Abstract In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, all levels of government are considering how to protect public health by keeping people in their homes, even if they can no longer afford their monthly mortgage or rent payments. The protections that have emerged thus far have been far more protective of homeowners than renters. This essay exposes how the disparity in legal protections for these two...
The Folly of Credit as Pandemic Relief
Abstract Within weeks of the coronavirus pandemic appearing in the United States, the American economy came to a grinding halt. The unprecedented modern health crisis and the collapsing economy forced Congress to make a critical choice about how to help families survive financially. Congress had two basic options. It could enact policies that provided direct and meaningful financial support to...
Immigration Federalism in the Weeds
Abstract This Article takes immigration federalism “all-the-way-down” by focusing on two counties in Southern California—Los Angeles County and Orange County—to consider the role that subfederal governmental entities play in immigration enforcement. Part I synthesizes the existing literature on immigration federalism with particular attention to the role of sublocal, local, county and regional...
Death by Stereotype: Race, Ethnicity, and California’s Failure to Implement Furman’s Narrowing Requirement
Abstract The influence of race on the administration of capital punishment had a major role in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia to invalidate death penalty statutes across the United States. To avoid discriminatory and capricious application of capital punishment, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment requires legislatures to narrow the scope of capital...
Trump’s Latinx Repatriation
Abstract Two historical episodes have indelibly influenced the development of Latinx identity and sense of belonging in the United States. During the Great Depression, state and local governments, with the support of the U.S. government, repatriated approximately one million persons of Mexican ancestry, including many U.S. citizen children and immigrant parents, to Mexico. Similarly, in 1954, the...
Race, Intellectual Disability, and Death: An Empirical Inquiry Into Invidious Influences on Atkins Determinations
Abstract In Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the execution of a person with intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. After more than a decade of Atkins litigation, we perceived there to be a substantial risk that race influences intellectual disability—and consequently, life and death—determinations. Due to the difficulty of...
Growing Up in Authoritarian 1950s East LA
Abstract By the 1950s, the criminal justice system had long combined with other systems, institutions, and individuals to target all the residents of East LA—particularly Mexicans—as criminals. In equating Mexicans with criminality, these networked forces and actors regarded and treated these residents as exceptions—as morally requiring and legally meriting authoritarian rather than...
Were Mexican American Communities Safer Than Others? Some Surprising Findings From San Antonio, 1960–1980
Abstract Contradicting widespread belief, scholarly research has confirmed that Mexican American (Latino/a/x) communities have lower levels of homicide than expected, given their high levels of economic disadvantage, residential instability, and rapid population change. But scholars are just beginning to explore the various social dynamics underlying this relationship at the community level for...