1,720,976 research outputs found
Nation
No full textThe state of civic participation in the U.S. is the subject of much hand-wringing. The lament is generally that citizens are withdrawn - that civic life is less vibrant than it once was and should be. This book review welcomes Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined its Citizens and Privatized its Public, by Matthew Crenson & Benjamin Ginsburg (2002), as an alternative to the tendency to blame citizens for the current malaise. Crenson & Ginsburg make the case that the government itself has disinvited civic participation in several key ways. The author observes that, notwithstanding this lack of invitation, citizens can and should still take on themselves the responsibility for civic action - not just in traditional political spheres, but in the myriad venues of our everyday lives.525-2927
Oregon Law Review
No full textThe article begins by documenting deep inequality in the form of Black-White wealth disparities. While the overall wealth distribution in the United States is highly unequal from both historical and international perspectives, racial wealth disparities are particularly acute, with median Black net worth approximately a tenth of median White net worth (as compared to median Black income that is approximately two-thirds of median White income). Next, the article ties the perpetuation of this inequality to current inheritance law. It then confronts this inequality as a civil rights issue in terms of its social effects, its historical causes, and legal avenues for attacking it. Finally, the article proposes two changes in our laws of succession to address this contemporary manifestation of White advantage and Black disadvantage. First, the article explains how civil rights considerations support existing proposals that inheritances be taxed as windfall income to those who receive them (as are lottery winnings currently). Second, the article identifies a need for revising intestacy law to provide heirs with clear title to assets, especially homes belonging to families of modest wealth whose wealth is primarily the value of those homes.2453-5048
Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review
No full textThis article offers a civic view of legal change. This view emphasizes the role of citizens and describes the connection between civic bonds and new, sustainable legal doctrine, especially constitutional doctrine. Three current socio-legal movements - gay rights, abortion, and gun control - are used as illustrations, and the role of non-lawyers and civic organizing in creating legal, and social change through those movements is emphasized.1117-1622
Stanford Environmental Law Annual
No full textEast Palo Alto is an anomaly in the Mid-Peninsula. The community houses a primarily minority and low-income population. The economic miracle which brought development and tax revenues to the rest of the Silicon Valley has largely bypassed East Palo Alto. This paper examines the debate in East Palo Alto over whether incorporation would help solve the community’s problems.Strand_4StanEnvtlLAnn119.pdf119-129
Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy
No full textBrown v. Board of Education brought the democratic value of equality to U.S. democracy, which had previously centered primarily on popular control. Brown has not, however, resulted in actual educational equality -- or universal educational quality.Developments since Brown have changed the educational landscape. While the social salience of race has evolved, economic inequality has risen dramatically. Legislative and other developments have institutionalized distrust of those who do the day-to-day work of education: public schools and the teachers within them. Demographic and economic shifts have made comprehensive preschool through post-secondary education a 21st-century imperative, while Common Core Standards represent a significant step toward defining quality K-12 education nationwide.Though we do not live in a post-racial era, we do live in a very different world than the world of Brown. For this transformed situation, we need a new vision -- and new legal paradigms to support realization of that vision. The Finnish school system -- ranked #1 internationally -- offers insights for systemic reform. The U.S. challenge, however, is to adapt those insights to our institutional structure. We must maintain a balance between the national interest in successful education across the country, the constitutional assignment of responsibility for education to the States, and the fact that education happens locally in individual classrooms and between individual teachers and students.A national educational vision of civic innovation that embraces all students and trusts public schools and teachers points to a three-pronged strategy for moving forward. First, States define the vision and instigate negotiations with the national government for support of that vision. Second, local school districts adapt to their communities and students to fulfill the States' vision. Third, public schools and teachers undertake the day-to-day work of building the relational trust that enables real reform; the federal government provides the additional support necessary for this work. New legal paradigms support these shifts.2283-3442
Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly
No full textRacism has been so deeply embedded in our culture for so long that actions taken to uproot it have not been entirely successful. After each concerted effort, racism grows back but in a different form. To emphasize the evolutionary nature of these "versions" or "updates" of racism, I label them Racism 1.0, Racism 2.0, Racism 3.0, and ? the current "operating system" ? Racism 4.0. Each of these represents a distinctive iteration of social mores, institutions, and law. Today's Racism 4.0 manifests itself in racially disparate group outcomes in criminal justice, education, health, economic resources, housing, and employment; it operates primarily through unconscious acts of myriad individuals and automatic reproduction of racial advantage and disadvantage that have arisen over time from past collective discrimination. This paper traces how Racism 4.0 runs on implicit bias, white privilege, structural racism, and white advantage. It denotes how current anti-discrimination law, which developed to challenge prior iterations of racism, is ineffectual in the face of Racism 4.0. It discusses two approaches to countering today's racism. The first, civity, counters implicit bias and white privilege with "power-with" relationships across racial lines. The second consists of three legal touchstones including (1) progressive taxation and investment to address existing disadvantage of Black citizens as a group; (2) regional policy-making to address disparities in our metropolitan areas; and (3) recognition of economic, social, and cultural human rights to make equality real. Re-constitution ? both sociopolitical and legal ? is necessary to address racism today.4763-7974
Idaho Law Review
No full textSociologists have demonstrated that "civic" social networks -- weblike ("small-world, weak-tie") networks comprised of collaborative relationships that bridge across social divides to generate trust and norms of generalized reciprocity -- contribute to the resilience of city-systems. These results suggest that cities can cultivate resilience in their human communities by intentionally nurturing "civity" -- civic social networks.The structure and quality of the civic social networks associated with city resilience point toward two types of legal approaches to nurturing these networks: (1) creating bridging relationships; and (2) facilitating interactions among citizens that build trust and collaboration. Law can facilitate the creation of bridging relationships between diverse groups, which enable communication and the growth of a sense of city-wide "we"-ness. Law can also create conditions for citizens to work together build trust and empathy.2153-1915
Creighton Law Review
Full text linkINTRODUCTION
This article is about fair housing in the Omaha, Nebraska-Council Bluffs, Iowa metropolitan region. I focus on this region because I teach at the Creighton University School of Law and have lived in Omaha for almost ten years. I am enough of an insider to have heard a lot of stories about how things work here; I am enough of an outsider that I hear those stories with a sense of how things are done elsewhere. In 2015, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development ("HUD") promulgated a regulatory requirement that cities receiving HUD funds ratchet up efforts to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing ("AFFH") as required by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Inspired by that mandate, I began to look past current inequities in housing to the institutional structures that facilitated White suburban growth after World War II, a time during which federal law and local practice together prevented Black citizens from purchasing homes outside of limited geographical areas. Discrimination in housing has been against the law since 1968, yet the institutions of development that created neighborhoods of unequal opportunity and channeled people into those neighborhoods remain largely in place today. The effects of those institutions today are more indirect than direct, but they continue to do their work that is more structural than individual....25
Creighton Law Review
No full textIn 2016, eighty years after the federal Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) drew redlining maps that solidified existing local segregation and gave the green light to suburban development, the residential patterns of race and socioeconomics in the Omaha, Nebraska, region embody those New Deal decisions. Inspired by recent regulations from HUD that intensify the agency’s responsibility under the Fair Housing Act to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing, this article looks past current inequities in housing to the institutional structures that facilitated White suburban growth after World War II. Special districts known as Sanitary and Improvement Districts (SIDs) gave – and continue to give today – private developers access to municipal bonds without significant public oversight. Historically, these SIDs provided market-rate housing to exclusively White residents; today they provide market-rate housing to predominantly White residents. Following SID development, the City of Omaha, which has extensive annexation powers under state law, annexes the SIDs, absorbing both their tax base and their remaining debt. This article describes this SID annexation development regime and the ways in which it diffuses responsibility for providing affordable housing and access to neighborhoods of opportunity throughout the metropolitan region. The article proposes an accounting and reconsideration of the existing development regime.2183-2475
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