Scott Phillips and Justin Marceau add a new layer to our understanding
of the role of race in the administration of capital punishment. In so doing,
they join a very small but hopefully expanding body of literature that is
shifting our focus to the act of execution itself.’ Indeed, the body of complex
studies of the administration of capital…[Read more]

Anthony Amsterdam urged litigators and scholars to focus on
individual prosecutors’ offices or counties and to identify “a set of local
institutions, conventions, and practices which are manifestly the
residues of classic Southern apartheid”; to “conduct analyses of the
impact of race in the sentencing patterns … in those specific…[Read more]

It is often stated that the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the last of the great
civil rights laws from the 1960s, was “fast-tracked” after the brutal
murder of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968.1 The late
Massachusetts Senator, Edward Kennedy, who was a senator at the time,
wrote the following of the law’s passage:

On April…[Read more]

In this Article, I will focus on the appointment of Louis D.
Brandeis to the United States Supreme Court as a significant landmark
in the history of the federal judiciary. I explore this topic initially
through a comparison of President Woodrow Wilson’s 1916
appointment of Louis Brandeis with President Lyndon Johnson’s
appointment of Thurgood…[Read more]

When the Modern Games began in 1896, women did not compete.5
The founder of the modern Games adamantly opposed female competition
on the basis of a natural law principle it believed governed the role of
women. Its leadership held that female competition would violate “the
laws of nature” and would be “the most unaesthetic sight human…[Read more]

Darren Wilson’s shooting of an unarmed nineteen-year-old Black
man, Michael Brown, was the tip of an iceberg of racial
subordination and despair. The deep outrage over that shooting
displayed in the small town of Ferguson, Missouri,6 the nation,7 and
all over the world8 suggests that the shooting of Michael Brown was
more than an isolated…[Read more]

Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged from two movements in legal
education. One was the Critical Legal Studies movement, which fostered
a power critique about American law and emerged at the University of
Wisconsin in 19771 and continued through meetings and scholarship until
about 1992.2 The second movement, which came to be known as…[Read more]

This article contends that the battle to preserve and place the
principles of Brown v. Board of Education’ at the center of the
quest for educational equality is more important than ever before.
Initially, this article notes that the United States Supreme Court’s
stewardship of Brown has been uneven, and the decision’s
precedential force has…[Read more]

President Trump’s border wall has evolved from an ambitious campaign
promise into a real opportunity to explore presidential versus Congressional
authority to determine how the president spends Congressionally
appropriatedfu nds. The president’s arguments that he has the power to
build the wall under either the National Emergencies Act or the…[Read more]

In her remarks to the 1971 National Women’s Political Caucus, civil rights
leader Fannie Lou Hamer described the quest for individual freedom as coextensive
with the pursuit of liberation for all people.2 Almost fifty years later,
this belief undergirds the work of the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo
movements. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors,…[Read more]

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is in a unique position to frustrate
the federal venue statute.3 In contrast to most state departments of
corrections, the BOP bears the unilateral power to transfer prisoners in its
custody to prisons across federal judicial districts. At times, the agency
exercises this power over prisoners involved in…[Read more]

As of November 12, 2020, at least 182,593 people incarcerated in American prisons, jails, and detention centers have tested positive for COVID-19; 1,412 incarcerated people have died.1 As the disease spread rapidly across the country (and world) in March 2020, public and prison health experts warned that jails and prisons could become incubators…[Read more]

It has long been said that a society’s worth can be judged by
taking stock of its prisons. That is all the truer in this pandemic,
where inmates everywhere have been rendered vulnerable and
often powerless to protect themselves from harm. May we hope
that our country’s facilities serve as models rather than
cautionary tales.1
Justice Sonia…[Read more]

For the last several years, criminal justice reform has been a pressing
political topic, and radical proposals to overhaul the criminal justice
system have gained traction.’ Nearly all of the candidates in the crowded
2020 Democratic presidential primary field introduced comprehensive
proposals to curb (or even eliminate) mass incarceration.2…[Read more]

In January 1917, a group of women led by Alice Paul began a twoand-
a-half year protest in support of women’s suffrage.1 As the first
activists to ever picket the White House,2 these women became known as
the “Silent Sentinels” for their practice of standing in peaceful silence
while holding banners displaying “provocative political slogans…[Read more]

It is no secret that American prisons and jails are often cruel and
degrading places to those who are forced to live or choose to work
within their walls.’ With the current political and social interest in
criminal justice reform, intrepid journalists are shedding some light on
what goes on behind prison walls.2 But the indignities suffered…[Read more]

In January 2000, three New York state prison officials refused to
provide Wayne Ford, a Muslim prisoner, one religious meal: the Eid ul
Fitr feast that marks the completion of Ramadan. 2 Mr. Ford sued the
prison officials for damages, claiming this refusal placed a substantial
burden on his religious practice without legitimate penological…[Read more]

Students enter law school to acquire the specialized
knowledge and skills necessary for legal practice.’ Their likelihood
of success in the legal academy is subject to many
measures: LSAT, GPA, and undergraduate institution and
major. However, for a variety of reasons, students often enter
law school without necessary fundamental skills to…[Read more]

When I irst started at MSU Law as the
Writing Specialist in 2006, I had several
questions about “the basics” of legal writing
pedagogy. I was inishing my Ph.D. in the
cumbersomely-named Critical Studies in the
Teaching of English, and I had never attended
law school. What I lacked in specialized legal
knowledge I made up for, I hoped, in…[Read more]

Years ago, I took a graduate course in critical literary theory. The irst day, the
professor opened class with a discussion of “physical and narrative space.” Her
irst proposition was for us to visualize how “readers” in a two-dimensional universe
might encounter a three-dimensional narrative object, speciically in reference to
the role of…[Read more]