Civil Rights Stories

For the over half-million people currently homeless in the United States, the U.S. Constitution has historically provided little help: it is strongly...

During times of crisis, governments often consider policies that may promote safety, but that would require overstepping constitutionally protected...

Supreme Court opinions involving race and the jury invariably open with the Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, or landmark cases like...

In an era defined by partisan rifts and government gridlock, many celebrate the rare issues that prompt bipartisan consensus. But extreme consensus...

Working hand-in-hand with the private sector, largely in a regulatory vacuum, policing agencies at the federal, state, and local level are acquiring...

The decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard [SFFA], invalidating the use of race in college admissions, reignites...

At first blush, the debate between Stanley Fish and Ronald Dworkin that took place over the course of the 1980s and early 90s seems to have produced...

Coercive policing is conducted mostly by means of commands, and officers usually cannot use force unless they have first issued an order. Yet, despite...

This chapter examines the intellectual and social contexts in which the American Law Institute (ALI) has operated and how they have influenced the...

offers a preliminary legal history of the white supremacist and anti-Semitic violence that took place in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia on...

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez that our Constitution...

The conventional wisdom is that the Commander-in-Chief Clause arms the President with a panoply of martial powers. By some lights, the Clause not only...

Sandy Levinson has always taken secession arguments seriously. This is, in my eyes, one of his great virtues. There are very few scholars who would be...

Both statutory and constitutional law prohibiting discrimination forbid actions taken on the basis of certain traits. But rarely are those traits...

It was 1804, and Thomas Ruffin, future Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, was having doubts about slavery. Ruffin was a young student...

In this Foreword, I lay out the case for intimate privacy—what it is, why it is in jeopardy, and how we can fight to get it back, if we try...

IN DECEMBER, 1999, after William E. Jackson's death, members of his family found, in a closet of his Manhattan apartment, a folder labeled “Roosevelt...

This paper, prepared for the 2023 Clifford Symposium on “New Torts” at DePaul Law School, addresses the tort of offensive battery. This is an ancient...