2005-06 News & Events

April 26, 2006
The Legacy of the Brown Decision: Looking Back to Look Forward
John Stokes, a former student intimately involved in the Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County lawsuit, delivered a public lecture in the Newcomb Hall Art Gallery. Stokes discussed his role as one of the organizers of the 1951 high-school student protest of segregated school conditions in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Stokes noted that they later enlisted the legal assistance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund, and their lawsuit eventually was folded into the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The Center co-sponsored the event in conjunction with the Curry School of Education and the Office of the Vice President and Chief Officer for Diversity and Equity.
 

April 20, 2006
From When and Where I Descend: An Examination of the Black Divide on Affirmative Action
University of Iowa law professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig presented her scholarship, “From When and Where I Descend: An Examination of the Black Divide on Affirmative Action.” Onwuachi-Willig noted that the current affirmative action debate about whether first generation Blacks, second generation Blacks, and biracial students of African descent should be eligible for affirmative action exposes the flaws of an admissions system that focuses solely on the endpoint of students in their academic career, as determined by their grade point averages and test scores. Rather, she proposed that admissions systems focus on the distance between where the students started from and the point to which they were able to climb or reach in their academic journeys. Onwuachi-Willig also stressed the importance of re-evaluating traditional admissions standards at elite colleges and universities. The Center and the Law & Humanities Program co-sponsored this event.

April 11, 2006
Scholars Remember Armstead Robinson’s Intellectual Legacy
Scholar, professor, author, husband, father, intellectual pioneer —these are just some of the many roles the late Armstead L. Robinson played during his career in academia. Robinson, associate professor of history and director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University until his death in 1995, is best known for his scholarship on slavery and the collapse of the Confederacy; the University of Virginia Press recently published Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy, 1861-1865, his final work. More

March 31, 2006
Family Should Be a Vehicle for Immigrant Integration, Professor Says
There are many ways to think about family within the context of immigration and citizenship law, according to Hiroshi Motomura, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, and it makes a difference how family is interpreted in the law. Motomura encouraged the audience at the “Welcome to America: Immigration, Families, and the Law” conference March 31 to “think about not just the family as introducing time but also as the family as a vehicle for the law to work in a very instrumental way to foster the integration of immigrants.” Ariela Dubler, associate professor of law at Columbia University and a family law specialist, provided comments on Motomura’s talk. More

March 17, 2006
New Orleans Needs More Federal Assistance to Rebuild, Panelists Argue
New Orleans will need more federal funds and more cooperation among local, state, and federal governments to rebuild in the aftermath of Katrina, said participants in the Urban Law and Policy panel of the Conference on Public Service & the Law March 17. The panel was sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race and Law. More
 

March 15, 2006
Race Not a Predictor of Future Violence, Monahan Says
Race should not be considered a risk factor in determining whether someone is likely to commit a violent crime in the future, Professor John Monahan said at a talk sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race and Law March 15. Monahan, a professor of psychology and psychiatric medicine who directs the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mandated Community Treatment at UVA, is only the second non-lawyer on the Law School faculty. More
 

February 24 and 28, 2006
Davis Analyzes the Role of Sexuality in American Slavery
UNC law professor Adrienne Davis discussed her article, "The Sexual Economy of American Slavery: Interracial Intimacy, Caste & the Shadow Family," at a faculty workshop co-sponsored by the Center and the Faculty Workshop Series. On Feb. 28 the Center sponsored a lunchtime talk by Davis, who presented “Slavery and Sexuality.” Davis presented her latest research regarding how the master-slave relations in the antebellum and postbellum South manifested itself in ways that legal and historical scholars often overlook. She candidly discussed the interracial, familial relationships that numerous slaveholders had with their slaves and explored the various ways in which white slaveholders sought to evade legal formalities to provide for their “shadow families.”  She also provided documentary evidence of how the wives of slaveholders were routinely cognizant of “shadow families” and how slaveholders’ wives used this leverage to better position themselves on the plantation in terms of the everyday operation of the farms.

Grey February 23, 2006
The State of Legal Services: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for the Underserved
This panel featured former American Bar Association President Robert Grey, Richmond-based Hunton & Williams LLP pro bono partner George Hettrick, and Professor Lillian BeVier, speaking in her capacity as vice-chair of the Legal Services Corporation, to discuss the virtues of public service. The Center co-sponsored the event with the Black Law Students Association, the Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, the Public Interest Law Association, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

February 16, 2006
Connecting Communities: The History of African-Americans at UVA
On February 16, 2006, the Black Law Students Association continued its Black History Month Speaker Series with a presentation by fourth-year Lawn resident Jade Craig. Craig’s presentation examined the evolving roles of African-Americans in the life of the University and connected the past with current race relations. Craig hoped that understanding the historical challenges that have confronted African-Americans would foster additional cultural sensitivity on Grounds and would spark critical discussion on how the University community could make the Grounds more welcoming and inclusive.
 

February 15, 2006
Data on Racial Profiling Leads to Police Reform, Garrett Says
Two African-American teenagers walked home from a late-night basketball game near the Bronx’s public housing projects in the summer of 1999. One of the teens, 16-year-old Dantae Johnson, had been accosted by police before for allegedly stealing a few dollars from a homeless man, and had spent the night in a jail as a result. So when police yelled “freeze” out the window of an unmarked vehicle, the teens picked up the pace. Johnson started to run. One officer remained in the car, chasing him against traffic on an uphill overpass. He caught the sleeve of Johnson, and the officer’s gun fired. More
 

February 13, 2006
Market Failure and Inequality: An Anti-Competitive Conduct Standard for Assessing When Disparate Impacts Are Unjustified
The Center and the Law & Economics Program co-sponsored a lunch presentation by Yale law professor Ian Ayres, titled “Market Failure and Inequality: An Anti-Competitive Conduct Standard for Assessing When Disparate Impacts Are Unjustified.” Ayres contended that anti-competitive conduct by a defendant should not provide a business necessity defense in disparate impact litigation even if the conduct increases the defendant’s profit. He reasoned that this anti-competition standard promotes both equity and efficiency as a policy matter and comports with the statutory requirement that to be justified a challenged practice must be “job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” According to Ayres, civil rights advocates, scholars, and courts have failed to understand that profits that are the byproduct of market failure are much less justified than those that are a byproduct of competition. Ayres concluded by emphasizing that disparate impact law can actually help make markets more competitive by enjoining policies that extract supra-competitive profits disproportionately from racial minorities.
 

February 9, 2006
Walker Examines the Legacy of Liberation in African-American Churches
Corey D.B. Walker kicked off the BLSA's annual Black History Month Speaker Series by exploring the theological underpinnings of the civil rights movement and discussing the liberationist theology espoused by many activists within the movement.
 

February 2, 2006
Earl Washington Case Shows Reforms to Death Penalty, Criminal Cases Needed, Neufeld Says
On June 4, 1982, a young housewife named Linda Williams, three small children in tow, returned to her Culpeper apartment after an evening errand to 7-Eleven. She didn’t lock the front door behind her. A strange man entered the house and attacked Williams, stabbing her repeatedly, dragging her to a bedroom and raping her, and then stabbing her again before fleeing the scene. Mortally wounded, Williams staggered outside her apartment where neighbors and the police soon arrived. Before slipping into a coma and succumbing to her injuries, Williams’s last words were of the lone black, bearded stranger who had attacked her. This was only the opening act of a harrowing account of a high-profile “heater case” that attracted media attention and resulted in the conviction of Earl Washington Jr., as told by Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, during a talk at the Law School Feb. 2. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1992, advocates for postconviction DNA testing to exonerate the wrongfully convicted as well as for other reforms that might prevent future wrongful convictions. More
 

January 26, 2006
University Community Gathers for a Film Screening of “Crash” and Dialogue on Diversity
The Curry School of Education, the American Studies Program, and the Anthropology Department co-sponsored a film screening of “Crash,” the Academy Award-winning drama that explores racial and gender-based prejudices in America. After the film screening, participants from across the University engaged in a scholarly dialogue on racism and sexism in the University and the Charlottesville area. The event intended to serve as a catalyst for discussion about diversity on Grounds and preliminary strategies for individual and collective change to minimize racist and sexist incidents in the local community.
 

November 16, 2005
Abrams Finds Hidden Motives in First U.S. Immigration Law
America’s first restrictive federal immigration law used rhetoric about prostitution and polygamy to accomplish a hidden agenda of racial exclusion against Chinese immigrants, according to law professor Kerry Abrams, who spoke Wednesday at a lecture sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race and Law and the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA). More
 

October 26, 2005
Brown Steered Courts Away from Economic Civil Rights, Goluboff Argues
Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 school desegregation case often hailed for ushering in the civil rights era and striking a fatal blow to Jim Crow, may have helped perpetuate material inequalities between black and white Americans, according to law professor Risa Goluboff, who presented her research on pre-Brown civil rights strategies at a lecture sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race and Law Oct. 26. More
 

October 21, 2005
Kang Proposes Behavioral Realist Revision of Affirmative Action
Recent findings in implicit social cognition (ISC)—a science that measures people’s subconscious biases—can provide a scientific basis for justifying and revising affirmative action, according to Jerry Kang, a UCLA law professor who explained his “behavioral realist” model of affirmative action at an Oct. 21 talk sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race and Law. More
 

October 7, 2005
Beyond the Hype: Trafficked Persons to the United States Rebuild Their Lives
The Center, in conjunction with the Anthropology Department, American Studies Program, Studies in Women and Gender Program, and the Women’s Center, sponsored Georgetown anthropology professor Denise Brennan’s lecture, “Beyond the Hype: Trafficked Persons to the United States Rebuild Their Lives,” at the Kaleidoscope Center for Cultural Fluency. Brennan examined how individuals, held in forced labor or servitude in the United States, rebuilt their lives. She argued that the living conditions and work lives of men and women who qualify as “trafficked” under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 often do not look much different after leaving conditions of servitude from other migrants who do not qualify as trafficked. The story of life after trafficking frequently mirrors migrants’ stories about their challenges in building a new life in a new place. According to Brennan, the process is an ongoing story, less finite and much less flashy than the story more often told in the media—one of a trafficked person’s escape or rescue.
 

September 28, 2005
Panelists Examine Consequences of Patriot Act
The USA Patriot Act remains a problematic, fractured piece of post-9/11 legislation, according to a panel discussion Sept. 28 on political and cultural issues surrounding the Act. Panelists Imad Damaj, president of the Virginia Muslim Coalition for Public Affairs, ACLU of Virginia executive director Kent Willis, and law professor Robert M. O’Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, spoke about the controversial Act, parts of which will expire in December unless the Senate and House agree on renewal legislation in the coming weeks. The panel was sponsored by the ACLU-UVA Law, the ACLU of Virginia, and the Charlottesville chapter of the ACLU, and supported by the Center. More
 

September 7, 2005
Damad Optimistic About Islam’s Compatibility with Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Practices in Islamic countries that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not the result of irreconcilable differences between Western and Islamic thought but of religious interpretations that change over time, according to Mohaghegh Damad, a professor of jurisprudence and law at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Iran. More

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