Issue number 5 of this year’s Connecticut Law Review is an excellent symposium on firearms law, policy, and culture. The lead article is from Nicholas Johnson, of Fordham: Firearms Policy and the Black Community: An Assessment of the Modern Orthodoxy. Johnson (who is my co-author on the Second Amendment textbook Firearms Law and the Second Amendment) details the long […]
Archive | Civil Rights
Bias in the Northern District of Georgia?
On Sunday, the Atlanta Journal of Constitution published a front-page story: Workers Who Cry Foul Seldom Get a Day in Court. The story focuses on an empirical study on summary dismissal of employment discrimination claims brought in the Northern District of Georgia in 2011 and 2012. That study reveals that it is “nearly impossible to get […]
Successes in Colorado Sheriffs’ Second Amendment case
By David Kopel on July 15, 2013 6:20 pm in Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Guns, Legal Terms, Self-Defense
This post provides an update on last week’s developments in Cooke et al. v. Hickenlooper. This is a lawsuit filed May 17 in federal District Court in Denver, challenging two gun laws enacted by the state legislature in March. In the case, I represent 55 of Colorado’s 62 elected Sheriffs, plus one retired police officer. Other […]
Rick Hasen Read the DoJ Inspector General Report on the Civil Rights Division So You Don’t Have To
As his Election Law Blog Rick Hasen has a fairly thorough summary of the just-released Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the politicization of the Civil Rights division. The bottom line: liberal and conservative employees of the division did not play well with one another. The IG largely absolves attorneys within the division of engaging […]
Review of Flagrant Conduct in the New York Review of Books
By Dale Carpenter on March 16, 2012 10:01 am in Civil Rights, Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Flagrant Conduct: Lawrence v. Texas, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Sexual Orientation
Georgetown Law Professor David Cole has a terrific review of my new book, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas (Norton) in the April 5 issue of the NYRB. Cole presents the basic background, including what likely happened the night John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were arrested for the crime of “Homosexual Conduct,” a Texas law that forbade […]
Speaking Engagements for Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas
By Dale Carpenter on March 13, 2012 6:49 pm in Civil Rights, Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Flagrant Conduct: Lawrence v. Texas, Gay Rights, Sexual Orientation
Over the next couple of months I will be on an active speaking tour for my new book, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas, which has just been published by W.W. Norton & Co. Of perhaps greatest interest to readers of this blog are a couple of events coming up soon. This Friday, March 16, […]
Something’s Not Kosher about Davis-Bacon
That’s the subtitle Reason Magazine editors gave to this journalistic piece I wrote back in 1991 about the discriminatory origins and effects of the Davis-Bacon Act. Reason recently posted it online, and I’m pleased to see that it holds up pretty well. I explored the anti-black origins of Davis-Bacon in far more detail in a […]
Whatever Happened to the New Black Panthers Party Case?
At Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen revisits the New Black Panthers Party scandal that engulfed the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and became the source of largely partisan infighting on the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded a report on the controversy back in March that largely […]
Behind the Scenes of DOJ’s Black Panther Case
On Friday the Washington Post ran an extensive story on the Justice Department’s handling of a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. Based upon the Post‘s reporting, which seemed quite thorough and balanced, I’ve come to the following conclusions: The original case was small potatoes. The Philadelphia district […]
US Commission on Civil Rights Conference on Civil Rights in the 21st Century
On September 14, the US Commission on Civil Rights will be hosting a conference on Civil Rights in the 21st Century that may interest many of our readers. The event will be in Washington, DC, at the National Press Club [HT: My fiancee Alison Schmauch, a special assistant/counsel at the Commission]. There will be many […]
Final Thoughts on Libertarianism and Antidiscrimination Laws
Here is my final contribution to the Cato Unbound mini-colloquium on libertarianism and antidiscrimination laws. Meanwhile, my friend Bryan Caplan criticizes my argument (read the original essay here) that Title II was justified on libertarian grounds to break up the Jim Crow cartel. He argues that the logical implications of my argument that Title II […]
Conservatives, Libertarians, and Civil Rights History
To follow up on Ilya’s post below, it’sworth noting that the post-World War II politician of national significance probably most beloved by libertarianish types (libertarianism was not a self-conscious movement until recently) was Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio. Taft, of course, lost the Republican presidential nomination to Eisenhower in 1952. The conservatives who eventually founded […]
Conservatism, Libertarianism, Civil Rights, and “Circumstances”
In a National Review post discussing the civil rights laws of the 1960s, Roger Clegg writes that “Conservatism is superior to libertarianism because it is less ideological and more readily acknowledges that circumstances matter.” Whatever the general validity of this claim, Clegg picked a very poor example to illustrate it. As co-blogger David Bernstein has […]
Discussion of Shelley v. Kraemer
Over at Cato Unbound, Jason Kuznicki, prompted by V.C. commenters, takes up Shelley v. Kraemer, the 1948 decision in which the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional for state courts to enforce racially restrictive covenants. I respond, concluding that Shelley was probably correct, but that the Court could have articulated a much clearer and […]
Are Civil Rights Groups Skeptical of Kagan?
By Jonathan H. Adler on June 27, 2010 10:14 am in Civil Rights, Judicial Nominations, Kagan Nomination
Today’s Washington Post reports that some civil rights organizations are still trying to determine whether (or how enthusiastically) to support Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. It begins: On the eve of Elena Kagan’s Senate confirmation hearings, her record on race in the Clinton White House and at Harvard Law School is producing discomfort […]