Upcoming Sessions
Future lectures TBA.
Watch Previous Race and the Law Sessions
The Diversification of Inequality: The Question of Class and the Politics of Inclusion
Professor Ahmed White.
Professor Ahmed White will explore how in recent years, 鈥渄iversity鈥 and 鈥渋nclusion鈥 have taken hold as governing precepts of 鈥渟ocial justice鈥 activism and given new meaning to civil rights and renewed relevance to the quest for social equality. But these concepts have also emerged as ways of justifying the extraordinary baby直播app inequality that defines our times, as they counsel legal and political reforms that accept the essential legitimacy of the structures that underlie baby直播app inequality and are preoccupied with making those structures more representative. 听In this way, diversity and inclusion have served less as means of advancing genuine equality than as methods for lending the appearance of democracy to a fundamentally undemocratic social order.
This program of diversifying inequality has its roots in a reconciliation of leftism with the politics of liberalism in New Deal and Postwar America, and likewise in a fateful dispute within the civil rights movement that ended with an initial push for structural baby直播app reform sidelined in favor of an approach to racial justice premised, instead, on private litigation, individual rights, and the principles of antidiscrimination. It draws essential support from a class of affluent minorities and women that it helped create. And it is fully realized today in the great success with which powerful corporations, oligarchs, and privileged professionals use diversity and inclusion to assert their own legitimacy and rule over the baby直播app, the cultural sphere, and the political order.
When Black Lives Don't Matter:听Years Lost to Wrongful Convictions in the Black Community
Anne-Marie Moyes, director of the Korey Wise Innocence Project, and Ann England, clinical professor of law.
Clinical Professor Ann England and Anne-Marie Moyes, director of the Korey Wise Innocence Project, examined the role of race in wrongful convictions. They explored why they happen more to people of color, how race informs the lack of adequate reforms, and why exonerations take longer for Black versus white defendants.听Wrongful convictions occur at significant rates and disproportionately affect communities of color. Scholars have identified various factors that contribute to wrongful convictions in studying hundreds of exonerations from the past three decades. Yet, progress has been slow in addressing the police practices, flawed forensic science, prosecutorial misconduct, and underfunded indigent defense at the root of most wrongful convictions.听
Racial Implications of Injustices in Food and Agriculture
Associate Professor Alexia Brunet Marks and postdoctoral research fellow Hunter Knapp ('20).
Criminalizing Race: A Practitioner鈥檚 Perspective on Policing and Mass Incarceration
Tyrone Glover听('09), a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer at听Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP.
Race and Religion:听A Case Study on Indigenous Peoples in the United States
Professor Kristen Carpenter
Race and the Constitution听
Professor Helen Norton
In this lecture, Professor Helen Norton will examine different interpretations of the Equal Protection Clause and their impact on racial inequality. It wasn鈥檛 until the Fourteenth Amendment鈥檚 ratification in 1868 that the Constitution included an explicit textual commitment to equality. Contemporary debates over the meaning of the constitutional term 鈥渆qual protection鈥 often turn on the choice between anti-subordination understandings of equality law (think, for example, of Justice Harry Blackmun鈥檚 statement that 鈥淚n order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way鈥) and anti-classification approaches (recall, for instance, Chief Justice John Roberts鈥 statement that 鈥淭he way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race鈥). This talk will examine when and how the distinction between these approaches makes a difference in courts鈥 and policymakers鈥 ability to address structural inequality.
When Cruelty Becomes Ordinary
Clinical Professor Violeta Chapin
Tackling Racial Bias in the Midst of a Global Pandemic: The City鈥檚 Response to Covid-19 鈥 Legal Aspects of Public Health Orders, Compliance, and Enforcement
Members of the Denver City Attorney's Office
Equality Still Dampened
S. James Anaya, Dean and University Distinguished Professor
In his lecture, Dean Anaya discussed how race and the idea of equality have played out in federal law, through the lens of several U.S. Supreme Court and other appellate cases. He examined the extent to which racism and its legacies are still present or enabled in federal law and judicial decision-making, and discussed how law鈥檚 call to equality can be a rival but not always sufficient force. Finally, he highlighted the need for an energized anti-racist stance by all legal professionals, in as much as each one may influence or determine the law鈥檚 content and application.