Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks Recent documents in Taunya Lovell Banks en-us Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:30:19 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/121 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/121 Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:33:45 PDT Taunya Lovell Banks Law & Popular Culture http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/120 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/120 Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:57:08 PDT Taunya Lovell Banks Race and Racial Formation http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/118 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/118 Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:23:29 PDT Taunya Lovell Banks Race and Racial Formation Civil Rights http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/117 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/117 Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:43:58 PDT Taunya Lovell Banks Race and Racial Formation Civil Rights http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/115 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/115 Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:17:50 PDT Film . . . has been used effectively to shape public perceptions about the criminal justice system. . . . [and] the documentary form has power to convict or release a defendant, as well as to disclose the positive and negative aspects of the criminal justice system. . . . Three articles on this subject appear in this issue of the UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND LAW JOURNAL OF RACE, RELIGION, GENDER AND CLASS and add to this body of scholarship. . . .Our goal was to foster a series of dialogues among and between a number of individuals: filmmakers.... Taunya Lovell Banks Law & Popular Culture http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/114 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/114 Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:13:55 PDT Socio-economic rights, first articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) sixty years ago, are regaining currency. Legal practitioners around the world, emboldened by emerging constitutional democracies in Eastern Europe and South Africa that constitutionalized socio-economic rights, are actively seeking to enforce these rights. The UDHR "reaffirim[ed] faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person," and served as the basis for the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Among those rights included in the Covenant are housing, food, and healthcare. Taunya Lovell Banks Civil Rights Constitutional Law http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/113 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/113 Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:20:52 PDT This article examines the conflicting film narratives about the internment from 1942 through 2007. It argues that while later film narratives, especially documentaries, counter early government film narratives justifying the internment, these counter-narratives have their own damaging hegemony. Whereas earlier commercial films tell the internment story through the eyes of sympathetic whites, using a conventional civil rights template Japanese and other Asian American documentary filmmakers construct their Japanese characters as model minorities -- hyper-citizens, super patriots. Further, the internment experience remains largely a male story. With the exception of Emiko Omori's documentary film memoir, Rabbit in the Moon (2004), the stories and voices of Japanese American women, who with their children comprised the bulk of internees, are marginalized. Thus I argue that the shadow of the internment experience affects Asian American documentarians' telling of the internment story. These filmmakers engage in a degree of self-censorship, crafting their stories to show Japanese Americans as a model minority to counter persistent perceptions of Asian American as foreigners--marginal citizens' whose loyalty is forever suspect. Taunya Lovell Banks Law & Popular Culture Civil Rights http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/112 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/112 Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:22:01 PDT Most people think of Thurgood Marshall as a champion of racial equality. Few legal scholars hail him as a great friend to women when he was on the United States Supreme Court. Yet between 1971, when the Court in Reed v. Reed invalidated a state law preferring men over women as administrators for estates on equal protection grounds, and 1991 when Marshall announced his retirement from the bench, he cast "pro-feminist" votes 92% of the time in gender employment discrimination cases, one percent more than Justice Brennan. .This overwhelmingly pro-woman voting record might even cause some to call Marshall a feminist a closer examination of the man, and his record, particularly three decisions, two of which he authored (Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, Florida Star v. B.J.F and Alexander v. Louisiana) where he votes against women's interests, discloses a more mixed picture. Without question Thurgood Marshall was a race man, but this article asks whether a good race man can also be a good feminist.I conclude that Marshall, while a friend to women, was no feminist in the contemporary meaning of the word, and at best could be classified as a practical as opposed to an idealistic feminist. Taunya Lovell Banks Civil Rights http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/110 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/110 Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:25:05 PDT Critics of reality daytime television court shows remain divided over whether the possible educational benefits of these shows outweigh their distorted images of judicial proceedings. .... few pay much attention to the shifting demographics of the reality court judges.... In 2008, women judges outnumber their male counterparts.... four judges are Latina/o and another four are black. Only Judy Sheindlin of Judge Judy, the best known and most popular reality court judge, and David Young of Judge David Young, an openly gay man, are white. There are no Asian American judges on reality court shows...., nevertheless, the judicial world of daytime reality television court shows is far more diverse in terms of gender and race than real courts. .... After almost a decade, the popularity of television reality court shows continues and the judges are even more diverse. This essay looks at the reasons for the persistent overrepresentation of women and non-white male judges on these shows and possible implications for the American legal system. Taunya Lovell Banks Law & Popular Culture http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/109 http://works.bepress.com/taunya_banks/109 Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:28:04 PDT Despite increasing support for global human rights ..., some scholars and constitutional democracies, like the United States, continue to resist constitutionalizing socio-economic rights. Socio-economic rights, unlike political and civil constitutional rights that usually prohibit government actions, are thought to impose positive obligations on government. As a result, constitutionalizing socio-economic rights raises questions about separation of powers and the competence of courts to decide traditionally legislative and executive matters. ... [W]hen transitional democracies, like South Africa, choose to constitutionalize socio-economic rights, courts inevitably must grapple with their role in the realization of those rights.... Two questions immediately come to mind: (1) whether it is possible to treat conflicting constitutional rights equally, or whether a hierarchy of rights, either formal or informal, is an inevitable result; and (2) whether in a true participatory democracy courts should be placed in the position of determining this hierarchy of constitutional rights, or whether the ordering of rights is an inherently political task. A related question is whether when vast socio-economic inequities exists among the citizenry a judicial approach is more appropriate until that society has reduced those inequities.... [and when courts] declare these rights justiciable, judicial enforcement is an issue. This chapter argues that some hierarchy of rights that privileges one set of rights over another is inevitable, especially where neither the state constitution nor the court clearly creates a formal hierarchy of rights. It uses the right to housing cases decided during the Constitutional Court's first decade to explore this question. Taunya Lovell Banks Civil Rights Constitutional Law