Abstract Since the unprecedented Summer 2020 uprisings against policing and racism, many elites have embraced an “anti-woke” politics that openly celebrates law-and-order authoritarianism, heteropatriarchy, and white nationalism. This Article attends to a different but reinforcing response to the George Floyd uprisings: repression through a politics of recognition, as elites fortified policing...
Executing Racial Justice
Abstract The United States has failed to eliminate racial discrimination in the decades since ratifying the international human rights treaty that prohibits it. To its credit, the Biden administration (Administration) has attempted to center the fight for racial equity in the work of the executive branch. But President Biden’s executive orders and agency action plans on racial justice omit any...
Police Brutality as Torture
Abstract Racial justice is one of the most pressing issues in America today, and police brutality is its flashpoint. Incident after incident ofpolice brutality confirm that police harm with impunity those whom they have a duty to protect. Existing criminal statutes are filled withdiscretionary standards that give officers deference, while civil remedies require victims to surmount the doctrine...
Preemption By Procurement
Abstract The federal government’s enormous financial commitment to infrastructure development has drawn renewed attention to the transformative economic potential of public procurement. However, as this Article shows, that potential is limited by the little-known federal competition rule, which requires state and local governments using federal transportation funds to award contracts through a...
Awarding Racial Segregation: The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit as a New Racially Restrictive Covenant
Abstract The United States has a history of racial segregation in its facilitation of federal housing programs. One such program, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), was intended to respond to the need for affordable housing since its establishment in 1986. Through the LIHTC program, the federal government grants tax credits to investors and developers who rent to low-income tenants. In...
Restorative Justice for Indigenous Culture
Abstract One still unresolved aspect of North American colonization arises out of the mass expropriation of Indigenous peoples’ cultural expressions to European-settler institutions and their publics. Researchers, artists, entrepreneurs, missionaries, and many others worked in partnership with major universities, museums, corporations, foundations, and other Institutions to capture and exploit...
The International Commitments of the Fifty States
Abstract U.S. law allocates power to conduct foreign relations primarily to the federal government, but it is well known that states routinely maintain foreign relations of their own. Much of this activity appears to result in legal and political commitments, whether in the form of “sister state” agreements or binding pledges to cooperate on discrete issues such as investment, environmental...
The Immigration Implications of Presidential Pot Pardons
Introduction On October 6, 2022, President Biden issued a proclamation pardoning most federal and Washington D.C. (D.C.) offenders—including lawful permanent residents—who have committed the offense of simple marijuana possession as defined by the federal Controlled Substance Act.[1] The impact of this proclamation is likely modest in light of the relatively small number of past federal and D.C...