Kerr on Aesthetic Play and Bad Intent @GeorgetownLaw

Andrew Jensen Kerr, Georgetown University Law Center, is publishing Aesthetic Play and Bad Intent in Minneosta Law Review Headnotes (2018) (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

Threatening words or images are assumed by American courts to be non-art. But this threshold question of art status is complicated by the evolution of rap and performance art. There is no articulable way to discern art from non-art for these non-textual media, a problem compounded in the unique context of the Internet. In civil litigation we can resort to institutionalist tests like audience reception. But mens rea matters in criminal prosecution. I favor judicial pragmatism in what I argue here is a very non-legal area of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Dennis @ProfALDennis on Black Contemporary Social Movements, Resource Mobilization, and Black Musical Activism

Andrea Dennis, University of Georgia Law School, is publishing Black Contemporary Social Movements, Resource Mobilization, and Black Musical Activism in volume 79 of Law and Contemporary Problems (2016). Here is the abstract.

In the last few years a grassroots social movement has emerged from the Black community. This movement aims to eliminate police and vigilante violence against Blacks nationwide. Blacks in America have long been subjected to this violence, and the issue has recently captured the country’s attention. Multiple groups are pressing for change, including Ferguson Action, Black Lives Matter, Say Her Name, and the leaderless social media effort organized by DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, to name a few. These fledgling activist groups have already experienced some success, garnering public attention and government response. As it currently stands, this nascent civil-rights movement has the potential to advance racial justice in twenty-first century America, but its path is not without obstacles. According to social-movement theory, the ability of activists to further marshal support is vital to the continued development of this civil-rights movement. Whether engaging in street-level activism or pursuing formal change through judicial, legislative, or electoral processes, movement organizers will have to think rationally and strategically about resource mobilization and oppositional forces. At a minimum, they must amass money and manpower for their activities, establish group credibility in the eyes of their participants and the public, and remain sensitive to the costs of movement participation imposed by government officials and counter-movements. To address these concerns, social-movement theory and history reveal that Black music and musicians can and should play a key role in Black America’s next-generation battle for criminal justice and civil rights. Social-movement activists should draw Black musicians, especially hip-hop artists, into the movement fold, encouraging Black musicians to initiate a massive wave of cultural activism.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

SpearIt on Muslim Hip Hop in the Age of Mass Incarceration

SpearIt, Texas Southern University School of Law, has published Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop in the Age of Mass Incarceration at 11 Florida International Law Review 201 (2015). Here is the abstract.

This essay examines hip hop music as a form of legal criticism. It focuses on the music as critical resistance and “new terrain” for understanding the law, and more specifically, focuses on what prisons mean to Muslim hip hop artists. Losing friends, family, and loved ones to the proverbial belly of the beast has inspired criticism of criminal justice from the earliest days of hip hop culture. In the music, prisons are known by a host of names like “pen,” “bing,” and “clink,” terms that are invoked throughout the lyrics. The most extreme expressions offer violent fantasies of revolution and revenge, painted within a cosmic worldview that likens present conditions to the slave system that first brought African Muslims to America as slaves. The discursive war challenges the notion that the most radical voices in Muslim America are to be found in mosques or other Muslim gatherings. Such a position must contend with this sonic jihad and its aural assault against prisons. These artists arguably represent the most radical Islamic discourse in America today that undoubtedly ranks Muslim rappers among the most cutting-edge critics of mass incarceration.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Hip Hop and the Law

Hip Hop and the Law (Pamela Bridgewater, andré douglas pond cummings, and Donald F. Tibbs, eds., Carolina Academic Press, 2015) is now available. Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

What is important to understanding American law? What is important to understanding hip hop? Wide swaths of renowned academics, practitioners, commentators, and performance artists have answered these two questions independently. And although understanding both depends upon the same intellectual enterprise, textual analysis of narrative storytelling, somehow their intersection has escaped critical reflection. Hip Hop and the Law merges the two cultural giants of law and rap music and demonstrates their relationship at the convergence of Legal Consciousness, Politics, Hip Hop Studies, and American Law. No matter what your role or level of experience with law or hip hop, this book is a sound resource for learning, discussing, and teaching the nuances of their relationship. Topics include Critical Race Theory, Crime and Justice, Mass Incarceration, Gender, and American Law: including Corporate Law, Intellectual Property, Constitutional Law, and Real Property Law.

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.