Research & Academic Scholarship

The Purpose The Mansfield Rule is a structured certification process designed to ensure all talent at participating law firms and legal departments have a fair and equal opportunity to advance into leadership. Mansfield is focused on broadening the talent pool for consideration, including those historically underrepresented in the legal profession, to facilitate transparent leadership pathways.  Read More...

Lloyd Lionel Gaines applied to the University of Missouri School of Law in 1936. Despite an outstanding scholastic record, Gaines was denied admission based solely on the grounds that Missouri’s Constitution called for “separate education of the races.” Because Missouri had no public law school that admitted Black applications, state law required the state to pay Gaines’ tuition at public universities in Iowa, Kansas or Nebraska. Attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) identified Gaines’ case as a good vehicle to begin the incremental process of challenging the ignominious precedent of “separate but equal” established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Together, they sued the University of Missouri seeking an order granting him admission to its Law School.

UAL Special Collections

Present-day courts, practitioners, and scholars continue to cite to and rely upon cases involving slavery and enslaved persons to construe, interpret, and apply

Accountability is a well-worn word in social justice circles. The three of us, one a member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, one of us African-American, one of us white, have worked hard to figure out what accountability means to us as we attempt to walk our social justice talk. We have done this because we’ve seen too often how the concept of accountability gets (mis)used in interpersonal games of tit for tat, manipulations aimed at getting people to follow an agenda rather than reach for a shared vision. We know how challenging it is to build community-wide accountability when we are spinning in ever increasing dysfunctional circles personally.

How a top-down coalition focused on reducing youth substance use in a predominantly white, rural area of Western Massachusetts has prioritized equity and community engagement.

The Florida St. Thomas University College of Law has recently rebranded to the Benjamin L. Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University in recognition of the prominent Black civil rights lawyer. Crump is a Florida State University College of Law graduate and has offices in California, Florida, and Washington, D.C. He is widely recognized […]

A longstanding justification for the institution of property is that it encourages effort and planning, enabling not only individual wealth creation but indirec

Race, Slavery, & the Founders of Yale Law School An exhibition curated by Kathryn James and Fred Shapiro

Universities Studying Slavery (USS) is a consortium of over ninety institutions of higher learning in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Scotland, Ireland, and England. These schools are focused …

Post contributed by John B. Gartrell, Director, John Hope Franklin Research Center Duke University Libraries is pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Civil Rights Movement Archive (CRMA) that designates the Duke Libraries as the stewards who will preserve and sustain the CRMA when the current managers are no longer … Continue reading Duke Libraries Partners with the Civil Rights Movement Archive to Sustain Activist Centered History →

This paper addresses “Orientalization,” which I define as the objectification of Asian women as the “Oriental Woman”—the stereotypical image of the Ex…

Women’s History Month is a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society and has been observed annually in the month of March in the

The National Indian Law Library at the Native American Rights Fund supports justice through knowledge by providing unique and useful Indian Law information.

The development of law is inextricably linked to matters of race and ethnicity. The stories of minority citizens--the texture of their lives, the prejudices they have endured, and their struggles for fair treatment--have been documented in the pages of legal opinions, as judges over the years have wrestled with fundamental questions of racial bias and inequality. Studying race, ethnicity, and the law is challenging for many reasons, not the least of which is the prime difficulty of defining what we mean by race. Even the choice of words used to identify minority individuals has social and political ramifications. How law functions to oppress and liberate minorities has been a longstanding topic in the field of sociolegal studies. Issues of race, ethnicity, and law have taken on new urgency in recent years, as affirmative action and reverse discrimination claims as well as reapportionment battles and racial hate speech cases have come before the courts. This special issue of Law and Human Behavior focuses on social science research on race, ethnicity, and the law. Articles in the special issue consider the influence of race and ethnicity on substantive law, legal processes, and crime and deviance, and illustrate the tensions and contradictions that pervade the law's treatment of racial and ethnic minorities. We conclude that taking race and ethnicity into account may force scholars to reconceptualize theories about law's impact and that a greater number of racial and ethnic minority scholars would enrich the field of sociolegal studies.

This Special Advance Fact Sheet outlines preliminary findings of the research conducted by the Raza Database Project, which investigates a long-suspected undercount of the number of deaths of Latinos and individuals of color by or while in the custody of police.

"Chief justices identify ways to implement reforms as part of modernization efforts"

"In several cases addressing the constitutionality of affirmative action admissions policies the Supreme Court has recognized a compelling state interest in schools with diverse student populations. According to the Court and affirmative action proponents the pursuit of diversity does not only benefit minority students who gain expanded access to elite institutions through affirmative action. Rather diversity also benefits white students who grow through encounters with minority students it contributes to social and intellectual life on campus and it serves society at large by aiding the development of citizens equipped for employment and citizen-ship in an increasingly diverse country."

"In June 1951 five African Americans Harvey E. Beech James L. Lassiter J. Kenneth Lee Floyd B. McKissick and James R. Walker enrolled in classes at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill ("Carolina Law")."

"Trump refused to condemn the insurrection which left five people dead including a Capitol law enforcement officer. He even praised the rioters calling them "patriots" saying "we love you" and "you are very special." The episode was reminiscent of his notorious declaration that there were "very fine people on both sides" in the aftermath of the violence at the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville Virginia."

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."

"The Multiculturalism Policy Index is a scholarly research project that monitors the evolution of multiculturalism policies in 21 Western democracies. The project is designed to provide information about multiculturalism policies in a standardized format that aids comparative research and contributes to the understanding of state-minority relations. The project provides an index for each of three types of minorities: one index relating to immigrant groups one relating to historic national minorities and one relating to indigenous peoples. The Multiculturalism Policy Index and supporting documentation are freely available for researchers public officials journalists students activists and others interested in the topic."

"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."

"In her evocative masterpiece The Alchemy of Race and Rights published in 1991 Patricia Williams captured a moment in American legal thought that marked a turning point in expressions about race and power and the implications for social equality. It contained lessons extending beyond America's unique race history to the general social and political dynamics in liberal democracy that create conditions of privilege and exclusion. She invited us to think about the place of law in the social and institutional practices that sustain status quo hierarchies despite proclaimed civil rights commitments to justice. She also inspired hope that the role of the lawyer could be one of mutinous agitator—struggling from the inside using the tools and skills of practice to support the causes of identifiable communities and social movements."

"Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. It is also known as Emancipation Day Juneteenth Independence Day and Black Independence Day. On June 19 1865 Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston TX and announced the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery. Although the Emancipation Proclamation came 2 years earlier on January 1, 1863 many slave owners continued to hold their slaves captive after the announcement so Juneteenth became a symbolic date representing African American freedom. This fact sheet assists congressional offices with work related to Juneteenth. It contains sample speeches and remarks from the Congressional Record presidential proclamations and remarks and selected historical and cultural resources."

"This is the second of four special Black History Month issues of De Novo the newsletter of the Law Library of Louisiana that will be distributed statewide by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Each issue will feature an Unsung Hero whose work though less well-known than others nonetheless contributed to the progress of civil rights in Louisiana"