Become a Patron! This searchable database includes 900+ law-related documents on the Coronavirus, Racism, and the law. It does not include news articles. It was updated with 57 additional documents on January 31, 2023. Documents were gathered through an electronic database search using the following search terms: (COVID-19 or coronavirus)...

Lexis Plus now has a specialized resource page that gathers resources (both free curated resources from the open web and proprietary Lexis resources) on racial and social justice. This guide is ava…

Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses. They faced formidable opposition, most notoriously from the US Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott. Still, Martha S. Jones explains, no single case defined their status. Former slaves studied law, secured allies, and conducted themselves like citizens, establishing their status through local, everyday claims. All along they argued that birth guaranteed their rights. With fresh archival sources and an ambitious reframing of constitutional law-making before the Civil War, Jones shows how the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized the birthright principle, and black Americans' aspirations were realized. Birthright Citizens tells how African American activists radically transformed the terms of citizenship for all Americans.

In this episode, Mike talks about race, both in America generally and the legal system specifically. He uses the story of Italian internment in World War II to explore the idea of "otherness." Out of preferences and perceptions, as well as a history of identifying white culture with professionalism, the legal industry has created a context that's hostile to African Americans. Resolving that distance will only come after first owning our ugly history.   Episode Resources Connect with Mike Whelan    White Lawyering by Russell G Pearce:   Why the US Needs Black Lawyers:   Police killings can be captured in data. The terror police create cannot.   Thomas Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior:  

Compiled resources from Harvard Law Review.

"Race Racism And The Law considers race racism and racial distinctions in the law. It examines the role of domestic and international law in promoting and/or alleviating racism. This website makes law review scholarship (and related material) more accessible to community activists students and non-legal faculty."

"This article argues that "race" is an unnecessary and potentially pernicious concept. As evidenced by the history of slavery segregation the Holocaust and other human tragedies the idea of "race" can perpetuate prejudices and misconceptions and serve as justification for systematic persecution. "Race" suggests that human beings can be divided into subspecies some of which are morally and intellectually inferior to others. The law has important symbolic and expressive value and is often efficacious as a force that shapes public ideology. Consequently it must undermine the notion that "race" is a legitimate mechanism by which to categorize human beings. Furthermore the focus on rigid "racial" classifications obfuscates political discussion concerning affirmative action scientific research and social inequities. When we speak of "racial" diversity discrimination or inequality it is unclear whether we are referring to color socioeconomic status continent of origin or some other factor. Because the term "race" subsumes so many different ideas in people's minds it is not a useful platform for social discourse."

The essays in this volume illuminate a central paradox in the post-colonial West: race remains a potent index of social, economic and political inequality even while racial discrimination has become unlawful, even anathema. The standard account of this paradox is that racial discrimination and inequality are unfortunate vestiges of the past, which an enlightened legal system is now engaged in extirpating. These essays reveal a different story: equality law preserves racial inequality even while denouncing it. The authors show how in country after country, legal rules define racism so narrowly and make racial discrimination so difficult to prove that inequality persists despite its symbolic extinction. This ground-breaking volume of English-language essays, aimed at academics and researchers, shows how critical race theory, an analytic approach developed in the United States, can shed light on the workings of race in political-legal systems as diverse as South Africa, New Zealand, France and Latin and South America.

Winner of the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Grand Prize "An original, wise and courageous work that moves beyond sterile arguments and lifts the discussion of race and justice to a new and more hopeful level."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. In this groundbreaking, powerfully reasoned, lucid work that is certain to provoke controversy, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy takes on a highly complex issue in a way that no one has before. Kennedy uncovers the long-standing failure of the justice system to protect blacks from criminals, probing allegations that blacks are victimized on a widespread basis by racially discriminatory prosecutions and punishments, but he also engages the debate over the wisdom and legality of using racial criteria in jury selection. He analyzes the responses of the legal system to accusations that appeals to racial prejudice have rendered trials unfair, and examines the idea that, under certain circumstances, members of one race are statistically more likely to be involved in crime than members of another. "An admirable, courageous, and meticulously fair and honest book."--New York Times Book Review "This book should be a standard for all law students."--Boston Globe

"This blisteringly candid discussion of the American dilemma in the age of Trump brings together the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the former attorney general of the United States, a bestselling author and death penalty lawyer, and a star professor for an honest conversation the country desperately needs to hear. Drawing on their collective decades of work on civil rights issues as well as personal histories of rising from poverty and oppression, these leading lights of the legal profession and the fight for racial justice talk about the importance of reclaiming the racial narrative and keeping our eyes on the horizon as we work for justice in an unjust time. Covering topics as varied as "the commonality of pain," "when lawyers are heroes," and the concept of an "equality dividend" that is due to people of color for helping America brand itself internationally as a country of diversity and acceptance, Ifill, Lynch, Stevenson, and Thompson also explore topics such as "when did 'public' become a dirty word" (hint, it has something to do with serving people of color), "you know what Jeff Sessions is going to say," and "what it means to be a civil rights lawyer in the age of Trump." Building on Stevenson's hugely successful Just Mercy, Lynch's national platform at the Justice Department, Ifill's role as one of the leading defenders of civil rights in the country, and the occasion of Thompson's launch of a new center on race, inequality, and the law at the NYU School of Law, A Perilous Path will speak loudly and clearly to everyone concerned about America's perpetual fault line."--Amazon.com.

What began as a neighborhood party during the summer of 1942 led to the largest mass murder trial in California's history. After young Jose Diaz was found murdered near Los Angeles' Sleepy Lagoon reservoir, 600 Mexican Americans were rounded up by the police, 24 were indicted, and 17 were convicted. But thanks to the efforts of crusading lawyers, Hollywood celebrities, and Mexican Americans throughout the nation, all 17 convictions were thrown out in an appellate decision that cited lack of evidence, coerced testimony, deprivation of the right to counsel, and judicial misconduct. Mark Weitz chronicles the Sleepy Lagoon case (People v. Zammora) from the streets of the L.A.'s Mexican-American neighborhoods to the criminal courts, through the appeals process, and to the ultimate release of the convicted. In the process, Weitz opens a window on the uneasy world of Hispanic-Anglo relations, which, exacerbated by an influx of Mexican immigrants, had simmered beneath the surface in California for a century and reached the boiling point by 1942. By demonstrating how an environment of hostility and fear had fostered a breakdown in the legal protections that should have been afforded to the Sleepy Lagoon defendants, Weitz also illuminates a vital episode in the evolution of defendants' rights--including the right to counsel and a fair and impartial trial. As the case unfolded, the prosecution and local media drew ominous comparisons between the supposed dangers posed by the Mexican-American defendants and the threat allegedly posed by thousands of Japanese Americans, whose sympathies had been called into question after Pearl Harbor. Weitz shows how Zammora demonstrates what it is like to literally be tried in the court of public opinion where the "opinion" has been shaped before the trial even begins. Now, as Americans once again feel threatened by outsiders--whether Islamic jihadists or illegal immigrants--Zammora provides a mirror showing us how we acted then compared to how we respond now. While much of what occurred in 1942 L.A. was unique to its time and place, Weitz's compelling narrative shows that many of the social, political, and culture issues that dominated America then are still with us today.

"In the first comprehensive account of the Supreme Court's race-related jurisprudence, a distinguished historian and a renowned civil rights lawyer scrutinize a legacy too often blighted by racial injustice. Discussing nearly 200 cases in historical context, the authors show the Court can still help fulfill the nation's promise of equality for all"--

Racial disparity in the use of lethal force by law enforcement has been a recurring point of contention for the United States. Join us as dive into recent developments, and how to research this hot topic in HeinOnline.

Slavery and the University of Virginia School of Law is a project of the UVA Law Library that examines UVA Law’s historical connections to the institution of slavery through people, places, and pedagogy. From UVA's Academical Village, legal education in the antebellum period played out within a landscape of enslavement. In the classroom, faculty lectured on slavery as a social good. Law student notebooks, digitized and available on this site, enable this new research into the inclusion of slavery in UVA’s antebellum legal curriculum.