Innovative new study mapping African American and Francophone black intellectual collaborations over human rights and citizenship from 1919 to 1963.

Four cases in which the legal issue was “race” — that of a Chinese restaurant owner who was fined for employing a white woman; a black man who was refused service in a bar; a Jew who wanted to buy a cottage but was prevented by the property owners’ association; and a Trinidadian of East Indian descent who was acceptable to the Canadian army but was rejected for immigration on grounds of “race” — drawn from the period between 1914 and 1955, are intimately examined to explore the role of the Supreme Court of Canada and the law in the racialization of Canadian society. With painstaking research into contemporary attitudes and practices, Walker demonstrates that Supreme Court Justices were expressing the prevailing “common sense” about “race” in their legal decisions. He shows that injustice on the grounds of “race” has been chronic in Canadian history, and that the law itself was once instrumental in creating these circumstances. The book concludes with a controversial discussion of current directions in Canadian law and their potential impact on Canada’s future as a multicultural society.

The book highlights the interconnections between three framing concepts in the development of modern western law: religion, race, and rights. The author challenges the assumption that law is an objective, rational and secular enterprise by showing that the rule of law is historically grounded and linked to the particularities of Christian morality, the forces of capitalism dependent upon exploitation of minorities, and specific conceptions of individualism that surfaced with the Reformation in the sixteenth century and rapidly developed in the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing upon landmark legal decisions and historical events, the book emphasises that justice is not blind because our concept of justice changes over time and is linked to economic power, social values, and moral sensibilities that are neither universal nor apolitical. Highlighting the historical interconnections between religion, race and rights aids our understanding of contemporary socio-legal issues. In the twenty-first century, the economic might of the USA and the west often leads to a myopic vision of law and a belief in its universal application. This ignores the cultural specificity of western legal concepts, and prevents us from appreciating that, analogous to previous colonial periods, in a global political economy Anglo-American law is not always transportable, transferable, or translatable across political landscapes and religious communities.

In Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience, Angelo N. Ancheta demonstrates how United States civil rights laws have been framed by a black-white model of race that typically ignores the experiences of other groups, including Asian Americans. When racial discourse is limited to antagonisms between black and white, Asian Americans often find themselves in a racial limbo, marginalized or unrecognized as full participants. Ancheta examines legal and social theories of racial discrimination, ethnic differences in the Asian American population, nativism, citizenship, language, school desegregation, and affirmative action. In the revised edition of this influential book, Ancheta also covers post-9/11 anti-Asian sentiment and racial profiling. He analyzes recent legal cases involving political empowerment, language rights, human trafficking, immigrant rights, and affirmative action in higher education-many of which move the country farther away from the ideals of racial justice. On a more positive note, he reports on the progress Asian Americans have made in the corporate sector, politics, the military, entertainment, and academia. A skillful mixture of legal theories, court cases, historical events, and personal insights, this revised edition brings fresh insights to U.S. civil rights from an Asian American perspective.

Race, Rights and National Security: Law and the Japanese American Incarceration is both a comprehensive resource and course book that uses the lens of the WWII imprisonment of Japanese Americans to explore the danger posed when the country sacrifices the rule of law in the name of national security. Following an historical overview of the Asian American legal experience as unwanted minorities, the book examines the infamous Supreme Court cases that upheld the orders leading to the mass incarceration and their later reopening in coram nobis proceedings that proved the government lied to the Court. With that foundation, the book explores the continued frightening relevance of those cases, including how racial and religious minorities continue to be harmed in the name of national security and the threat to democracy when courts fail to act as a check on their co-equal branches of government. New to the Third Edition: An entirely new section, which views the recent targeting of religious minorities through the lens of the Japanese American incarceration, including the Muslim travel ban case of Trump v. Hawaii, which purported to overrule Korematsu v. United States. A continuous inquiry throughout the book regarding the role of courts in reviewing government actions taken in the name of national security, the tensions inherent in identifying that role, the potential cost of excessive court deference, and a proposed method for judicial review of national security-based government actions. Updated text, including revisions that tailor the book’s content to its revised focus on national security, enhanced discussions of early anti-Asian exclusionary laws and Ex Parte Endo; recent events raising parallels to the Japanese American incarceration, such as the incarceration of immigrants and family separation at the southern border and the continued negative stereotyping of Asian Americans. Augmented discussion of ethical rules in relation to misconduct by government lawyers during World War II. Professors and students will benefit from: A succinct overview of Asian American legal history An overarching narrative that takes the reader from early anti-Asian discriminatory laws to the wartime Japanese American incarceration to today, interweaving carefully contextualized case law with questions, original government and litigation documents, oral histories, commentary, and photographs to stimulate class discussion. A focus on both the legal and non-legal issues surrounding the Japanese American incarceration, so that readers consider how the legal system, the law, and players within the legal system act within a broader milieu of politics, economics, and culture. The ability to understand law and the legal system in a way that is both interdisciplinary and that crosses different areas of law. The book treats subjects such as race relations and critical race theory; constitutional, criminal, and national security law; criminal and civil procedure; professional ethics; evidence; legal history; and lawyering practice. A professor in the area of constitutional law, for example, might excerpt relevant portions of the book to supplement the standard, typically decontextualized case law treatment of the Korematsu and Hirabayashi cases. At the same time, this book explores these and other cases in their historical and political context and addresses the law’s real human impact. Finally, the story of the Japanese American incarceration provides a powerful starting place for students to discuss a range of present-day issues regarding stereotypes and profiling, government restraint on liberties, national protectionism, and civic responsibility. If teaching at its best is about engaging students’ hearts and minds, and provoking stimulating debate, these materials are designed to facilitate just that.

In Race, Rights, and Recognition, Dean J. Franco explores the work of recent Jewish American writers, many of whom have taken unpopular stances on social issues, distancing themselves from the politics and public practice of multiculturalism. While these writers explore the same themes of group-based rights and recognition that preoccupy Latino, African American, and Native American writers, they are generally suspicious of group identities and are more likely to adopt postmodern distancing techniques than to presume to speak for "their people." Ranging from Philip Roth's scandalous 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint to Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan in 2006, the literature Franco examines in this book is at once critical of and deeply invested in the problems of race and the rise of multicultural philosophies and policies in America. Franco argues that from the formative years of multiculturalism (1965-1975), Jewish writers probed the ethics and not just the politics of civil rights and cultural recognition; this perspective arose from a stance of keen awareness of the limits and possibilities of consensus-based civil and human rights. Contemporary Jewish writers are now responding to global problems of cultural conflict and pluralism and thinking through the challenges and responsibilities of cosmopolitanism. Indeed, if the United States is now correctly-if cautiously-identifying itself as a post-ethnic nation, it may be said that Jewish writing has been well ahead of the curve in imagining what a post-ethnic future might look like and in critiquing the social conventions of race and ethnicity.

"One-third of American adults-some 86 million people-own firearms. This is not just for protection or hunting. Today it is common to associate US gun-centric ideology with individualist and libertarian traditions in American political culture, but Race, Rights, and Rifles shows that gun-centric ideology rests on a very old, but different foundation-a belief system dating back to the American Revolution that fuses republican notions of civic duty with a belief in white male supremacy and a commitment to maintaining racial and gender hierarchies. Alexandra Filindra calls this belief system ascriptive martial republicanism because it combines republican ideals of civic virtue with an exclusionary vision of citizenship and an emphasis on martial preparedness over other forms of civic participation and service. Drawing on wide-ranging historical and contemporary evidence, Race, Rights, and Rifles traces how this ideology emerged during the Revolution and became embedded in America's institutions, from state militias to the National Rifle Association (NRA). Although no longer a dominant ideology, ascriptive republicanism remains a potent force in American politics, and the NRA is a critical vector of its influence. New survey data shows that many White Americans -including those outside of the NRA's direct orbit-understand citizenship in ascriptive martial republican terms. This ideology is a robust predictor of gun ownership, support for the NRA, and beliefs that guns are a sign of good citizenship. Moreover, those who embrace this ideology are more likely than others to value gun rights over voting rights, to embrace antidemocratic norms, and to justify political violence"--

This book considers institutional racism as a problem that exists within modern societies. Its roots lie with the transatlantic slave trade and slavery and the solution involves ridding society of the problem. It is argued here that, first, there needs to be an acceptance of its existence, then developing the tools needed to deal with it and, finally, to implement those tools so that institutional racism can be permanently removed from society. The book has four themes: the first considers the nature of institutional racism, the second theme looks at instances of institutional racism through matters such as deaths in custody and skin lightening, the third considers the concept of reparations and the final area looks at the development of social movements as a way of pushing institutional racism up the political agenda. The development of a social movement is part of a social discourse which would, for example, push mentoring as a form of reparations. There is a need for more research on the manifestations of institutional racism and this book is part of that discourse. It is argued that the legacy of the slave trade and slavery is continuing and contemporary through the presence of institutional racism in society. This problem has not been addressed through legislation and policies devised to combat racial discrimination. Institutional racism needs to be understood as being located in the processes and procedures of societal institutions.

Vols. for 1902- include decisions of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and various other courts of the District of Columbia.