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,...
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...
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...
Trampling Whose Rights? Democratic Majority Rule and Racial Minorities: A Response to Chin and Wagner, 43 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review 127 (2008)
Gabriel Chin and Randy Wagner argue us that there were black majorities and pluralities in...
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,...
Health Care and AIDS
Rush to Judgment: HIV Test Reliability and Screening (with Roger R. McFadden), 23 Tulsa Law Journal 1 (1987)
Law & Popular Culture
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...
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...
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962): Lawyering in an Unjust Society, Screening Justice - The Cinema of Law: Films of Law, Order and Social Justice (2006)
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...
Setting the Record Straight: Maryland's First Black Women Law Graduates, 63 Maryland Law Review 752 (2004)
Race and Racial Formation
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)
The Black Side of the Mirror: The Black Body in the Workplace, Sister Circle: Black Women Represent Work (Sharon Harley, ed.) (2002)
Colorism: A Darker Shade of Pale, 47 U.C.L.A. Law Review 1705 (2000)
In this article, Professor Banks argues that colorism, skin tone discrimination against dark-skinned but not...
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...