February is Black History Month and, in recognition, SCOTUSblog has set up a rather impressive line-up for their programming on Race and the Supreme Court. Over the next four weeks, law professors, litigators, journalists and other top professionals will donate their time to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court’s historical impact on the black community. These posts promise to reflect “diverse and sometimes divergent views, opinions, attitudes and assumptions.”
Here is a list of their scheduled postings from the Web site:
Week 1
“Has the Supreme Court Been Mainly a Friend or a Foe to African Americans?: The Supreme Court’s Impact on Black History for the Past Fifty Years”
–Michael Klarman, professor at Harvard Law School“Ending Racial Preferences”
–Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity“Justice Kennedy’s Evolving Views On Race”
–Heather Gerken, professor at Yale Law SchoolPodcast: Interview on Brown v. Board of Education and subsequent litigation over black civil rights
–Jack Greenberg, professor at Columbia Law School and former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education FundWeek 2
“NAMUDNO: Right Question, Wrong Case”
–Abigail Thernstrom, vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute“Jones v. Alfred Mayer and the Uniqueness Of Race”
–Michael Rosman, general counsel for the Center for Individual Rights“The Supreme Court, Race, and Political Representation”
–Kenneth Mack, professor at Harvard Law SchoolPost on Buchanan v. Warley and residential segregation
–David Bernstein, professor at George Mason University School of LawPodcast with Vernon Jordan, former president of the National Urban League and civil rights litigator (topic TBA)
Week 3
Podcast: “The Unexpected Consequences of Brown v. Board of Education on African American Schools and Education in the South”
–David Cecelski, historian and author of Along Freedom Road, Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the SouthPodcast on Brown v. Board of Education
–Nina Totenberg, legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio“The Global Impact of Brown v. Board of Education”
–Mary Dudziak, professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and founder of the Legal History Blog“What Can Brown Do For You?: The Court’s Struggle Over the Meaning of Equal Protection”
–Pamela Karlan, professor at Stanford Law SchoolWeek 4
Post on “disparate impact analysis” and the Constitution
–Gail Heriot, former commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and present professor at the University of San Diego Law SchoolPodcast with David Stras, law professor at the University of Minnesota, on his experience clerking for Justice Clarence Thomas
“What Powell v. McCormack Teaches Us About Racial Politics in a Constitutional Democracy”
–Kareem Crayton, professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law
I recommend checking out the blog as well as subscribing to the RSS feed.
W. Blake Wilson
Instructional Librarian