Sciullo on Defending Critical Race Theory @nickjsciullo

Nick J. Sciullo, Texas A&M University, has published Defending Critical Race Theory. Here is the abstract.

Recent attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT) have caused wide-ranging discussions about CRT in a diverse number of disciplines, throughout all grade levels, and around the world in media. While CRT adherents have long wished for more engagement with CRT, the recent firestorm of attacks has been surprising at best, and horribly worrisome and frightening at worst. Efforts to ban CRT in schools, while likely not having much effect given the improbability that CRT is taught in any K-12 schools, have politicized CRT in new ways (though like all education, it was always political). Moreover, this engagement is clearly not in ways that many of us writing in or about this tradition imagined, yet the increasing politicization of CRT has raised interest in the theory well beyond the colleges, universities, and graduate and professional schools where it was, at best, occasionally taught. Arguably, conservatives created a debate where there is none and was none. Or, as Donald Earl Collins puts it, this is a discussion not about CRT, but rather about “critical race fact.” This Article sets out to defend CRT from the criticisms levied by conservative and Republican politicians in the United States as well as other pundits and pontificators. These criticisms have always existed, but they have now been taken up in popular media in a confusing menagerie of political fervor. Of course, the criticisms of CRT are almost always based on a misunderstanding of the idea. Each Part below takes up a different criticism and presents evidence that the criticism is simply not true by using both what critical race theorists have written, as well as what others who have experience teaching it in the United States’ schools, colleges, and universities have claimed. It is possible, one supposes, that the country’s alleged critical-race-teaching kindergarten teachers are covertly inserting CRT into our five-year-olds’ lessons on colors, but this seems unlikely.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Pfeiffer and Hu on Deconstructing Code Words @ASUCollegeOfLaw @uarizonalaw @law_soc

Deirdre Pfeiffer, Arizona State College of Law, and Xiaoqian Hu, University of Arizona College of Law, are publishing Deconstructing Racial Code Words in volume 58 of Law & Society (2024). Here is the abstract.

Racism has become more covert in post-civil rights America. Yet, measures to combat it are hindered by inadequate general knowledge on what “colorblind” race talk says and does and what makes it effective. We deepen understanding of covert racism by investigating one type of discourse—racial code words, which are 1) indirect signifiers of racial or ethnic groups that contain 2) at least one positive or negative value judgment and 3) contextually implied or salient meanings. Through a thematic analysis of 734 racial code words from 97 scholarly texts, we develop an interpretive framework that explains their tropes, linguistic mechanisms, and unique roles in perpetuating racism, drawing from race, linguistic, and cultural studies. Racial code words promote tropes of White people’s respectability and privilege and Racial/Ethnic Minorities’ pathology and inferiority in efficient, adaptable, plausibly deniable, and almost always racially stratifying ways, often through euphemism, metonymy, and othering. They construct a “colorblind” discursivity and propel both “epistemic racism” (racism in knowledge) and systemic racism (racism in action). We further strengthen applications of Critical Race Theory in sociolegal studies of race by presenting a “racial meaning decoding tool” to assist legal and societal measures to detect coded racism.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Vats and Keller on Critical Race Theory as Intellectual Property Methodology @raceip @FAMULaw @PittLaw

Anjali Vats, University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Department of Communication, and Deidre A. Keller, Florida A & M University College of Law, have published Critical Race Theory as Intellectual Property Methodology in Intellectual Property Research (Irene Calboli and Maria Lilla Montagnani, eds., Oxford University Press, 2021). Here is the abstract.

This chapter traces the emergence of Critical Race Intellectual Property (CRTIP) as a distinct area of study and activism that builds on the work of Critical Legal Studies and Critical Intellectual Property scholars. Invested in the workings of power - but with particular intersectional attentiveness to race - Critical Intellectual Property works to imagine new, often more socially just, forms of knowledge produce. In this brief chapter, we lay out the origins of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its central methods, articulate a vision of CRT, and contemplate how CRT's interdisciplinary and transnational methods might apply to intellectual property. In accomplishing the latter, we use India's commitments to access to knowledge in the recent Delhi University copyshop case and controversy over Novartis's drug Gleevec to show how CRT's central insights can open possibilities for reading intellectual property law with attunement to structures of racial power.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Crawford, Jackson, and Hartzel on Stealing Culture: The Internalization of Critical Race Theory Through the Intersection of Criminal Law and Museum Studies

Nicole Crawford, University of Wyoming Art Museum, Darrell Jackson, University of Wyoming College of Law, and Toni Hartzel have published Stealing Culture: The Internalization of Critical Race Theory Through the Intersection of Criminal Law and Museum Studies in Critical Race Theory in the Academy (V. L. Farmer and E. S. W. Farmer, eds., Information Age Publishing, 2020). Here is the abstract.

Consider this scenario: You walk into a museum or a collector’s home and take the most valuable item located within. Society, via criminal laws, would label you a thief and your actions as theft, robbery, or some other heinous activity. Yet, when the actors are flipped, and the museum (via its agents) enters the homes or lands of certain peoples, the law labels that 'an acquisition' and the thief turn into 'a collector.' Critical Race Theory (CRT) gives us a legal analytical tool to reconsider these labels, definitions, and outcomes.

The full text is not available from SSRN. 

Call For Proposals: The Utopia/Dystopia Project: A Writing Workshop, UNLV School of Law, Feb. 13-14, 2020 @UNLVLaw @elmacdowell @ljewel

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The Utopia/Dystopia Project: A Writing Workshop 

February 13-14, 2020

William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada Las Vegas

There is no end / To what a living world / Will demand of you.

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower 

In these days of hate politics and urgent need, there is a great need for countervailing narratives and envisioning. The Utopia/Dystopia Project seeks to engage the legal imagination with utopian and dystopian art forms to decolonize mental space, reframe critical consciousness, and engender deep resistance. Project organizers believe that this art has much to teach the legal academy about understanding contemporary politics and re-organizing and re-envisioning what comes next. Popular utopian and dystopian narratives may illuminate truth and sharpen our vision. Indeed, the most critical articulations of these genres struggle with basic questions while expressing alternative visions of what could be. Speculative texts urge us to think from a different perspective than the ones we normally occupy, to live differently than we are, and to dissent from the status quo. They teach us to resist against what scares or enrages us, and to build and engender what we hope for and love. They show us that alternative possibilities for empathy, recognition, and joy may be as near as the next frame or the turn of a page. 

This Workshop follows the powerful Utopia/Dystopia Project Conference held at Tulane University School of Law in April 2019, and panels at critical legal conferences in 2018-19. Guiding questions addressed at these events included: What is law? What is justice? What are our obligations to one another? What is sacred? What is profane? What is a person? What is gender? What is sex? What is race? Must our answers be linear, inevitable, binary? Participants also engaged questions about ethics, power, and the realm of the political: How should we treat one another? What does it mean to live a good or just life? How does power structure our interactions and inevitabilities in our lives? Could power structures be other than they appear to be? How? What institutions shape our life chances/choices? What does it mean to belong or to exclude? What is self,  community, nation, other? 

Please join us for an intimate workshop to support the development of a rich, interdisciplinary legal scholarship that engages these themes. This Workshop will continue this vital dialogue with a focus on developing the participants’ ideas and scholarship toward the goal of publication. Participants will share working drafts before the Workshop and receive intensive feedback at the Workshop, as well as participate in discussions of cross-cutting ideas and issues, in a supportive environment. 

We are seeking proposals for participation. 

Participation may include academic and artistic written materials that engage socio-legal themes, storytelling in the critical race theory tradition, and speculative, utopian and/or dystopian materials, themes, or ideas. Proposals of 250-500 words should be emailed to elizabeth.macdowell@unlv.edu by Dec. 19, 2019 and include the author’s resume. Selected participants will be notified by Dec. 27. 

Working drafts will be due Jan. 24, 2020. Inquiries may be sent to Elizabeth MacDowell or another organizing committee member: Cyra Akila Choudhury, FSU College of Law;  Atiba R. Ellis, Marquette University Law School; Anthony Farley, Albany Law School; Marc-Tizoc González, St. Thomas University School of Law; Lucy Jewel, University of Tennessee College of Law; Brant Lee, University of Akron School of Law; Saru Matambanadzo, Tulane University Law School; Christian B. Sundquist, Albany Law School; and Matthew Titolo, West Virginia University College of Law.

McMurtry-Chubb on Still Writing at the Master's Table @genremixtress

Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb, John Marshall Law School; Mercer University School of Law, has published Still Writing at the Master's Table: Decolonizing Rhetoric in Legal Writing For a 'Woke' Legal Academy at 21 Scholar 255 (2019). Here is the abstract.

When I wrote Writing At the Master’s Table: Reflections on Theft, Criminality, and Otherness in the Legal Writing Profession almost 10 years ago, my aim was to bring a Critical Race Theory/Feminism (CRTF) analysis to scholarship about the marginalization of White women law professors of legal writing. I focused on the convergence of race, gender, and status to highlight the distinct inequities women of color face in entering their ranks. My concern was that barriers to entry for women of color made it less likely that the existing legal writing professorate, predominantly White and female, would problematize the ways students are taught legal reasoning, analysis and writing. I argued: “If the traditional [dominant] legal analytical process is normalized and passed off as objective, both in the content of the legal writing curriculum and in the body of the person teaching the curriculum, most students unwittingly will continue to replicate racist and elitist legal structures as they learn the very process of legal reasoning and analysis in law school and as they undertake the practice of law.” I pick up that major theme in this article by focusing on how law professors of legal writing are forced to serve as handmaidens of hierarchy in the maintenance of the legal academy as an elite and closed discourse community. It considers how in teaching students how to “do” law - employ legal reasoning and analysis through written communication - legal writing curricula provide for no critique of the colonized formal rhetorical structures in which critical thinking, reading, analysis and writing skills are grounded. Part I problematizes the relationship of the five canons of rhetoric, specifically Invention and Dispositio, to Western/European epistemologies. Part II introduces Indigenous, African and Asian Diasporic Rhetorics, and Latinx Rhetorics as critiques of the canons of rhetoric and the Western concept of canonicity; examines them as new sites for Inventio and Dispositio; and considers the implications for teaching legal reasoning, analysis, and communication. Part III explores how de-centering Western epistemologies as the sole acceptable source of rhetoric opens possibilities for decolonizing the legal academy, and for preparing law students to become change agents in the practice of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Corbin on Picturing Terrorists: "Always Muslim But Never White" @CarolineMCorbin

Caroline Mala Corbin, University of Miami School of Law, is publishing 'Terrorists are Always Muslim But Never White': At the Intersection of Critical Race Theory and Propaganda in the Fordham Law Review. Here is the abstract.

When you hear the word “terrorist,” who do you picture? Chances are, it was not a white person. In the United States, two common though false narratives about terrorists who attack America abound. We see them on television, in the movies, on the news, and, currently, in the Trump Administration. The first is that “terrorists are always (brown) Muslims.” The second is that “white people are never terrorists.” Different strands of critical race theory can help us understand these two narratives. One strand examines the role of unconscious cognitive biases in the production of stereotypes, such as the stereotype of the “Muslim terrorist.” Another strand focuses on white privilege, such as the privilege of avoiding the terrorist label. These false narratives play a crucial role in Trump’s propaganda. As the critical race analysis uncovers, these two narratives dovetail with two constituent parts of propaganda: flawed ideologies and aspirational myths. Propaganda relies on pre-existing false ideologies, which is another way to describe racist stereotyping. Propaganda also relies on certain ideals and myths, in this case, the myth of white innocence and white superiority. Thus, the Trump Administration’s intentional invocation of both narratives amounts to propaganda in more than just the colloquial sense. Part I illustrates each of the two narratives. Part II analyzes them through a critical race lens, showing how they map onto two strands of critical race theory. Part III examines how these narratives simultaneously enable and comprise propaganda. Finally, Part IV argues that the propagation of these false narratives hurts the nation’s security.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Evaluating and Appreciating Critical Race Theory and Hip-Hop: The Contributions of Richard Delgado and Ice Cube

andre douglas pond cummings, Indiana Tech Law School, is publishing Richard Delgado and Ice Cube: Brothers in Arms in volume 33 of Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice (2015). Here is the abstract.

Critical Race Theory as a movement is best understood through the lens of founding voice Richard Delgado. Delgado’s prolific and fearless writings have inspired thousands and launched theories that have literally changed the course of race law in the United States. In fact, two explosive movements were born in the United States in the 1970s. While the founding of both movements was humble and lightly noticed, both grew to become global phenomena that have profoundly changed the world. Founded by prescient agitators, these two movements were borne of disaffect, disappointment, and near desperation — a desperate need to give voice to oppressed and dispossessed peoples. America in the 1970s bore witness to the founding of two furious movements: Critical Race Theory and hip-hop.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) was founded as a response to what had been deemed a sputtering civil rights agenda in the U.S. Driven primarily by law professors of color, it targeted the law by exposing the racial inequities supported by U.S. law and policy. Hip-hop, on the other hand, was founded by emerging artists, musicians, and agitators in the South Bronx neighborhoods of New York City, primarily driven by young African American disaffected youth, as a response to a faltering music industry and abject poverty. While these two movements, Critical Race Theory and hip-hop, seem significantly separated by presentation, content, and point of origin, they share startling similarities. Among the many similarities between Critical Race Theory and hip-hop, the closest link is the use of narrative in response to racism and injustice in a post-civil rights era. Further, Critical Race Theory and hip-hop share a fundamental desire to give voice to a discontent brewed by silence, and a dedication to the continuing struggle for race equality in the United States. Both Critical Race Theory and hip-hop strive toward their mutual goals of radical realignment and societal recognition and change of race and law in America.

One of the most important voices in the nascent days of the CRT movement was founding voice Richard Delgado, who along with Derrick Bell, introduced the world to CRT. Delgado published the explosive articles "The Imperial Scholar" and "A Plea for Narrative." Delgado’s early CRT publications represented an effort to educate and enlighten the civil-rights generation, emerging scholars of color, and the rest of the legal world to the inequities and discrimination inherent in a legal system that systematically disadvantages minority citizens in the U.S. Delgado’s voice was so important during the founding of CRT that he is revered today as a true pioneer in race jurisprudence in the United States.

Similarly, no early hip-hop voice seized the attention of both fans and critics alike the way that Ice Cube and N.W.A. did when “Straight Outta Compton” shocked the nation at its release. When Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, MC Ren, and DJ Yella (as N.W.A.) released "Straight Outta Compton," the album dropped profoundly on the consciences of inner-city youth, the nation, and eventually, the globe. Never before had such an intensely angry, ferocious, rebellious record been released and embraced by the consuming public. Cuts like "Fuck tha Police," "Gangsta Gangsta," and "Straight Outta Compton" resonated with inner-city youth.

Both Ice Cube and Richard Delgado furiously challenged convention and status quo America.

A Symposium On Richard Delgado's Legacy

Kevin R. Johnson, University of California, Davis, School of Law, is publishing Richard Delgado's Quest for Justice for All in Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice (2015). Here is the abstract.

This is a contribution to a symposium celebrating Richard Delgado’s illustrious career in law teaching. This commentary offers some thoughts on Delgado’s contributions to pushing the boundaries of Critical Race Theory – and legal scholarship generally – in seeking to create a more just society. This ambitious program has been the overarching theme to his scholarly agenda throughout his career.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Assessing and Documenting Outsider Jurisprudence: The LatCrit Example

SpearIt, Texas Southern University, Thurgood Marshall School of Law, has published Foreword: From Latcrit to Latcrit 2.0 -- Institutionalizing a Movement and Cultivating Next-Generation Scholarship at 47 John Marshall Law Review (2014). Here is the abstract.

This essay is the foreword to the LatCrit 2013 symposium. It charts the evolution of the LatCrit movement into an institution and documents efforts at cultivating outsider jurisprudence; it also introduces the essays of in symposium.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

A Conference on Civil Rights, Duke University School of Law, November 20-21, 2015

From Wendy Greene, Professor of Law, Cumberland School of Law:

Present and Future of Civil Rights Movements Conference

Duke University School of Law, November 20-21, 2015

The Center on Law, Race and Politics at the Duke University School of Law will hold its Present and Future of Civil Rights Movements Conference on November 20-21, 2015.This symposium will examine the future of American civil rights through the interdisciplinary lens of critical race studies, bringing together scholars and practitioners from the legal and social science communities to engage with each other and create conversations towards a more equitable future.  We encourage paper and panel proposals on a wide range of topics including, but not exclusively encompassing, the following:

• Present and Future of Civil Rights Movements in relation to
• Race and criminal justice
• Minority communities, wealth, and access to credit
• Race and healthcare
• Affirmative action
• Undocumented students and immigration reform
• School disciplinary policies and the school-to-prison pipeline
• Reproductive rights
• Passing and assimilation
• Discourses about post-racialism
• Multiracial identity
• Race and the Workplace
• Race and the Family
• International conceptions of equality law

Each proposal must include a cover page with paper title, presenter, affiliation, and a current email contact, along with a C.V. of each presenter and an abstract of no more than 250 words. Please submit materials via email to DukeLawCLRP@gmail.com with the subject line: CRS Symposium Proposal.

The deadline for submission is June 15, 2015. Scholars whose submissions are selected for the symposium will be notified no later than July 15, 2015. We encourage early submissions, as selections will be made on a rolling basis.

Please visit the Center website at http://web.law.duke.edu/lrp/ for more information.

Incarceration, Racial Justice and "The Wire"

Frank Rudy Cooper, Suffolk University Law School, has published Hyper-Incarceration as a Multidimensional Attack: Replying to Angela Harris through The Wire, at 37 Washington University Journal of Law and Policy 67 (2011). Here is the abstract.

Angela Harris's article in this symposium makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of hyper-incarceration. She argues, quite persuasively, that the term “gender violence” should be understood broadly to include men’s individual and structural violence against other men. She then considers what we ought to do about the incredible increase in incarceration, mostly of racial minority men, over the past 40 years. She terms this “mass incarceration” and argues that it is best dealt with by a shift from “restorative justice” to “transformative justice.” Whereas restorative justice emphasizes bringing together various elements of the community to repair the harm done by a crime, transformative justice goes further by emphasizing the racist and heteropatriarchal forces leading to the crime and preventing the healing of both the harm doer and communities.

It is hard to criticize Angela Harris. She is, after all, a founder of critical race theory and critical race feminism. Her article in this symposium demonstrates the depth of her insights and clarity of her expression. Nonetheless, I want to challenge Harris on one point and extend her analysis on another. First, for reasons I will explain, I believe it is crucial for scholars to start referring to so-called “mass incarceration” as “hyper-incarceration.” Second, I want to extend Harris's analysis of the multidimensionality of identities by means of a case study of how class operates during the drug war era, as depicted in the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire.
To establish those arguments, this essay proceeds as follows. Part I explains the importance of the term “hyper-incarceration.” Part II defines a multidimensional masculinities approach to the relationships between identities, culture, and law. Part III uses an analysis of The  Wire to argue that identity theorists should pay greater attention to capitalism. Part IV concludes that addressing hyper-incarceration requires simultaneously reducing the stigma attached to racial minority men and rebuilding economic structures in the inner-city.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

Critical Race Theory Conference at Yale, February 8-9, 2013

 From Yale Law School, an announcement of a forthcoming Conference on Critical Race Theory:

Critical Race Theory: From the Academy to the Community Conference

Yale Law School

127 Wall Street

New Haven, CT 06511

February 8-9, 2013

Registration is now live!

http://yalecrt.eventbrite.com/

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Following the success of the last critical race theory conference held at Yale in 2009, Yale Law School is proud to host the Critical Race Theory: From the Academy to the Community conference on Friday, February 8, 2013 and Saturday, February 9, 2013. The conference is sponsored by the Zelia & Oscar Ruebhausen and Debevoise & Plimpton Student Fund at Yale Law School, the American Studies Department, the Public Humanities Initiative, and La Casa Cultural at Yale College.

The conference will convene scholars, legal practitioners, and community leaders to examine the ways in which critical race theory can be applied to scholarly work, legal practice, social justice advocacy and community based movements. Confirmed speakers include Devon Carbado, Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Lani Guinier, Cheryl Harris, Tanya Hernandez, Charles Lawrence, Gary Peller, and Gerald Torres.

In 2009, Yale Law School hosted a highly successful conference that explored the insights of critical race theory, as applied to immigration law. We look forward to continuing these conversations and exploring the role of CRT in other contexts at this February’s conference.

For more information about programming, travel, accommodations, and more, please visit our website at http://www.law.yale.edu/news/crt2013.htm. Any questions or comments may be directed to crt.conference@yale.edu. 

Legal Intellectuals and Their Impact On Society

James R. Hackney, Jr., Northeastern University School of Law, has published Legal Intellectuals in Conversation: Reflections on the Construction of Contemporary American Legal Theory (New York University Press, 2012). Here is the abstract.

In this book the author examines the trajectory of American legal theory in the late 20th century by way of interviewing ten leading theorists. The interviews conducted with Bruce Ackerman, Jules Coleman, Drucilla Cornell, Charles Fried, Morton Horwitz, Duncan Kennedy, Catharine MacKinnon, Richard Posner, Austin Sarat, and Patricia Williams cover a wide breadth of contemporary legal theory — including law and economics, critical legal studies, rights theory, law and philosophy, critical race theory, critical legal history, feminist theory, postmodern theory, and law and society. The topics raised in the conversations include the early lives of interviewees as thinkers and scholars, their contributions to American legal theory, and their thoughts regarding some fundamental questions in legal academe.

A Bibliography of Derrick Bell's Works

As promised, a bibliography of Derrick Bell's books and articles, prepared by Kevin Baggett, Circulation Librarian at the LSU Law Center Library. Posted with permission.

Derrick A. Bell Bibliography

Books

1. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1992

2. Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

3. And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. New York: Basic Books, 1987.

4. Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

5. Shades of Brown: New Perspectives on School Desegregation. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1980.

6. The Age of Segregation: Race Relations in the South, 1890-1945: Essays (Co-author Robert J. Haws). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1978.

7. Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth. New York: Bloomsbury: Distributed by Holtzbrinck Publishers, 2002.

8. Gospel Choirs: Psalms of Survival for an Alien Land Called Home. New York. NY: Basic Books, 1996.

9. Afrolantica Legacies. Chicago: Third World Press, 1998.

10. Race, Racism, and American Law. Boston, Little, Brown, 1973.

11. The Derrick Bell Reader (Co-authors Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic). New York: New York University Press, 2005.

12. Civil Rights – Leading Cases. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.

13. And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. New York, Basic Books, 1989.

14. Constitutional Conflicts: Cincinnati: Anderson Pub. Co., 1997.

15. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1992.

16. Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

17. And we are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. New York, Basic Books, 1987.

18. Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

19. Shades of Brown: New Perspectives on School Desegregation. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1980.

20. The Age of Segregation: Race Relations in the South, 1890-1945: Essays (Co-author Robert J. Haws). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1978.

21. Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth. New York: Bloomsbury: Distributed by Holtzbrinck Publishers, 2002.

22. Gospel Choirs: Psalms of Survival for an Alien Land Called Home. New York. NY: Basic Books, 1996.

23. Afrolantica Legacies. Chicago: Third World Press, 1998.

24. Race, Racism, and American Law. Boston, Little, Brown, 1973.

25. Civil Rights – Leading Cases. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.

26. Constitutional Conflicts: Cincinnati: Anderson Pub. Co., 1997.

27. When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories (Co-Author Bernestine Singley). Chicago, Ill.: Lawrence Hill; Lancaster: Gazelle, 2004.

28. Civil Rights in 2004: Where Will We Be? College Park, Md.: Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, 1985.

29. The African American Law School Survival Guide: Information, Advice, and Strategies to Prepare You for the Challenges of the Law School Experience (Co-author Evangeline M. Mitchell). Houston, Tex.: Hope’s Promise Pub., 2006.

30. Ask Your Mama; 12 Moods for Jazz (Co authors Langston Hughes, Arnold Rampersad, and others). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Art Farm West, 2009, 1961.

31. In Defense of Minority Admissions Programs: A Response to Professor Graglia (co-author Lino A. Graglia). Philadelphia, 1970.

Articles

Bell, Derrick A., Jr.. 2007. "A Prophesy for Effective Schooling in an Uncaring World." Boston College Third World Law Journal 27, no. 1: 1-12.

Bell, Derrick A.. 2004. "The Unintended Lessons in Brown v. Board of Education." New York Law School Law Review 49, no. 4: 1053-67.

Bell, Derrick A.. 2000. "Wanted: a white leader able to free whites of racism.." U.C. Davis Law Review 33, no. 3: 527-44.


Bell, Derrick A.. 2000. "Brown v. Board of Education {74 S. Ct. 686 (1954)}: forty-five years after the fact." Ohio Northern University Law Review 26, no. 2: 171-81.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1999. "“Here come de judge”: the role of faith in progressive decision-making." The Hastings Law Journal 51, no. 1: 1-16.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1999. "A colony at risk." Touro Law Review 15, no. 2: 347-9.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1999. "The power of narrative." Legal Studies Forum 23, no. 3: 315-48.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1999. "Getting beyond a property right in race." Washington University Journal of Law and Policy 1: 27-36.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1998. "Constitutional conflicts: the perils and rewards of pioneering in the law school classroom." Seattle University Law Review 21, no. 4: 1039-51.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1997. "California's Proposition 209: a temporary diversion on the road to racial disaster." Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 30: 1447-64.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1997. "A gift of unrequited justice." Howard Law Journal 40, no. 2: 305-13.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1996. "Racial libel as American ritual." Washburn Law Journal 36: 1-17.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1996. "A pre-memorial message on law school teaching." New York University Review of Law and Social Change 23, no. 2: 205-15.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1995. "Black history and America's future." Valparaiso University Law Review 29: 1179-91.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1995. "1995 commencement address—Howard University School of Law." Howard Law Journal 38: 463-71.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1995. "The triumph in challenge." Maryland Law Review 54: 1691-9.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1995. "Who's afraid of critical race theory?." University of Illinois Law Review 1995: 893-910.

Bell, Derrick A. and Linda Singer. 1993. "Making a record." Connecticut Law Review 26: 265-84.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1993. "Diversity and academic freedom." Journal of Legal Education 43: 371-9.

Bell, Derrick A. and Erin Edmonds. 1993. "Students as teachers, teachers as learners." Michigan Law Review 91: 2025-52.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1993. "The racism is permanent thesis: courageous revelation or unconscious denial of racial genocide." Capital University Law Review 22: 571-87.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1993. "An epistolary exploration for a Thurgood Marshall biography." Southern University Law Review 20: 83-105.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1993. "Political reality testing: 1993." Fordham Law Review 61: 1033-43.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1993. "Learning the three “I's” of America's slave heritage." Chicago-Kent Law Review 68: 1037-49.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1993. "The permanence of racism." Southwestern University Law Review 22: 1103-13.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1992. "The Racial Preference Licensing Act. A fable about the politics of hate." American Bar Association Journal 78: 50-5.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1992. "Racial realism." Connecticut Law Review 24: 363-79.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1992. "Reconstruction's racial realities." Rutgers Law Journal 23: 261-70

Bell, Derrick A.. 1991. "Racism is here to stay: now what?." Howard Law Journal 35: 79-93.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1991. "Foreword: the final Civil Rights Act." California Law Review 79: 597-611.

Bell, Derrick A., Tracy Higgins and Sung-Hee Suh. 1990. "Racial reflections: dialogues in the direction of liberation." UCLA Law Review 37: 1037-100.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1990. "After we're gone: prudent speculations on America in a post-racial epoch." Saint Louis University Law Journal 34: 393-405.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1989. "Racism: a prophecy for the year 2000." Rutgers Law Review 42: 93-108.


Bell, Derrick A.. 1989. "Xerces and the affirmative action mystique." The George Washington Law Review 57: 1595-613.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1989. "The final report: Harvard's affirmative action allegory." Michigan Law Review 87: 2382-410.


Bell, Derrick A.. 1988. "White superiority in America: its legal legacy, its economic costs." Villanova Law Review 33: 767-79.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1988. "The republican revival and racial politics." The Yale Law Journal 97: 1609-21.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1988. "The constitution at 200: reflections on the past—implications for the future." New York Law School Journal of Human Rights 5: 331-44.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1986. "The dilemma of the responsible law reform lawyer in the post-free enterprise era." Law & Inequality 4: 231-43.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1986. "Strangers in academic paradise: law teachers of color in still white schools." University of San Francisco Law Review 20: 385-95.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1986. "Application of the “tipping point” principle to law faculty hiring policies." Nova Law Journal 10: 319-27.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1985. "The Supreme Court, 1984 term—foreword: the civil rights chronicles." Harvard Law Review 99: 4-83.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1984. "An American fairy tale: the income-related neutralization of race law precedent." Suffolk University Law Review 18: 331-45.


Bell, Derrick A.. 1984. "A tragedy of timing." Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 19: 277-9.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1984. "A holiday for Dr. King: the significance of symbols in the black freedom struggle." U.C. Davis Law Review 17: 433-44.

Bell, Derrick A., Alan Freeman, Monroe Fordham and Sidney Willhelm. 1984. "A hurdle too high: class-based roadblocks to racial remediation: a panel." Buffalo Law Review 33: 1-34.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1983. "A school desegregation post-mortem." Texas Law Review 62: 175-90.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1981. "Private clubs and public judges: a nonsubstantive debate about symbols." Texas Law Review 59: 733-54.

Freeman, Alan, Derrick A. Bell and Henry McGee. 1981. "Race, class, and the contradictions of affirmative action." The Black Law Journal 7: 270-89.

Bell, Derrick A.. 1981. "Law school exams and minority-group students." The Black Law Journal 7: 304-13.

A Giant Passes From the Scene

Derrick Bell, the first tenured African-American professor at Harvard Law School, died Wedneday at the age of 80. According to this article, published today in the New York Times, Professor Bell suffered from carcenoid cancer. Professor Bell also taught at New York University Law School and was Dean of the University of Oregon Law School. Early on, Professor Bell espoused the use of narrative and allegory to explain the workings of law and he became one of the founders of the critical race studies movement. His contributions are many, and he will be missed.


More here from The Root, here from National Visionary Leadership Project.

I will post a bibliography of Professor Bell's works sometime in the next few days.

Race, Poverty, and Disability on "The Wire"

Rabia Belt, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has published 'And then Comes Life': The Intersection of Race, Poverty, and Disability in HBO's, 'The Wire'. Here is the abstract.

Despite its low ratings and lack of Emmys or Golden Globes, HBO’s groundbreaking show, The Wire, has caught and kept the attention of critics, academics, and others interested in urban life. Though the show has disappeared off the airways, it is now becoming part of the academic landscape through conferences, panels, books, and courses. The article will be the first to examine The Wire, from a legal perspective. I focus upon The Wire’s lack of attention to disability. Injury abounds in The Wire. Police officers are shot, suspects are beaten, and drug addicts overdose. Despite the onslaught of injury, disability is an underdeveloped part of the world of The Wire. The Wire is not alone in its failure to adequately examine the intersection of race, poverty, and disability, but it is a helpful lens through which to examine the neglect of poor people with disabilities and disabled people of color with disabilities. The article will open new avenues in a longstanding debate concerning appropriate policy and legal interventions for the urban poor, link together disability studies with critical race studies, and illustrate the use of an artistic medium to convey complex policy and legal ideas. The article will be of substantial utility for the growing number of scholars who teach classes on The Wire, critical race scholars, disability law scholars, and poverty law scholars.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

The Origins Of Critical Race Theory

Richard Delgado, Seattle University School of Law, has published "Liberal McCarthyism and the Origins of Critical Race Theory," at 94 Iowa Law Review 1505 (2009). Here is the abstract.

I wrote this piece exploring some of the intellectual origins of critical race theory for a 20-year anniversary of the movement held at the University of Iowa in April, 2009. In it, I look at the role of certain prominent university officers in purging their ranks of white radicals to prepare the way, in the late sixties and early seventies, for the first large group of post-Brown minority students who were starting to arrive around that time. I show how four promising white professors, two of law, one of history, and one of criminology lost their jobs and what they did afterward. I show that they continued to teach and write about left-wing thought in the hinterlands in ways that contributed to the rise of critical race theory. As they say, it is hard to kill an idea.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.