Civil Rights
Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Bench: "Race Man" and "Pragmatic Feminist", (2009)
Most people think of Thurgood Marshall as a champion of racial equality. Few legal scholars...
A Few Random Thoughts About Socio-Economic "Rights" in the United States in Light of the 2008 Financial Meltdown, 24 Maryland Journal of International Law 163 (2009)
Socio-economic rights, first articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) sixty years ago,...
Equality and Sorority during the Decade after Brown, Law Touched Our Hearts: a Generation Remembers Brown v. Board of Education. (2009)
Multilayered Racism: Courts' Continued Resistance to Colorism Claims, Shades of difference: why skin color matters (2009)
Outsider Citizens: Film Narratives about the Internment of Japanese Americans, 42 Suffolk University Law Review 769 (2009)
This article examines the conflicting film narratives about the internment from 1942 through 2007. It...
Constitutional Law
A Few Random Thoughts About Socio-Economic "Rights" in the United States in Light of the 2008 Financial Meltdown, 24 Maryland Journal of International Law 163 (2009)
Socio-economic rights, first articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) sixty years ago,...
Balancing Competing Individual Constitutional Rights: Raising Some Questions, Law and Rights: Global Perspectives on Constitutionalism and Governance (2008)
Despite increasing support for global human rights ..., some scholars and constitutional democracies, like the...
State Constitutions, Freedom of Expression, and Search and Seizure: Prospects for State Court Reincarnation (with Sue Davis), 17 Publius 13 (1987)
Health Care and AIDS
Legal Challenges: State Intervention, Reproduction and HIV-infected Women, HIV, AIDS and Childbearing: Public Policy, Private Lives 143 (Ruth R. Faden & Nancy E. Kass, eds. (1996)
The Americans With Disabilities Act and the Reproductive Rights of HIV-Infected Women, 3 Texas Journal of Women & Law 57 (1994)
Reproduction and Parenting, Aids Law Today: A New Guide for the Public (Burris et al., eds.). (1993)
Women and AIDS - Racism, Sexism, and Classism, 17 New York University Review of Law & Social Change 351 (1990)
Law & Popular Culture
Here Comes the Judge! Gender Distortion on TV Reality Court Shows, 39 University of Baltimore Law Forum 28 (2009)
Judging the Judges - Daytime Television's Integrated Reality Court Bench, Lawyers in Your Living Room: Law on Television (2009)
Critics of reality daytime television court shows remain divided over whether the possible educational benefits...
Outsider Citizens: Film Narratives about the Internment of Japanese Americans, 42 Suffolk University Law Review 769 (2009)
This article examines the conflicting film narratives about the internment from 1942 through 2007. It...
Troubled Waters: Mid-Twentieth Century American Society on "Trial" in the Films of John Waters, 39 Stetson Law Review (2009)
In this Article Professor Banks argues that what makes many of filmmaker John Waters early...
What Documentary Films Teach Us About the Criminal Justice System - Introduction, 8 University of Maryland Law Journal on Race, Religion, Gender & Class 1 (2009)
Film . . . has been used effectively to shape public perceptions about the criminal...
Legal History
Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventheenth Century Colonial Virginia, 41 Akron Law Review 799 (2008)
Elizabeth Key, an African-Anglo woman living in seventeenth century colonial Virginia sued for her freedom...
Mestizaje and the Mexican Mestizo Self: No hay Sangre Negra, so there is no Blackness, 15 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 199 (2006)
Many legal scholars who write about Mexican mestizaje omit references to Afromexicans, Mexico’s African roots,...
Setting the Record Straight: Maryland's First Black Women Law Graduates, 63 Maryland Law Review 752 (2004)
Race and Racial Formation
Equality and Sorority during the Decade after Brown, Law Touched Our Hearts: a Generation Remembers Brown v. Board of Education. (2009)
Multilayered Racism: Courts' Continued Resistance to Colorism Claims, Shades of difference: why skin color matters (2009)
Mestizaje and the Mexican Mestizo Self: No hay Sangre Negra, so there is no Blackness, 15 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 199 (2006)
Many legal scholars who write about Mexican mestizaje omit references to Afromexicans, Mexico’s African roots,...
Exploring White Resistance to Racial Reconciliation in the United States, 55 Rutgers Law Review 903 (2003)
Women and Feminism
Lawrence Summers at the NBER Conference: The Real Deal, 11 Cardozo Women's Law Journal 501 (2005)
This mini commentary is written in response to a public speech made by Lawrence Summers,...
Two "Colored" Women's Conversation about the Relevance of Feminist Law Journals in the Twenty-first Century (with Penelope Andrews), 2 Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 498 (2003)
This is a critique by two non-white law professors in the form of a conversation...