Racial Justice

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“The Many Faces of Health”: March 2021 Northeastern University Law Review Symposium Synopsis

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By Kelsea Davis

The 2021 Northeastern University Law Review (“NULR”) Symposium (“the Symposium”), entitled “The Many Faces of Health,” addressed the multidisciplinary intersection of systemic racism, public health, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. Laudable professionals from across the globe were featured at the event to discuss various facets of the public and private systems that have led to both the creation and maintenance of inequity within the United States. Out of these discussions emerged common themes, including the public’s right to the data and information collected by publicly funded institutions and programs. However, the most dominant theme was the importance of both procedural and distributive justice in abating inequity and discriminatory practices.

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Massachusetts Highest Court Mandates Parole Reform in Dinkins v. Massachusetts Parole Board

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By Lauren Watford

A major parole reform is now underway in Massachusetts after a win in Dinkins & Ivey v. Massachusetts Parole Board. Prisoners serving parole-eligible life sentences with consecutive sentences could be released years, possibly decades sooner, and will receive new parole hearings. Importantly, the Court held the Parole Board accountable for its injustices. . .

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Indian Farmers Lead the Largest Protest in World History

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By Kiman Kaur

Tens of thousands of Indian farmers have marched to India’s capital, New Delhi, demanding that the government repeal three agricultural reforms: (1) the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce Act; (2) the Farmers (Empower and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act; and (3) the Essential Commodities Act. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced these three bills to the Parliament of India in September 2020 in efforts to push forward the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (“BJP”) deregulatory agenda. All three agricultural bills were passed by the lower house of parliament (“Lok Sabha”) and the upper house of parliament (“Rajya Sabha”) and then approved by President Ram Nath Kovind . . .

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Yes, On Our Campus: Why Police Divestment Efforts Must Include Universities

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By Christine Farolan and Chase Childress

The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks during the pandemic have forced a reckoning in America about racism and racial justice. The failure of police reforms to curb the rampant killing of unarmed Black people by police has led to widespread protests against police violence—protests that were met with startling displays of force by the police. As demonstrations continued through the end of the summer, activists of color brought nuance to our national conversations of policing. Persistent efforts on the part of community advocates have fundamentally shifted our conversations, locating the roots of American policing in the protection of property and maintenance of the slave economy and identifying its modern management function: a catch-all for social issues our government has failed to solve. Frustration, not just with the actions of individual officers but the institution of policing itself, has led to calls to abolish, disband, or #defund the police . . .

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Is the Public Interest Lawyer Antiracist?

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By Bavani Sridhar

Over the last century, public interest law has taken shape as advocating on behalf of “the people” over economic interests. In the present day, there still exists some ambiguity and controversy as to the definition of public interest law and all it encompasses. Who are the “people” that public interest lawyers advocate for? What is the “public interest” and who defines it? Lawyers have argued that “the people” who are the subject of public interest law are historically underrepresented and disadvantaged groups. These groups—while also ill defined—are often comprised of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) minorities. On the other hand, organizations and legislative bodies, influenced by their political, moral, and religious beliefs, regularly determine what the public interest is . . .

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Open Letters to Prison Administrators: Do Black Lives Matter to the Department of Corrections?

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By Mac Hudson

Am I any less human because I happen to be Black and in prison? Are Massachusetts prisons the only place on Earth that racism does not exist? There isn’t anyone in America that hasn’t heard the name George Floyd and the many names of Black and Brown lives prematurely extinguished at the hands of police. It has created a difficult national conversation that has brought society full circle to confront one of America’s ugly realities of racial oppression and racial inequity. Our society has had to face a few hard truths that have given way to the idea that no citizen is privileged to sit idly by and permit such inhumane treatment without suffering a collective consequence to their own moral decadence. Booker T. Washington said, “one man cannot hold another down in the ditch without staying down in the ditch with him.” Morally speaking, racism has generationally kept all of us, people of all races, down. It has become so ingrained in society that it is as American as apple pie! So much so, that when someone attacks racism, some white people think you are attacking America herself or her ideals instead of challenging Americans to live up to her ideals . . .

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The Continued Crash of the Legal Industry

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By Antonio Coronado

“What was the holding of the case?” A harsh silence filled the space as students nervously waited for the cold call to end. They flipped between the 30-some assigned pages of their casebook in discomfort, desperate to pass the time. Only clicks of pens and the occasional cough dared cut the tense air. But the professor was unresponsive to the silence. Like the laws they represented, they remained steadfast and unflinching in repetition of their routine: “What was the holding of the case?” . . .

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Reasonability and the Case Outside the Courtroom

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By Richard Raya

“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” This quote, evocative as it is on its own, is the title of an entire essay by Audre Lorde, a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” I was introduced to her work in my Black Feminist Thought class as I worked toward an American Studies degree . . .

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What Do We Want? Justice! When Do We Want It? Now! So, Why Is It Taking So Long To Receive Justice?

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By Asantewaah Ofosuhene

“Justice delayed is justice denied.” We have all heard this saying, but what does it really mean? This legal maxim means, when there is equitable relief available to an injured party, but that relief is not given in a timely manner, then it is as if there is no remedy at all. Why is delayed justice, leading to no justice, normalized within the United States criminal justice system? . . .

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Breonna Taylor and the Erasure of Black Women from Movements Addressing State Violence Against Black People

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By Sarah Nawab

Trigger warning/content warning: This blog post contains descriptions of state violence against Black people, including killing, brutalization, and sexual assault and harassment, as well as descriptions of physical and sexual brutalization of Black women during the chattel slavery era.

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Blueprints of a Black New Deal

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By Elijah Miller

Drop a pin on any threadbare of our crises and you will find a thousand shifting layers of history folding in to form our social architecture. Over [100,000][1] U.S. residents and counting have now been snuffed out by a deadly combination of COVID-19 and an unrestrained dominance of racialized Neoliberal capitalism. Like so many diseases, Coronavirus is a threat, but it is the pre-existing conditions that make it so deadly. With blotted eyes and broken shoulders, rotted lungs, minds strung out of our gaslit sons, every organ in our social body aches in self-immolating class, gender, race . . .

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“AI, Ain’t I a Woman:” The Gendered Lens of Facial Recognition Technology

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By Christie Dougherty

Most facial recognition software cannot identify dark-skinned women. This was one of the most spine-chilling revelations at the Northeastern University Center for Law, Innovation and Creativity’s recent conference, “About Face: The Changing Landscape of Facial Recognition.” The conference highlighted the social and legal implications of surveillance technology. On Friday May 10, 2019, MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini gave a moving presentation highlighting a major problem in facial recognition technology: its gendered and racial lenses. AI, Ain’t I A Woman? Algorithmic Justice League Project, https://www.notflawless.ai/#2 (last visited June 14, 2019). Her research revealed this critical flaw in current software . . .

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Legislation to Watch: Abolishing Life Without Parole

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By Renna Ayyash

Seeking to continue the success of last session’s Criminal Justice Reform Act, St. 2018, c. 69, a number of currently proposed legislative bills aim to reprioritize rehabilitation, rather than punishment, in the Massachusetts’s prison system. The specific focus of this entry will be on An Act to Reduce Mass Incarceration, S.D. 533/H.D. 154, which would abolish the sentence of life without parole (LWOP), a sentence more than one in ten Massachusetts’ prisoners are serving. Ashley Nellis, Still Life: America’s Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences, The Sentencing Project (May 3, 2017). As this article hopes to illustrate, this proposed bill should be seriously considered for both pecuniary and financial reasons . . .

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Jeff Sessions Further Burdens Domestic Violence Asylum Seekers in Matter of A-B-

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By Stefanie Gonzalez

Attorney General Jeff Sessions expressly overruled a critical precedential decision regarding domestic violence asylum claims in his June 11, 2018 decision, Matter of A-B-. The loss of a favorable precedential decision will certainly present challenges, but the Matter of A-B- decision does not categorically deny all domestic or gang violence related asylum claims . . .