For the past forty years, Justice Powell’s concurring opinion in University of California v. Bakk... more For the past forty years, Justice Powell’s concurring opinion in University of California v. Bakke has been at the center of scholarly debates about affirmative action. Notwithstanding the enormous attention Justice Powell’s concurrence has received, scholars have paid little attention to a passage in that opinion that expressly takes up the issue of gender. Drawing on the theory of intersectionality, this Essay explains several ways in which its reasoning is flawed. The Essay also shows how interrogating Justice Powell’s “single axis” race and gender analysis raises broader questions about tiers of scrutiny for Black women. Through a hypothetical of a university’s affirmative-action plan that specifically targets Black women, the Essay considers what tier of scrutiny should apply. Because, for the most part, scholars take a race or gender approach to equal-protection law, they have not engaged that doctrinal puzzle and its implications for tiers-of-scrutiny writ large.
This event is sponsored by the Brock-Wilson Center for Women in Management at Purdue University. ... more This event is sponsored by the Brock-Wilson Center for Women in Management at Purdue University. Kimberlé Crenshaw is the co-founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum, the host of the Intersectionality Matters! podcast, moderator of the webinar series Under The Blacklight, and a Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School. She is widely known for her development of the term “intersectionality” and the #SayHerName campaign. A published editor, Crenshaw’s foundational work on critical race theory, titled Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed The Movement, compiled the movement’s most important essays and has become essential reading in today’s age where racial injustice discussions have moved from classrooms and courtrooms to the dinner table.Crenshaw is a leading authority on civil rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. She is the most cited woman legal scholar in the history of the law, and was named one of the ...
A new constitutional amendment offers a new beginning. The equality paradigm proposed here recogn... more A new constitutional amendment offers a new beginning. The equality paradigm proposed here recognizes the failures of what is, turns away from language and interpretive canons rooted in an unjust past, and imagines a fully functioning democracy as the inheritance of future generations. This proposal reenvisions constitutional equality from the ground up: it centers on rectifying the founding acts and omissions of race and sex, separately and together, and incorporates similar but distinct inequalities.2 It is informed by
... How-ever much one may affront the dignity of a speaker by restricting the range of discursive... more ... How-ever much one may affront the dignity of a speaker by restricting the range of discursive choices available to him, these theorists argue, one must ... histoxy can only be understood, criti-cal race theorists argue, in tenns of the very phenomenon that they hope to fight with the ...
In modem US jurisprudence it would be difficult to identify two more contested areas within the l... more In modem US jurisprudence it would be difficult to identify two more contested areas within the legal and judicial system than the first and fourteenth amendments to the constitution (with the possible exception of the maddeningly enduring debate over reproductive rights, ...
It is both an honor and a pleasure to write the Foreword for this issue of the National Black Law... more It is both an honor and a pleasure to write the Foreword for this issue of the National Black Law Journal. This project represents the culmination of a joint effort involving the NBLJ, Dean Susan Westerberg Prager and me. The project grew out of discussions that began ...
For the past forty years, Justice Powell’s concurring opinion in University of California v. Bakk... more For the past forty years, Justice Powell’s concurring opinion in University of California v. Bakke has been at the center of scholarly debates about affirmative action. Notwithstanding the enormous attention Justice Powell’s concurrence has received, scholars have paid little attention to a passage in that opinion that expressly takes up the issue of gender. Drawing on the theory of intersectionality, this Essay explains several ways in which its reasoning is flawed. The Essay also shows how interrogating Justice Powell’s “single axis” race and gender analysis raises broader questions about tiers of scrutiny for Black women. Through a hypothetical of a university’s affirmative-action plan that specifically targets Black women, the Essay considers what tier of scrutiny should apply. Because, for the most part, scholars take a race or gender approach to equal-protection law, they have not engaged that doctrinal puzzle and its implications for tiers-of-scrutiny writ large.
This event is sponsored by the Brock-Wilson Center for Women in Management at Purdue University. ... more This event is sponsored by the Brock-Wilson Center for Women in Management at Purdue University. Kimberlé Crenshaw is the co-founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum, the host of the Intersectionality Matters! podcast, moderator of the webinar series Under The Blacklight, and a Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School. She is widely known for her development of the term “intersectionality” and the #SayHerName campaign. A published editor, Crenshaw’s foundational work on critical race theory, titled Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed The Movement, compiled the movement’s most important essays and has become essential reading in today’s age where racial injustice discussions have moved from classrooms and courtrooms to the dinner table.Crenshaw is a leading authority on civil rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. She is the most cited woman legal scholar in the history of the law, and was named one of the ...
A new constitutional amendment offers a new beginning. The equality paradigm proposed here recogn... more A new constitutional amendment offers a new beginning. The equality paradigm proposed here recognizes the failures of what is, turns away from language and interpretive canons rooted in an unjust past, and imagines a fully functioning democracy as the inheritance of future generations. This proposal reenvisions constitutional equality from the ground up: it centers on rectifying the founding acts and omissions of race and sex, separately and together, and incorporates similar but distinct inequalities.2 It is informed by
... How-ever much one may affront the dignity of a speaker by restricting the range of discursive... more ... How-ever much one may affront the dignity of a speaker by restricting the range of discursive choices available to him, these theorists argue, one must ... histoxy can only be understood, criti-cal race theorists argue, in tenns of the very phenomenon that they hope to fight with the ...
In modem US jurisprudence it would be difficult to identify two more contested areas within the l... more In modem US jurisprudence it would be difficult to identify two more contested areas within the legal and judicial system than the first and fourteenth amendments to the constitution (with the possible exception of the maddeningly enduring debate over reproductive rights, ...
It is both an honor and a pleasure to write the Foreword for this issue of the National Black Law... more It is both an honor and a pleasure to write the Foreword for this issue of the National Black Law Journal. This project represents the culmination of a joint effort involving the NBLJ, Dean Susan Westerberg Prager and me. The project grew out of discussions that began ...
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