This week at the Law Library we’re teaching administrative law, focusing on Civil Rights resources, celebrating Black History Month, and previewing February Supreme Court arguments.

This Week’s Research Sessions

Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021

• Prof. Oliver’s Advocacy, section 3 with Electronic Resources​  & Instructional Technology Librarian Ron Jones
  • Administrative Law Research
  • 10:40am – 12:05 pm
  • Zoom
• Prof. Oliver’s Advocacy, section 1 with Electronic Resources​  & Instructional Technology Librarian Ron Jones
  • Administrative Law Research
  • 1:30pm – 2:55pm
  • Zoom

Featured Guide

Critical Race Theory Research

Critical Race Theory “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (1997). This guide will help you find resources on CRT.

Featured Database

HeinOnline: Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law

This HeinOnline collection brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. Our cases go into the 20th century, because long after slavery was ended, there were still court cases based on issues emanating from slavery. To give one example, as late as 1901 Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had to decide if a man, both of whose parents had been slaves, could be the legitimate heir of his father, because under southern law, slaves could never be legally married. The library has hundreds of pamphlets and books written about slavery—defending it, attacking it or simply analyzing it. Hein has gathered every English-language legal commentary on slavery published before 1920, which includes many essays and articles in obscure, hard-to-find journals in the United States and elsewhere. Hein has also provided more than a thousand pamphlets and books on slavery from the 19th century. Additionally, this database provides word searchable access to all Congressional debates from the Continental Congress to 1880.

Featured Study Aids

Civil Rights Stories

• This study aid provides students with a three-dimensional picture of the most important cases that are addressed in civil rights courses. These stories give the students and faculty members a deeper understanding of the historical and cultural background of the cases and an insight into their long-term impact on the development of civil rights law.
• Available via the West Academic subscription

 

Understanding Civil Rights Litigation

• This study aid covers all aspects of civil rights and constitutional litigation, including the history of civil rights legislation in the United States; the substantive elements of Section 1983 and Bivens causes of action; individual immunity defenses; governmental liability and immunity; procedural and jurisdictional hurdles; abstention; and remedies.
• Available via the LexisNexis Digital Library (Overdrive subscription)

Featured Treatise

Civil Rights Actions

Featured Video

February is Black History Month

This year’s theme for Black History Month is The Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity.

Five More Databases for Black History Month

Below are just a few of the excellent resources that you can use to research black history:

• JSTOR: African American Studies
  • Journals related to African American history
• Kanopy: African American Experience
  • Kanopy is database of films that could be searched on topics related to the African American experience.
• Oxford African American Studies Center
  • A comprehensive collection of scholarship focused on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture¸ coupled with precise search and browse capabilities. Features over 7¸500 articles from Oxford’s reference works¸ approximately 100 primary sources with specially written commentaries¸ over 1¸000 images¸ over 100 maps¸ over 200 charts and tables¸ timelines to guide researchers through the history of African Americans and over 6¸000 biographies. The core content includes: Africana¸ which presents an account of the African and African American experience in five volumes ; the Encyclopedia of African American history ; Black women in America¸ 2nd ed ; and the African American national biography.
• Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience
  • The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience¸ a unique database detailing the rich tapestry of the African experience throughout the Americas. Explore interdisciplinary topics through in-depth essays; read the seminal research and timelines that accompany each topic; and search for images and film clips to provide another dimension to your research.
• Umbra Search African American History
  • Umbra Search African American History makes African American history more broadly accessible through a freely available widget and search tool, umbrasearch.org; digitization of African American materials across University of Minnesota collections; and support of students, educators, artists, and the public through residencies, workshops, and events locally and around the country. Umbrasearch.org brings together hundreds of thousands digitized materials from over 1,000 libraries and archives across the country.

 

Black History Events

All Month:

• Black Lawyers in America
  • ABA National Town Hall Series featuring 3 African-American former presidents of the ABA
    • Against the backdrop of a global pandemic and economic meltdown, familiar tragedies have brought us again to another moment of outrage and protest. But there is something different this time. Perhaps the pandemic has given everyone – especially nonminorities – the grim understanding that African Americans have always known: Leaving the house for something as simple as a jog or a trip to the convenience store could turn fatal. This town hall series will examine the struggle for change and racial equity in the legal profession from the past, present and future.

UC & College of Law Events

February 23, 2021

• Social Justice and Anti-Racism Panel Discussion
  • Taking off from last year’s “Red, White, and Soul” panel discussion featuring Black veterans who served in Vietnam, the AACRC and Veterans Programs and Services will team up again this year for Black History Month. An engaging veterans’ event featuring UC alumni, community and UC student veterans, this discussion will feature details about serving in the military as an African American. Narrated by UC alum and veteran Byron Stallworth, this event promises to provide insight from veterans from all ages who have hurdled challenges as well as received high accolades by serving in the United States armed forces.

February 24, 2021

• 5th Annual Black Feminist Symposium: Radical Rest
  • An in-house conference dedicated to uplifting Black scholarship and celebrating Black voices, forums, panels, and lectures that are led by students, staff, faculty, and community members. The Black Feminist Symposium works to unite black feminist work being done amongst UC members with the community at large.
    • Reimagining and Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Black Women’s Economic Mobility in Cincinnati MSA
      •  5:00pm
      • At the Women’s Fund, we are designing a community where all women can participate, prosper and reach their full potential. The Women’s Fund leads our community in ensuring the economic self-sufficiency of women in our region and ignites a shared desire to improve it. We know this cannot be achieved without resolving systemic racism and sexism. That’s why we commissioned a multi-phased research project on Black women’s economic mobility to better understand regional opportunities and deterrents. This project consists of three research phases meant to build on one another to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that fuel and hinder economic mobility for Black women, as well as identify specific policy recommendations. This series will be released in 2020 and 2021 and will be comprised of: 1) a literature review of the historical context of labor trends and systemic barriers to Black women’s employment; 2) a quantitative analysis to understand Black women in the workforce, their economic mobility status and the impact of economic downturns; and, 3) a qualitative study to illuminate the factors fostering or deterring Black women’s economic mobility. Our goal with each of these phases is to recommend concrete actions that government, businesses, non-profits and other entities can enact to reverse these trends. Please feel free to review the Analysis of Black Women’s Historical Labor Trends & Systemic Barriers to Economic Mobility.
      • Presenter(s): Meghan Cummings, Adrienne Taylor, & Sam Molony | The Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation
      • RSVP
    • Praxis as Practice
      • 6:00pm
      • “Racism as a fundamental cause” (Phelan, & Link, 2015) should resound within the halls of social science departments. From Black maternal mortality to the under prescription of pain medications, Black women have faced the physical consequences of hegemony in every institution (Collins, 2004). The Ellipsis Institute for Womxn of Color in the Academy strives to center womxn and femmes who are unable to escape structural violence (Farmer, 2004). Sonya Renee Taylor (2018) teaches us that centering the body can be a major tool for liberation. In academic and scholarly fashion, it is easy to delineate between the conceptual and the real. The Ellipsis Institute for Womxn of Color in the Academy intentionally calls into question the connective tissue between abstraction and reality. It is within this space that the most marginalized are understood to get the support and assistance needed, but the physical component of acquiring said resources falls short. By emphasizing bodily assaults and their connection with the disenfranchising and oppressive forces of the state, we are able to find where Black Feminist theory becomes praxis and can be fully exercised. This workshop style presentation uses two case studies to demonstrate how an organization can translate abstract conceptual concepts (racialization and victimization) into tangible programmatic interventions: ways to center bodies in our liberation work. We will go point by point on how we took the abstract idea of violence via hegemony and brought it to the personal both conceptually and logistically for the Ellipsis Annual Conference and subsequent academic publications.
      • Presenter(s): Presenter(s): Dr. Shemariah Arki (She/They/Ella) | Kent State university | Erin K. Phelps, MA (Erin) | Pierce College | Case Western Reserve University | the Ellipsis Institute for Womxn of Color in the Academy
      • RSVP
• More than Dancing: Black Women and the Mythology of Post-Racial America
  • 6:00pm – 7:30pm
  • UC Blue Ash women musicians featuring Dr. Tammy Kernoodle in a segment of our PATHS Speaker Series. This presentation looks at four key events during Obama’s second administration as a lens to understanding the current wave of protest culture that has coincided with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and other variant social movements. It will specifically focus on the cultural responses of Black women as a method of illuminating the long and varied history of Black women musicians in shaping and promoting a public rhetoric of social change.
• 7th Annual Onyx & Ruby Gala
  • 6:30pm
  • Hosted by UC’s African American Alumni Affiliate (4A), the Onyx & Ruby Gala will honor six alumni, staff and students for their leadership and impact on their fellow Bearcats. The event will also enlist support for the Shani Scholarship Fund which helps provide study-abroad and international co-op opportunities for Black students.

February 25, 2021

• Black History Virtual Paint Party
  • 6:30pm
  • 4A presents a unique experience in which participants, working individually but also virtually as a group, create their own paintings with instruction provided by event partner Soul Palette, LLC.
  • Register online

February 26, 2021

• UC Blue Ash Game Night: Black History Jeopardy
  • 7:00pm – 8:00pm
  • What is something fun to do on Friday nights? Join us for Black History Jeopardy and test your knowledge about Black history icons, events, music, and more.
  • RSVP on CampusLink is required.

February Arguments at the United States Supreme Court

From SCOTUS Blog:

February 22, 2021

• Florida v. Georgia: whether Florida is entitled to equitable apportionment of the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin and appropriate injunctive relief against Georgia to sustain an adequate flow of fresh water into the Apalachicola Region.

February 23, 2021

• Wilkinson v. Alcaraz-Enriquez: whether a court of appeals may conclusively presume an applicant’s testimony is credible and true whenever an immigration judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals adjudicates a withholding-of-removal application without making an explicit adverse credibility determination.
• Wilkinson v. Dai: whether a court of appeals may conclusively presume that an asylum applicant’s testimony is credible and true whenever an immigration judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals adjudicates an application without making an explicit adverse credibility determination; and (2) whether the court of appeals violated the remand rule as set forth in INS v. Ventura when it determined in the first instance that the respondent, Ming Dai, was eligible for asylum and entitled to withholding of removal.

February 24, 2021

• Lange v. California: whether the pursuit of a person whom a police officer has probable cause to believe has committed a misdemeanor categorically qualifies as an exigent circumstance sufficient to allow the officer to enter a home without a warrant.