All content tagged with: Representation

Filter

  • States Taking Charge: Examining the Role of Race, Party Affliation, and Preemption in the Development of in-state tuition laws for undocumented immigrant students

    Part I of this Article details both the legislative and legal history of undocumented immigrants’ access to education in the United States. Part II then describes the current U.S. state laws in effect regarding in-state tuition for undocumented immigrant students at state-funded colleges and universities. Part III further explores the development of laws and policies with a keen focus on potential correlations between (1) the racial composition of state legislatures and the passage of in-state tuition policies; (2) the race of governors and the passage of in-state tuition policies; (3) partisan composition of state legislatures and the passage of in-state tuition policies; and (4) party affiliation of governors and in-state tuition policies. Part IV describes the concept of preemption and discusses the extent to which preemption has impacted the state statutes identified in Part II of this Article. Finally, Part V discusses the practical and normative implications of this research.

  • Brennan Center For Justice Symposium Introduction: Diversity, Impartiality, and Representation on the Bench

    As is evident from these articles, the question of judicial diversity is far more complex and nuanced than the current debate suggests. Many unanswered questions remain. The scholars in this issue and the others who presented their work at our convening have begun to reframe the debate and identify the hardest questions. We hope that this symposium issue will provoke further thought and provide a context for additional scholarship that will help us to answer those questions.

  • A Principled Approach to the Quest for Racial Diversity on the Judiciary

    Part I of this Article considers the different voices and perspectives added to the judiciary by the appointment of minorities. Part II analyzes the many impacts of diversity on the bench, including greater judicial impartiality. Part III sets forth the arguments supporting a diverse jury pool and discusses how they inform the analysis of the quest for racial diversity among judges. Part IV outlines a principled approach to the pursuit of judicial diversity.

  • Does a Diverse Judiciary Attain a Rule of Law That is Inclusive?: What Grutter V. Bollinger Has To Say About Diversity on the Bench

    This Article concludes that political dialogue engendered by controversial minority judicial nominations, like those of Miguel Estrada and Janice Rogers Brown, could be an avenue to educating the polity as to why it is important to achieve greater minority representation on the bench. The pluralistic process-based model of judging advocates that a critical mass of diverse judges be achieved, not that the minority judges be liberal rather than conservative, communitarian rather than individualist, or Democrat rather than Republican. The goal is that there be a critical mass of minority judges on benches that make decisions as a group, like circuit courts and supreme courts. This ideal is one towards which pluralist polities must strive.

  • Toward an Understanding of Judicial Diversity in American Courts

    Part I of this Article explores the utility of descriptive representation as an important concept in understanding why judicial diversity matters from a political perspective. Part II begins an empirical examination of judicial diversity at the federal level while Part III presents an analysis of state court diversity. The data presented in Parts II and III indicate that judges of color are underrepresented at all levels of the federal and state court systems and that particular racial and ethnic groups are virtually excluded from federal and state benches. The conclusion argues that the data presented in this Article support a disquieting portrait that erodes the myth of progress toward the attainment of a multiracial and multiethnic American judiciary.

  • Redefining American Democracy: Do Alternative Voting Systems Capture the True Meaning of “Representation”?

    This Article explores whether alternative voting systems are compatible with the meaning of representation in the United States. Part II begins by examining the role of geographical representation and the effect it has on the ability of individuals and groups of voters to give or withhold their consent. Part III follows this inquiry by assessing the relationship between representatives and constituents under majoritarian and proportional systems to determine the consequences of moving away from geographical representation towards models designed to enhance opportunities for all voters to choose winning candidates. A description of what a "majority" is and when and how it is attained to secure the people's consent then is taken up in Part IV, providing some insight into the extent to which departures from majority rule are consistent with the American conception of representation. This discussion leads into Part V, which evaluates the role of our two-party system and ascertains whether proportional models of representation can cure the perceived defects of winner-take-all elections without undermining the continued stability of our Republic.

  • From Tokenism to Emancipatory Politics: The Conferences and Meetings of Law Professors of Color

    In this paper, the author traces the history of the First National Meetings and conferences since 1969. In Part II, this paper explores the range of meetings and conferences which outlined the development of a proactive agenda for minority student and faculty inclusion within mainstream historically White legal institutions and the evolution of this agenda from one of access to an agenda of security, retention, and the advancement of legal theory and scholarship within and without the established academy. Part III chronicles the maturation of this tradition of independent meetings and conferences of professors of color into a network of legal education institutions promoting institutional, as well as ideological, pluralism. Finally, the concluding comments are devoted to an analysis of the two-fold function of this tradition of meetings and conferences: to combat the paradoxical isolation and heightened visibility of professors of color within historically White institutions and to generate legal theory responsive to the experiences of people of color.

  • Expert Report of Thomas J. Sugrue

    At the end of the twentieth century, the United States is a remarkably diverse society. It grows more diverse by the day, transformed by an enormous influx of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. In an increasingly global economy, Americans are coming into contact with others of different cultures to an extent seen only in times of world war. Yet amidst this diversity remains great division. When the young black academic W.E.B. DuBois looked out onto America in 1903, he memorably proclaimed that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." Over the last one hundred years, that color line has shifted but not disappeared. The brutal regime of Jim Crow and lynching was vanquished by a remarkable grassroots movement for racial equality and civil rights. Overt expressions of racism are less common than they were a half century ago. Many nonwhite Americans, among them African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, are better off than their forbears. Despite all of the gains of the past century, however, the burden of history still weighs heavily. Color lines still divide and separate Americans. Many Americans have managed diversity by avoiding it-by retreating into separate communities walled off by ignorance and distrust. In American public and private life, there are far too few opportunities to cross racial and ethnic barriers, to understand and appreciate differences, to learn from diversity rather than use it as an excuse for reproach and recrimination.

  • Who is Black Enough For You? An Analysis of Northwestern University Law School’s Struggle Over Minority Faculty Hiring

    This Article considers the factors that should be used in hiring a person of color to a faculty position and raises the following questions: Apart from potential teaching ability and scholarly productivity, should faculty appointments committees look to other criteria for candidates of color? Provided that we can still consider the race and ethnicity of prospective candidates of color at private institutions, should faculty appointments committees be concerned about how closely identified a candidate is to an essentialized conception, for instance, of Black persons? Should a faculty hiring committee focus its efforts to hire African Americans on a Black person who has ancestral roots in the American South, whose family has endured Jim Crow racism, who is very dark-skinned, whose family background is impoverished, and who grew up in an all-Black segregated environment? Stated conversely, should a faculty appointments committee hire a Black person who does not meet any of these essentialized characteristics? In confronting these issues, this Article calls. into question conceptions of race within mainstream U.S. society and among African Americans and other communities of color

  • Moving Ground, Breaking Traditions: Tasha’s Chronicle

    This Note uses a fictional dialogue to analyze and engage issues concerning stereotypes, stigmas, and affirmative action. It also highlights the importance of role models for students of color and the disparate hiring practices of law firms and legal employers through the conversations and thoughts of its main character, Tasha Crenshaw.