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Introduction to the Volume 69 Symposium

WELCOME FROM THE UCLA LAW REVIEW Alanna Kane, Editor-in-Chief and Hope Bentley, Symposium Editor “What does it look like to build a city, state, or nation invested in communities thriving ratherthan their death and destruction? To ask this question is the first act of an abolitionist.” - Patrisse Cullors[1] We are honored to welcome you to our 2022 annual Symposium: Toward an Abolitionist Future...

Questioning Questions in the Law of Democracy: What the Debate Over Voter ID Laws’ Effects Teaches About Asking the Right Questions

ABSTRACT Voter identification laws (“voter ID laws”), laws that require voters to present identification when voting, launched the modern Voting Wars. After the Supreme Court blessed Indiana’s voter ID law in Crawford v. Marion County, voter ID laws proliferated across the country. Their prevalence belies their notoriety. They remain one of the most hotly contested category of election laws and...

Tribal Sovereignty, Decolonization, and Abolition: Why Tribes Should Reconsider Punishment

ABSTRACT This Comment outlines the intersections of abolition theory and decolonization theory, and then proposes that Tribal Nations become leaders in reconsidering systems of punishment and instead create systems of care and liberation. It argues that because abolition is a decolonial project, tribes should adopt abolitionist practices in their own communities. Part I provides an overview of...

The Path to Municipal Liability for Racially Discriminatory Policing

ABSTRACT Racist policing and the racially discriminatory use of force by police officers pose a serious challenge for a legal system committed to equal justice. Yet litigants cannot easily contest the systemic racism that permeates police departments across the country. Individuals injured by police violence may not have the resources to pursue systemic claims and there are barriers to...

Municipal Fair Housing Act Litigation and Reparations

ABSTRACT This Comment argues that a recent vein of litigation involving the FHA should be considered a promising type of reparations litigation, one uniquely positioned to achieve reparative ends that other types of this litigation have failed to accomplish. The FHA litigation involves more than a dozen local governments that have filed complaints against mortgage lenders. These municipal...

The Path to Municipal Liability for Racially Discriminatory Policing

ABSTRACT Racist policing and the racially discriminatory use of force by police officers pose a serious challenge for a legal system committed to equal justice. Yet litigants cannot easily contest the systemic racism that permeates police departments across the country. Individuals injured by police violence may not have the resources to pursue systemic claims and there are barriers...

Race, Racism, and Police Use of Force in 21st Century Criminology: An Empirical Examination

ABSTRACT Race scholars have voiced concerns about the field of criminology and how it examines issues pertaining to race, racism, and racial difference. Various critiques have been made, from the field’s overly positivist approach that privileges “white logics” that obscure the nuance of race relations to methodological critiques on how the field understands the significance of race in its models...

The Gender of Gideon

ABSTRACT This Article makes a simple claim that has been overlooked for decades and yet has enormous theoretical and practical significance: the constitutional guarantee of counsel adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright accrues largely to the benefit of men. In this Article, we present original data analysis demonstrating that millions of women face compulsory and highly...

Unfit to Print: Government Speech and the First Amendment

ABSTRACT Each year, the UCLA School of Law hosts the Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture. Since 1986, the lecture series has served as a forum for leading scholars in the fields of copyright and First Amendment law. The UCLA Law Review has regularly published these lectures, and proudly continues that tradition by publishing an Article based on this year’s Nimmer Lecture, presented by Professor...

The Miseducation Of Carceral Reform

ABSTRACT Public education looms large in criminal law reform. As states debate what to invest in—other than criminal law enforcement—to provide safety and security to the public, public schools have emerged as a popular answer. Today, legislatures move money from prisons to public education, arguing that this reinvestment can address the root causes of mass incarceration. This Article analyzes...

Deadly Desires: The Juridical Birth of Queer Humanism Amidst Slavery’s Afterlife

ABSTRACT Black trans life has recently taken center stage in the liberal mind. The machine of diversity, equity, and inclusion has increased visibility of Black transness in a variety of arenas. We are now seen on red carpets, earn book deals, and play prominent roles in television shows and films. Yet the potential for our violation remains constitutive of our embodiments as we are coerced to...

Embedded Healthcare Policing

ABSTRACT Scholars and activists are urging a move away from policing and towards more care-based approaches to social problems and public safety. These debates contest the conventional wisdom about the role and scope of policing and call for shifting resources to systems of care, including medical, mental health, and social work. While scholars and activists in favor of reducing society’s...

The Anti-Parent Juvenile Court

ABSTRACT This Article identifies and analyzes features of the juvenile delinquency court that harm the people on whom children most heavily depend: their parents. By negatively affecting a child’s family—creating financial stress, undermining a parent’s central role in rearing her child, and damaging the parent-child bond—these parent-harming features imperil a child’s healthy growth and...

Breach by Violence: The Forgotten History of Sharecropper Litigation in the Post-Slavery South

ABSTRACT This Article uses private law as a lens and a guide to excavate an unfamiliar story about labor and racial violence in the post-slavery south. It is the story of farmers like Colonel Bishop, whose landlord attacked him in the middle of the night in an effort to coerce him into breaching his contract. Violent breaches of contract such as these were not uncommon in the post-slavery south...