implement remedies.Reading, Writing, and Reparations: Systemic Reform of Public Schools as a Matter of Justice
This Article analyzes Virginia's effort to remedy massive resistance and posits that, under reparations theory, a broader remedy is necessary to redress the scope of the state's wrongdoing. To do this, Part I briefly examines reparations theory, which provides the tools to identify the proper scope of the injury to be addressed, and, in turn, informs the proper choice of remedy. With this background, Part II discusses the Brown Fund Act and the massive resistance it seeks to remedy. In this connection, the Article demonstrates that the school shutdowns were part of a statewide decision to defy Brown and maintain its tradition of segregation. Part III places that discrimination in historic context, examining Virginia's long history of denying educational opportunities to African Americans. This section demonstrates that the state's intransigence in the face of the Brown decision was but one incident in a centuries-old chain of state-imposed constraints on education for Blacks. Starting with proscriptions against literacy for slaves, and moving to legislation designed to disfranchise Blacks after emancipation, among other means, Virginia used and abused public education to maintain an oppressive social order in which African Americans would perpetually be at the bottom. As a result, Part IV concludes that the Brown Fund Act falls far short of remedying the scope of the state's wrongdoing. In the face of, quite literally, centuries of government abuse of its authority to purposefully exclude its citizens, reparations-that is, a remedy designed to rectify a profound injustice that reverberates today-are necessary. This Part then briefly touches upon the varied forms reparative remedies might take to mend the breach.A History of Hollow Promises: How Choice Juisprudence Fails to Achieve Educational Equality
This Article combines analysis of case law at state and federal levels as well as federal educational policy in an effort to formulate a framework for addressing educational inequalities, of which the achievement gap is only one result. As individual rights concepts control the discourse of equal educational opportunity, community injury continues to be ignored. Because educational policy aimed at ending educational inequities is governed by equal protection analysis and guided by court decisions, limitations in legal opinions drive such policies. The lack of attention to community harm in law and educational policy limits the ability of education legal reforms and education policy initiatives to address the scope of the problem of educational inequalities. This essay contextualizes the issue to demonstrate how policies have reinforced a dominant narrative about race that is counter to the goal of ending educational disparities and continues to harm individuals and communities of color even as they try to respond to these issues.
