African American Policy ForumVarmennettu tili

"Almost all of the justice on the Supreme Court are former federal appellate judges. ... Most of them have backgrounds as former prosecutors. ... That's a very skewed lens for a profession that actually is quite broad." As Sherrilyn Ifill notes, this is deeply problematic.

When almost every Supreme Court justice has a background in prosecution as opposed to civil rights or criminal defense, their understanding of the world, of the law, and of all the cases before them are necessarily going to be different from ours. #UnderTheBlacklight

Devon Carbado, a professor at @UCLA_Law, disusses Justice Ginsburg in Florida v. J.L., where she held that reasonable suspicion doesn't mean you get to stop people based on an anonymous tip that there's a Black man out there in a plaid shirt.

Prof. Crenshaw explains that we need to recognize how racial advantages are embedded in systems that distribute social opportunities and try to interrupt those processes. Yet working toward greater equity is exactly what President Trump would call "reverse racism."

.@ProfMMurray discusses Coker v. Georgia, in which Justice Ginsburg filed a brief arguing against a Georgia law authorizing the death penalty in cases of rape, and argued that it served to highlight the degree to which women were seen historically as the property of men.

.@ProfMMurray and @sandylocks talk about Pauli Murray, one of the pre-eminent civil rights activists and lawyers of her time who worked with Justice Thurgood Marshall and deeply influenced Justice Ginsburg. #UnderTheBlacklight

Suzanne Goldberg, Executive Vice President of @Columbia, discusses her role in litigating Romer v. Evans, in which the Court held that civil rights are not special rights. They are laws that enable people to access basic protections and fully participate in our society.