Posted April 21, 2004
Goluboff Wins Law and Society Award
for Scholarship on Civil Rights in the 1940s
When
looking at the history of civil rights, scholars tend to zero
in on one significant moment—Brown v. Board of
Education (1954)—but the 1940s offer a rich foundation
as well, as law professor Risa
Goluboff discovered while writing her doctoral dissertation
in history, “The Work of Civil Rights in the 1940s: The
Department of Justice, the NAACP, and African-American Agricultural
Labor.” Goluboff’s scholarship was recently awarded
the Law and Society Association’s annual Dissertation Prize. More
Posted April 1, 2004
Grutter Litigators Explain Strategies Used to Win Affirmative
Action Case
Students and professors got a lesson in the
anatomy of a Supreme Court case March 30, as attorneys who worked
on one of the most publicized cases before the Court in years—Grutter
v. Bollinger, which upheld use of affirmative action in
higher education admissions decisions—dissected their strategic
approach in arguing the case. Latham & Watkins attorneys
Maureen Mahoney and Scott Ballenger ’96 spoke at the event,
which was sponsored by the Student Legal Forum and the
Center for the Study of Race and Law. More
Posted March 16, 2004
Klarman's Book Details Role of Supreme Court in Ending Segregation
It's now conventional wisdom that Brown vs. Board
of Education, the
1954 Supreme Court decision that demolished the legal basis for
segregated schools, is the Court's most important ruling of the
20th century. But the Justices who made the ruling weren't so
confident they'd done the right thing, and the matter of exactly
why it is so important is also disputed. In a new definitive
history of the Court's role in healing America's long-running
race wound, constitutional law scholar Michael
J. Klarman has told the saga in vivid detail and resolved
the theorizing over Brown's significance. In From
Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle
for Racial Equality, published in January by Oxford University
Press, Klarman shows that Brown did not launch the Civil
Rights Movement; instead it stirred a backlash that exposed the
violent nature of Jim Crow and thus led to the landmark civil
rights legislation of the 1960s. More
February 20-21, 2004
50 Years of Brown v. Board of Education Symposium
Full Coverage, including video clips
Brown Helped Break Segregationist
South, Greenberg Says
Brown v.
Board of Education encouraged the Civil Rights Movement
and paved the way for key civil rights legislation in the 1960s,
forever weakening Southern politicians' hold on Congress, former
NAACP lawyer and director-counsel Jack Greenberg said in his
keynote address at a symposium Feb.
20 honoring the landmark Supreme Court decision that ordered
an end to school segregation in 1954. Greenberg, who was just
shy of his 28th birthday when he argued before the Supreme
Court in Brown, worked for the NAACP Legal and Educational
Defense Fund (LDF) for over 30 years and headed the organization
when Thurgood Marshall left to join the Supreme Court. He discussed
the questions he most frequently faces about the strategy of
the LDF and the consequences of Brown at the event,
sponsored by the Virginia Law Review and
the Center for the
Study of Race and Law.
Posted February 20, 2004
Brown, Lawrence Prove Justices Weigh Their Own Beliefs,
Public Opinion, Klarman Says
One case struck at the heart of the segregated
South by proclaiming schools could not be separate but equal, while the other
offered a mild opening feint at state laws targeting homosexuals—but Brown
v. Board of Education and last year's Lawrence v. Texas reveal
how Supreme Court justices weigh their own beliefs in controversial
cases that are not necessarily supported by conventional legal
sources, according to law professor Michael
Klarman, who compared the two cases at an event co-sponsored
by the American Constitution Society and Lambda Law Alliance Feb.
18. Although the Lawrence decision
avoided the issue of gay marriage—just as Brown avoided
interracial marriage—Klarman predicted the Court eventually
would deem classifications by sexual orientation unconstitutional,
as public support for gay rights continues to increase. More
February
3, 2004
"The Effects of the Federal Income Tax Marriage Penalty
on Women of Color"
Federal tax laws that hurt dual-income married couples disproportionately
hurt African-American households, said visiting law professor Dorothy
Brown, noting that married black women account for 40 percent
of their household's income, while married white women's income
accounts for only 29 percent. Although tax laws are written to
be neutral, they can have varying impacts on households of different
races, Brown explained at a luncheon sponsored by Women
of Color Feb. 3. The discrepancy may result in part because
African-American employees don't earn wages equal to whites,
which may encourage black women to work in support of the family
income. More
November 18, 2003
"Race, Identity & Self-Segregation at UVA Law:
A Student Panel"
Panelists included Tim Clinton, Adrian Guy, Berin Szoka and Eric Wang. Moderated
by Professor Anne
Coughlin, interim director of the Center for the Study of Race
and Law. Sponsored by the Student
Bar Association Diversity
Committee, American Constitution
Society, Virginia
Law Republicans, National
Lawyers Guild and the Student
Legal Forum.
November 7, 2003
"The Liberal Case Against Racial Preferences" with University
of Michigan Professor Carl Cohen
Affirmative action programs corrode minorities' long-term aspirations and
should be abandoned because they violate basic American democratic values of
equality and merit, according to University of Michigan philosophy professor
Carl Cohen. That point of view is not novel, but it is unusual in an intellectual
with solid liberal bona fides, and that kink was one reason Cohen was asked
by law professor Kim
Forde-Mazrui to deliver the inaugural lecture of the Law School 's new
Center for the Study of Race and Law. Cohen presented "The Liberal Case Against
Affirmative Action," Nov. 7 in Caplin Pavilion to a large but skeptical audience. More
November 4, 2003
"Prison Labor Laws and White Working Class Formation"
The Center presented the third Student-Faculty Workshop of the fall semester,
with Ethan Blue, a doctoral candidate at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for
African and African American Studies. Blue's research examines the changes and
continuities in white male working-class formation as well as the state's relationship
to racially subordinate populations. His dissertation analyzes laws regulating
prison labor and the effect of these laws in protecting the livelihoods of white
male workers. He argues that these laws did not simply reflect racial difference
and hierarchy, but rather produced and reproduced hierarchy in different political
economic moments and conditions.
October 20, 2003
"Blackface and the First Amendment"
Panelists included Robert
O'Neill, Professor of Law, Director
of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression; and
Stephen Railton, Professor of American Literature and author of "Uncle Tom's
Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive." The panel discussed two
conflicting cases involving blackface: Iota Xi v. George
Mason and Tindle v. Caudell. Sponsored
by the Center for the Study of Race and the Law, the Jefferson Literary and
Debating Society, and the Law For Us Student Mentoring Program.
October
14, 2003
How to Achieve a Colorblind Society: A Debate
Roger Clegg, VP & General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity;
and visiting Marquette law professor Gordon
Hylton, Senior Research Fellow of the Carter
G. Woodson Institute of Afro-American and African Studies at UVA, debated
issues such as affirmative action in education and the workplace, legislative
redistricting on the basis of race, and the collection of racial data by the
Census Bureau. Co-sponsored by the Federalist
Society, APALSA, BLSA, Law
Democrats, National
Lawyers Guild, and SUPRA.
October 13, 2003
"Professional Lives of Black Lawyers in Post-Civil
War Virginia"
The number of black lawyers in Virginia rose steadily
during Reconstruction, when there were virtually
no criteria for admission to the bar, but stagnated
once the state passed its Jim Crow constitution in
1902, visiting law professor J.
Gordon Hylton told a small group on hand Oct.
13 for a student/faculty workshop sponsored by the
Center for the Study of Race and Law. More
October 13, 2003
The Future of Latinos and the Legal Community
Voz Latina presented Robert Raben, the President of the Hispanic Bar Association of D.C.,
who discussed the future of Latinos and the law.
September 29, 2003
Center
for the Study of Race and the Law Workshop
A scholarly workshop with law professor Risa
Goluboff.
September 24, 2003
Law School Diversity: The Students' Perspective
A panel and audience of students debated the meaning of diversity and its
role at the Law School, while documenting their own struggles and successes
in finding a place in the community during an event sponsored by the Student
Bar Association Sept. 24.
Panelists expressed the perceptions they had about the school's diversity before starting law school. "I saw that there were a lot of viewpoints and political diversity at this school—more than a lot of other law schools at this level," said Lillian Omand, president of the Federalist Society, in explaining why she chose Virginia. She said she would include life experiences in her definition of diversity, as well as social situations such as being married, and having a variety of viewpoints. More
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