SelectedWorks of Kim Forde-Mazrui

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Kim Forde-Mazrui joined the law faculty of the University of Virginia in 1996, and
was promoted to full professor in 2001. He teaches Constitutional Law, Employment
Discrimination, Criminal Law, and Race and Law. His scholarship focuses on equal
protection, especially involving race and sexual orientation. His publications have
considered what role race should play in placing children for adoption; whether and how
to select racially and other demographically diverse juries; whether affirmative action
policies that employ race-neutral means are constitutional; whether America is morally
obligated to remedy past discrimination; and whether racial profiling and other
discriminatory practices by law enforcement are adequately deterred by current
constitutional doctrines. His scholarship has also examined the parallels between
historical arguments against interracial relationships and contemporary arguments against
same-sex relationships, as well as the role of tradition as a justification for banning
same-sex marriage. His articles have been published in several prestigious law journals,
including the University of Chicago Law Review, the California Law Review, the Michigan
Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal. The hallmark of
Forde-Mazrui's approach is to take seriously conflicting perspectives on
controversial issues and to offer constructive proposals to move society beyond current,
often intractable, debates. 

Forde-Mazrui earned his B.A. in Philosophy, summa cum laude, from the University of
Michigan in 1990, and his J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law
School in 1993. During law school, the Michigan Law Review selected him and subsequently
promoted him to Notes Editor. The law school's clinical faculty awarded him the Carl
Gussin Memorial Prize for excellence in trial advocacy, and he won both the Law School
and Regional ABA Client Counseling Competitions. He also volunteered as a
student-attorney with the Family Law Project, an organization providing legal services to
battered women. At graduation, the faculty elected Forde-Mazrui to the Order of the Coif
and granted him the law school's highest honor, the Henry M. Bates Memorial
Scholarship, "awarded to outstanding seniors in the Law School, account being taken
of scholarship in both undergraduate and legal studies, personality, character,
extracurricular interests, and promise of a distinguished career." 

After law school, Forde-Mazrui served a year as judicial clerk to Judge Cornelia G.
Kennedy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He then practiced two years
at Sidley & Austin law firm in Washington, D.C. He is admitted to practice law in
Michigan, Washington, D.C., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. 

At UVA, Forde-Mazrui has been appointed the Barron F. Black Research Professor and the
Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Research Professor of Law. In 2003, he was
appointed the inaugural director of the Center for the Study of Race and Law, a position
he served in for seven years. The Black Law Students Association has twice awarded him
the Service to BLSA Award and, in 2009, UVA's Office of Equal Opportunity Programs
named Forde-Mazrui an "EOP Champion." 

His research interests include race and criminal procedure, race in the child placement
process, affirmative action, and reparations. Forde-Mazrui's publications include:
Kim Forde-Mazrui, Tradition as Justification: The Case of Opposite-Sex Marriage, 78 U Chi
L Rev 281 (2011); Ruling Out the Rule of Law, 60 VAND. L. REV. 1497 (2007); Learning Law
Through the Lens of Race, 21 J.L. & Pol. 1 (2005); Taking Conservatives Seriously: A
Moral Justification for Affirmative Action and Reparations, 92 CAL L. REV. 683 (2004);
Live and Let Love: Self-Determination in Matters of Intimacy and Identity, 101 MICH. L.
REV. 2185 (2003) (reviewing RANDALL KENNEDY, INTERRACIAL INTIMACIES: SEX, MARRIAGE,
IDENTITY AND ADOPTION (2003)); Will Affirmative Action Survive?: Grutter v. Bollinger
Asks the Supreme Court, LEGAL TIMES, Vol. XXV, No. 24, p.52 (June 17, 2002) (op-ed); The
Constitutional Implications of Race-Neutral Affirmative Action, 88 GEO L.J. 2331 (2000);
Jural Districting: Selecting Impartial Juries Through Community Representation, 52 VAND.
L. REV. 353 (1999); and Black Identity and Child Placement: The Best Interests of Black
and Biracial Children, 92 MICH. L. REV. 925 (1994). Works-in-progress include an
examination of the constitutional implications of Arab profiling.

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