Taunya Lovell Banks

Screening Justice - The Cinema of Law: Significant Films of Law, Order and Social Justice

Rennard Strickland et al. — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:41:49 PDT

Screening Justice is designed to tell the complex story of law through an exploration of forty films focusing upon courtroom dramas, social issues and questions of justice. These motion pictures are evaluated by distinguished scholars who, using a range of narrative styles, compare the law on the screen and the law in action. The work serves as a guide to understanding law, the rhetoric of law and images of justice. The book will introduce readers to new films as well as help create new perspectives on familiar classic movies.

Funding Race as Biology: The Relevance of "Race" in Medical Research

Taunya L. Banks — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:53:01 PST

Most scientists agree that race and ethnicity (ethno-race) classifications are the result of social and political conditions, as opposed to biological differences. But there is disagreement about the scientific validity of these categories. A number of scientists use ethno-race as a surrogate for various socioeconomic and environmental factors. Using race as a biological category can reflect and reinforce racial stratification as well as racist notions of inherent human difference. Questions surrounding the appropriateness of ethno-race classifications in medical research have been heightened by two decades of federal legislation that contains initiatives on minority health.

This article proceeds from the assumption that conventional legal challenges to the inappropriate use of ethno-race in federally funded biomedical research are fraught with problems. Further, it argues that the current regulatory approach used by high impact medical journals and the federal government to discourage misuse of ethno-race comes too late. A more effective approach is stringent review and clearer standards about the use of ethno-face in biomedical research at the grant proposal stage.

Thurgood Marshall, The Race Man, and Gender Equality in the Courts

Taunya Lovell Banks — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 06:26:17 PST

Renowned civil rights advocate and race man Thurgood Marshall came of age as a lawyer during the black protest movement in the 1930s. He represented civil rights protesters, albeit reluctantly, but was ambivalent about post-Brown mass protests. Although Marshall recognized law's limitations, he felt more comfortable using litigation as a tool for social change. His experiences as a legal advocate for racial equality influenced his thinking as a judge.

Marshall joined the United States Supreme Court in 1967, as dramatic advancement of black civil rights through litigation waned. Other social movements, notably the women's rights movement, took its place. The push for women's equality had garnered some success in Congress, but the enforcement and scope of these protections became a focus of litigation in the 1970s and 1980s. While on the Court, Marshall played an important role in the advancement of women's equality, yet a few cases suggest he struggled when the interests of race and gender equality seemed to directly clash. This paper considers the ways in which Marshall's role as a participant and lawyer in the black civil rights movement influenced his thinking about gender equality. While his record on women's equality is very strong, Marshall's position in three cases indicates that he believed institution concerns sometimes trumped otherwise valid gender equality claims.

Book Review: What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America

Taunya L. Banks — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 06:26:13 PST

Black Pluralism in Post Loving America

Taunya L. Banks — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:21:51 PST

The face of late twentieth and early twenty-first century America has changed, as have attitudes about race, especially about persons with some African ancestry. Since 1967, the number of multi-racial individuals with some African ancestry living in the United States has increased dramatically as a result of increased out-marriage by black Americans and the immigration of large numbers of multiracial individuals from Mexico, the Caribbean, as well as Central and Latin America. Many members of the post-Loving generation came of age in the 1990s with no memories of de jure racial segregation laws or the need for the 1960s civil rights legislation to combat overt racial discrimination. Accordingly, they see race, racism and identity through different lens. In other words, we are witnessing a significant generational shift in thinking that is beginning to be reflected in popular culture and scholarly literature about race and identity, but not in the courts. American judges and policy-makers, composed primarily of the children of Brown v. Board of Education, remain stuck in a racial jurisprudence and rhetoric of the late twentieth century.

This chapter analyzes the experiences of and public dialogues about children of interracial parentage and how their differential treatment by non-blacks, as well as blacks, raises legal issues courts are not prepared to address. One emerging question is whether mixed-race individuals are more likely to experience situational blackness - whether one can be black for some but not for other purposes, and if so, when one is black for anti-discrimination purposes. This question is even more sharply drawn when questions about “racial authenticity” arise for individuals whose African ancestry is less apparent. As this chapter explains, the overriding question in both cases is whether interracial parentage confers some type of benefit and disadvantage on Afro-descendant children not experienced by individuals whose formal racial classification is black, and if so whether anti-discrimination law should take these differences into account.

What Documentary Films Teach Us About the Criminal Justice System - Introduction

Taunya Lovell Banks — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:41:45 PST

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....

The Black Side of the Mirror: The Black Body in the Workplace

Taunya Lovell Banks — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:08:48 PST

Troubled Waters: Mid-Twentieth Century American Society on "Trial" in the Films of John Waters

Taunya Lovell Banks — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:49:00 PST

In this Article Professor Banks argues that what makes many of filmmaker John Waters early films so subversive is his use of the “white-trash” body—people marginalized by and excluded from conventional white America—as countercultural heroes. He uses the white trash body as a surrogate for talk about race and sexuality in the early 1960s. I argue that in many ways Waters’ critiques of mid-twentieth century American society reflect the societal changes that occurred in the last forty years of that century. These societal changes resulted from the civil rights, gay pride, student, anti-war and women’s movements, all of which used social protest and the legal process as vehicles for social change. Waters used his films not only as counter-narratives of mid-twentieth century mores but also as critiques of the increasingly disruptive effect of media forces in glamorizing criminality. Although the films Professor Banks discusses in this Article are set largely in the 1960s, many of the themes they raise - acceptance of difference, a rejection of exclusionary mores and the media’s disruptive role in the quest for justice - continue to have currency.

Here Comes the Judge! Gender Distortion on TV Reality Court Shows

Taunya Lovell Banks — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:33:45 PDT

Teaching Laws With Flaws: Adopting A Pluralistic Approach To Torts

Taunya Lovell Banks — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:57:08 PDT

Multilayered Racism: Courts' Continued Resistance to Colorism Claims

Taunya Lovell Banks — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:23:29 PDT

Equality and Sorority during the Decade after Brown

Taunya Lovell Banks — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:43:58 PDT

A Few Random Thoughts About Socio-Economic "Rights" in the United States in Light of the 2008 Financial Meltdown

Taunya Lovell Banks — 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.

Outsider Citizens: Film Narratives about the Internment of Japanese Americans

Taunya Lovell Banks — 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.

Judging the Judges - Daytime Television's Integrated Reality Court Bench

Taunya Lovell Banks — 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.

Balancing Competing Individual Constitutional Rights: Raising Some Questions

Taunya Lovell Banks — 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.

Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventheenth Century Colonial Virginia

Taunya Lovell Banks — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:46:30 PDT

Elizabeth Key, an African-Anglo woman living in seventeenth century colonial Virginia sued for her freedom after being classified as a negro by the overseers of her late master’s estate. Her lawsuit is one of the earliest freedom suits in the English colonies filed by a person with some African ancestry. Elizabeth’s case also highlights those factors that distinguished indenture from life servitude – slavery in the mid seventeenth century. She succeeds in securing her freedom by crafting three interlinking legal arguments to demonstrate that she was a member of the colonial society in which she lived. Her evidence was her asserted ancestry – English; her religion, Christian; and the inability to be enslaved for life that stems from the first two statuses. These factors, I argue, determined who was the equivalent of white in seventeenth century Virginia.

Exploring White Resistance to Racial Reconciliation in the United States

Taunya L. Banks — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:43:23 PDT

Does Santa Have a Color? (A digital video short)

Taunya L. Banks — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:10:32 PDT

Gender Bias in the Classroom

Taunya Lovell Banks — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:42:11 PDT