Through a study of racial ideology in the history of international legal thought, this Article offers the beginnings of an explanation for how this lack of attention to race and racism came to be, and why it matters today.
Slavery Is Not a Metaphor: U.S. Prison Labor and Racial Subordination Through the Lens of the ILO’s Abolition of Forced Labor Convention
This Article calls for a recalibration, arguing that transnational labor law is deeply historicized, rooted in the persisting presence of a racial capitalism that is too easily relegated to a distant past.
Critical Race Theory Meets Third World Approaches to International Law
By and large, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) exist in separate epistemic universes. This Article argues that the borders between these two fields are unwarranted.
Race and Empire: Legal Theory Within, Through, and Across National Borders
Mainstream and official analysis casts the international system and its hegemonic actors in the role of humanitarian responders to a Libyan crisis not of their making. Instead, we draw attention to the ways in which the racial framing of Libya—and its subordination to imperial prerogatives—proved critical to international governance regimes for managing the country—and the bodies and territory...
Abolishing Racist Policing With the Thirteenth Amendment
This Essay was also published in the UCLA Law Review’s online publication, Discourse. Abstract Policing in America has always been about controlling the Black body. Indeed, modern policing was birthed and nurtured by white supremacy; its roots are found in slavery. Policing today continues to protect and serve the racial hierarchy blessed by the Constitution itself. But a string of U.S. Supreme...
Human Rights on the Border: A Critical Race Analysis of Hernandez v. Mesa
Abstract This Comment presents a historical investigation of the violence that establishes nationstate borders. The analysis deconstructs the U.S.–Mexico border through the 2010 shooting of Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca, and asks how the framework of human rights may provide justice for this tragedy. In 2015, the Fifth Circuit for the U.S. Court of Appeals heard his parents’ legal case en banc...
The (Un)Holy Shield: Rethinking the Ministerial Exception
Abstract Does the First Amendment’s protection of religious expression mean religious organizations are free to discriminate on the basis of sex, disability, or race in hiring and firing employees? In 2012, the Supreme Court answered this question with a unanimous yes, finding that religious organizations are immune from liability for discriminating against their employees, as long as those...
Bad Characters and Desperados: Latinxs and Causal Explanations for Legal System Bias
Abstract Although there is a long history of prejudice and discrimination against Latinxs within the U.S. legal system, there is a dearth of research seeking to understand the causal underpinnings of the biased decisionmaking that works against them. While this Article discusses the experience of those who identify as Latinx broadly, in several areas it pays special attention to the experience of...