Introduction Constance Baker Motley, the first female attorney of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), was dedicated to reimagining the nature and scope of civil rights protections in American jurisprudence. Motley’s legal career chronicles the ways in which litigation served to bring about revolutionary social changes in our society. Motley, a staunch believer in the […]
Symposium
This contribution to the Constance Baker Motley Symposium examines the future of civil rights reform at a time in which longstanding limitations of the antidiscrimination law framework, as well as newer pressures such as the rise of economic populism, are placing stress on the traditional antidiscrimination project. This Essay explores the openings that nevertheless remain in public law for confronting persistent forms of exclusion and makes the...
Introduction In 1961, James Meredith applied for admission to the University of Mississippi. Although he was eminently qualified, he was rejected. The University had never admitted a black student, and Meredith was black. Represented by Constance Baker Motley and the NAACP Legal DeÂfense and Educational Fund (LDF), Meredith brought suit in the United States District […]
This Essay examines how the Supreme Court has used conceptions of time and the passing of time to narrow the definition of racial discrimination and, ultimately, to constrain the very meaning of equal protection. The Essay challenges the common notion in equal protection that as time passes, discrimination and its harmful effects dissipate and eventually expire. Based largely on this notion, courts set artificial time horizons for identifying the...
Mrs. Motley’s reputation has always been excellent . . . . [S]he is a woman, with great humanitarian instinct, but I have never seen it to disturb her judgment objectively and on questions of law. –U.S. Senator Jacob Javits (1966) Introduction Is justice truly blind—rendered without regard to wealth, race, sex, or other background characteristics? For centuries, that compelling […]
The newest federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA), reflects a recent turn toward basing social policy on research evidence. Proponents suggest that evidence-based policymaking in education and other social policy areas can help cut through ideological debate and provide meaningful limits on the choices made by the federal executive branch, states, and localities. This Essay argues that such hopes for evidence-based...
When passed in 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act represented the federal government’s most dramatic foray into the elementary and secondary public school policymaking terrain. While critics emphasized the Act’s overreliance on standardized testing and its reduced school-district and state autonomy, proponents lauded the Act’s goal to close the achievement gap between middle- and upper-middle-class students and students historically ill served...
With recent rejections of plaintiff challenges in Colorado, Texas, and California, and continued battles over implementation of court orders in Kansas and Washington, state court judges may be sounding a cautious note on the limitations of the almost half-century-old educational finance reform litigation movement. Undeterred, advocates for economically disadvantaged schoolchildren have not abandoned the judiciary as an institution for advancing...
For the past few years, our nation has been engaged in a broad and passionate discussion about crime and policing. It is a dialogue that is as important as it is difficult. It is also one that defies simple answers, as tempting as those might be. We need better, more informed conversations about this […]
What a difference a decade makes. In 2006, 45% of Americans were worried a great deal about crime. By 2016, the number had jumped to 53%, the highest level since 9/11, which was the last time a majority of Americans had expressed that view. This increase in the level of fear buoyed Donald Trump to […]