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Lawyers cannot fully understand the American legal landscape without studying the impact of race. The Law School founded the Center for the Study of Race and Law in 2003 to provide opportunities for students, scholars, practitioners and community members to examine and exchange ideas related to race and law through lectures, symposia and scholarship. The Center also coordinates with the Law School to offer a concentration of courses on race and law, including 16 core courses and more than 10 related offerings, and serves as a resource for faculty whose teaching or scholarship addresses subjects related to race.
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Curriculum
Virginia offers courses in civil rights and anti-discrimination law, but equally important is a wide array of courses in constitutional law and history. These offerings reflect a deeper understanding of the ways in which the struggle for civil rights shaped — and continues to shape — our country and institutions.
Each year the Center brings a visiting professor to teach a short course on race and law. Past visitors include:
• Devon Carbado, professor of law and former vice dean of the faculty, UCLA School of Law
• Richard Banks, Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
• Richard McAdams, Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Fostering Scholarship
The Center’s Scholarly Paper Competition encourages and recognizes outstanding scholarship pertaining to race and law by law students in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The top three winning papers’ authors are invited to present an oral summary of their work at a special program held at the Law School. Recognized papers have covered topics such as the Insular Cases and the 14th Amendment, affirmative action, and the response to the crisis in Darfur. Winning submissions for the 2007-08 school year were accepted for publication in the Virginia Law Review, the Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law, and the Virginia Journal of International Law.
Taking Action
The Center promotes projects that advance racial justice in the legal system. In 2008 the Center partnered with The Sentencing Project to submit an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Kimbrough v. United States, in which the appellant challenged the idea of mandatory sentencing guidelines for the manufacture and distribution of crack cocaine. Sentencing guidelines for powder cocaine recommend a much shorter sentence, suggesting that crack cocaine guidelines are in part motivated by race because they disproportionately affect African-American defendants. The Supreme Court sided with Kimbrough (and the Center) and ruled that the sentencing guidelines were not mandatory.
As a result of this partnership, the Law School is offering the course Advanced Race and Law Projects so that students may address a host of similar race-related public policy issues.
Contact: Center Director Professor Kim Forde-Mazrui
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