Mixed Race Studies

The Color of Change: Voting Rights in the 21st Century and the California Voting Rights Act

Harvard Latino Law Review
Volume 15 (2012)
pages 184-231

Joanna E. Cuevas Ingram
University of California, Davis

Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION
• I. THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 AND THE CALIFORNIA VOTING RIGHTS ACT
• II. U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON FEDERAL VRA STANDARDS
  • A. Heightened Burdens of Proof for Potential Plaintiffs
  • B. Post-Racial Penumbras
  • C. The Politics of Containment: Post-Racial Opposition to Voting Rights Remedies
  • D. The Full Spectrum of Voter Discrimination: “Multiracial” Identities and Multiethnic Members of Protected Voting Rights Classes
• III. FEDERAL VRA STANDARDS: CIRCUIT COURT DECISIONS ADDRESSING MULTIETHNIC/MULTILINGUAL COALITIONS
  • A. The Majority View: Recognition of Coalition Plaintiffs
  • B. The Minority View: Non-Recognition of Coalition Plaintiffs
• IV. MULTIETHNIC/MULTILINGUAL COALITIONS IN CALIFORNIA AND THE CVRA
  • A. Multiethnic/Multilingual Coalition Voting Blocs in California
  • B. Impediments and Rewards for Compliance
• V. CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.”

— César Chávez, Address to the Commonwealth Club of California (November 9, 1984).

In the twenty-first century, we have witnessed the rise of a post-racial national political narrative, particularly as the population in the United States has become increasingly multilingual and multiethnic. This narrative has been fashionably employed by cultural critics, media personalities, elected officials, attorneys, and even courts in an attempt to check the unprecedented surge in the political power of the diverse demographic, allowing these public figures and institutions to gloss over statistically sound cases of voter disenfranchisement in an attempt to dilute or contain what are fast becoming “minority-majority” voting districts.  Under Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act (“VRA”) of 1965, illegal vote dilution can be found where an electoral standard, practice, or procedure results in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race or color, including those instances where it can be demonstrated that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the state or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a protected class of citizens under the VRA…

…D. The Full Spectrum of Voter Discrimination: “Multiracial” Identities and Multiethnic Members of Protected Voting Rights Classes

Opponents of minority coalition claims under Section 2 seem to make another secondary, and offensive, intimation: the idea that multiracial identity itself could frustrate the purpose and practical application of the VRA.

This argument rings hollow after the Bartlett decision, however, particularly given the fact that the U.S. Census Bureau had established clear guidelines in 2000 for data interpretation based on responses that included one or more, two or more, and four or more race/ethnicity selections. Over the last decade, the Census Bureau has developed some incredibly advanced digital statistics on racial demographics by census tract The Bureau continues to maintain relatively accurate analyses of voting patterns and polls for individual groups as well as aggregate groups; data that is readily available online to any inquiring mind.

While more young Americans today do identify as multiethnic, multiracial, or mixed race, self-identification alone does not mean that individuals who so identify believe that they live in a presently post-racial society, nor does it mean that multiethnic or multicultural individuals do not experience any discriminatory treatment. Furthermore, nor does it signify that they are no longer considered members of a protected class or minority group. In fact, many individuals who identify as multiethnic and multiracial speak to the diversity of experiences each person may encounter in equal access to employment, education, housing, health care, insurance, business loans, and other social indicators of discrimination, including access to the political franchise. Increasingly, several scholars who identify as multiethnic and multiracial have worked to craft a discourse of resistance, encouraging individuals, regardless of how they identify, to embrace the complexity of their experiences and heritage by challenging the dominant social, cultural, and political structures that perpetuate white supremacy and racial segregation.

Further, opponents’ arguments that the 2000 Census would complicate litigation projections for local jurisdictions ring hollow; the standards set forth by the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) in March 2000 established a coherent framework for the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) in evaluating claims for the purpose of the Voting Rights Act and other remedies designed to address both systemic racial discrimination and individual discriminatory treatment. The 2000 OMB standards, although arguably problematic in dealing with social constructs such as race, have sought to provide a clear framework to respond to systemic discrimination and to accommodate the groundbreaking transformation that the 2000 and 2010 Census have taken in allowing respondents to check more than one ethnicity/race. The rules set forth by the OMB and applied by the DOJ would in fact alleviate any perceived difficulties in meeting the Gingles requirements:

Pursuant to those rules, DOJ will allocate any multiple-race response in which “White” and one of the five other basic categories were checked to the minority race that was checked. Thus, the numbers for each minority race will consist of the total of (i) the single-race responses in which only that minority race was checked; and (ii) the multiple-race responses in which only that minority race and “White” were checked. DOJ will allocate the remaining multiple-race responses—those in which two or more minority races were checked, either along with “White” or without it—to a category called “Other Multiple-Race.” If it finds that a jurisdiction’s “Other Multiple-Race” category contains a significant number of responses that reflect a particular multiple-race combination, it will allocate those responses alternatively to each of the minority races in that combination.”

When it comes to the question of Hispanic or Latino identity, the DOJ has expressed its intention to continue to treat individuals who identify as Hispanic or Latino as members of a distinct minority group for the purpose of enforcing the Voting Rights Act. If the DOJ finds that a significant number of the individuals in the jurisdiction have identified as members of this ethnic category and one or more minority racial groups, it will allocate those responses alternatively to the Hispanic or Latino category and the minority race(s) checked. For example, if the DOJ finds that a significant number of responses checked both Hispanic or Latino and Black or African-American, it will allocate the first of those responses to the Hispanic or Latino category, the second to the Black or African-American category, and so on. While other scholars have confirmed that the DOJ will also have to use the OMB allocation rules in enforcing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, they have also posited that the courts are not bound to follow the guidelines as established by the executive branch…

Read the entire article here.

Void and Voidable Marriages in Maryland and Their Annulment

Maryland Law Review
Volume 2, Issue 3 (1938)
Article 2
pages 211-259

John S. Strahorn Jr., Professor of Law
University of Maryland

The essential task of this article will be to classify invalid or defective marriages in Maryland into those which are totally void and hence subject to collateral attack and those which are only voidable by appropriate steps of direct attack taken during the joint lifetime of the spouses. But, as investigation of this question requires a survey of all the local law concerning the requirements of and impediments to a valid marriage, and, as well, an inquiry into the procedural aspects of annulment, the article will be, in effect, one on the broader questions of validity of marriage and annulment in Maryland.

THE GENERAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TOTAL VOIDNESS AND VOIDABILITY

Terminology presents the first problem. The phrase “totally void” will be used herein to express the idea of a marriage’s possessing some defect rendering it susceptible to collateral attack, even after the death of one or both of the spouses. For such marriages no direct step or proceeding to annul is necessary, although the latter may be desirable. “Voidable” will be used to express the idea that the defect, at most, permits the validity of the marriage to be directly attacked by appropriate steps during the joint lifetime of the spouses, although without that the invalidity may not be asserted collaterally in any other proceeding. “Valid” and “completely valid” will be used interchangeably in the sense that the marriage meets all the requirements and encounters none of the impediments so that it can withstand both direct and collateral attack.

In addition to the question of total voidness or mere voidability, there must be considered whether, if the marriage be only voidable, it may be avoided by simple private act, or a judicial proceeding is necessary. Related to this is the matter of ratification, which is possible for some, though not all, voidable marriages and which is considered by some writers to be possible for certain marriages which are otherwise totally void. Whether such a latter class exists in Maryland law will be one of the inquiries of this article.’ A certain confusion exists between a marriage’s being totally void although capable of ratification, and its being voidable by private act without judicial proceeding…

…C. Race (Miscegenation).

White persons and Malayans are forbidden to intermarry and both are forbidden to marry Negroes or persons of Negro descent to the third generation. The statutory mode of expression to cover persons of mixed white and Negro blood is an awkward one and makes doubtful just what proportion of Negro blood will disqualify one from marrying a pure white person or Malayan. It is suggested that if the person in question has some non-Negro blood and that if all of his parents and grand-parents also had some, he is eligible for purposes of the statute, even though he is predominantly Negro.

Is a marriage which is definitely under the statutory ban totally void or only voidable? While no Maryland case has ever dealt directly with either the prohibition generally or the specific problem, a strong dictum in Jackson v. Jackson has indicated that such a marriage, forbidden by our statute, is so totally void that it cannot be recognized even when performed in a state sanctioning such marriages. As has been suggested, this should also determine the issue of total voidness or voidability for the purpose of internal law. This is particularly so in view of the fact that the Jackson case dictum put this type of marriage under the part of the exception to the conflicts rule for those marriages which “the local law making power has declared shall not have
any validity.

Granting such marriages to be totally void, what procedures are available for directly declaring that quality. The statutory procedure does not apply. No doubt, a divorce on the ground of marriage void ab initio could be procured. It is doubtful that an annulment under the general equity practice could be secured. A successful criminal prosecution for entering into the unlawful marriage (if the ceremony occurred in Maryland) or for illicit cohabitation s in Maryland under such an invalid marriage might accomplish the result of a judicial declaration of nullity, even though this does not come under the statutory method, which makes specific mention of criminal prosecution as an annulment device…

Read the entire article here.

Race Treason: The Untold Story of America’s Ban on Polygamy

Columbia Journal of Gender and Law
Volume 19, Number 2 (2010)
pages 287-366

Martha M. Ertman, Carole & Hanan Sibel Research Professor of Law
University of Maryland

Today’s ban on polygamy grew out of nineteenth century Americans’ view that Mormons committed two types of treason. First, antipolygamists charged Mormons with political treason by establishing a separatist theocracy in Utah. Second, they saw a social treason against the nation of White citizens when Mormons adopted a supposedly barbaric marital form, one that was natural for “Asiatic and African” people, but so unnatural for Whites as to produce a new, degenerate species that threatened the project of white supremacy. This Article reveals how both kinds of treason provided the foundation of polygamy law through the discourse of legal, political and medical “experts, ” as well as, most vividly, cartoons of the day. This discourse designated the overwhelmingly White Mormons as non-White to justify depriving them of citizenship rights such as voting, holding office, and sitting on juries. Paralleling the Mormon question to miscegenation disputes also raging in the decades after the Civil War, the Article suggests two theoretical perspectives to understand the “blackening” of Mormons. First, postcolonial theorist Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism helps explain how designating Mormons a subject race rendered their subjection inevitable. Second, Sir Henry Maine’s 1864 observation that progressive societies move from status to contract reveals the visceral defense of status embedded in antipolygamy discourse. That defense of status may also have implicated other ways status was giving way to contract, such as wage labor replacing slavery and the partnership theory of marriage beginning to displace coverture. In either case, the Article contends, the racial foundations of American antipolygamy law require us to rethink our own often reflexive condemnation of the practice. It concludes by suggesting three questions to help us frame that inquiry, asking: (1) whether we need to rethink this rarely-enforced ban; (2) whether current antipolygamy law’ associates polygamy with barbarism, foreignness, and people of color; and (3) whether it is coincidental that the plain language of the Defense of Marriage Act prohibits both polygamy and same-sex marriage.

INTRODUCTION

Race is at the center of all of American history.
— Ken Burns

Many people think that American law bans polygamy to ensure women’s equality and shield teenage girls from marrying old men. But that notion is largely wrong, at least if we interpret the relevant cases and statutes in light of the intentions of the lawmakers who enacted four federal statutes and the courts that upheld them in a line of cases that are still cited as good law. They were hardly concerned with gender equality or protecting children’s safety. Instead, the statutes went far beyond criminalizing polygamy, depriving Mormon men and women of voting and other citizenship rights to achieve the larger goal of preventing the traitorous establishment of a separatist theocracy in Utah. Polygamy was merely a symptom, fascinatingly salacious and easily ridiculed, of the pathology that most Americans saw in Mormonism. However, knowing the treason-based genesis of antipolygamy law need not force us to rethink the ban on polygamy. Treason remains unlawful, making it a permissible justification for the law today.

But race is also at the center of antipolygamy law, in a way that forces us to rethink the ban itself. Many Americans, from the highest levels of government to political cartoonists, viewed the Mormons’ political treason as part of a larger, even more sinister offense that I call race treason. According to this view, polygamy was natural for people of color, but unnatural for White Americans of Northern European descent. When Whites engaged in this unnatural practice, antipolygamists contended, they produced a “peculiar race.”  Antipolygamists linked this physical degeneration to Mormons’ submission to despotism, reasoning that their primitive form of government was common among supposedly backward races. The Supreme Court accepted this argument in the leading antipolygamy case, Reynolds v. United States, in which it rejected Mormon claims that polygamy was protected as the free exercise of religion. The Court reasoned that polygamy was “odious among the northern and western nations of Europe,” “almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people,” and ultimately “fetters the people in stationary despotism.” Well into the twentieth century, many Americans continued to associate White Mormons with people of color, as evidenced by a character’s quip in Jack London’s 1914 novel, “They ain’t whites; they’re Mormons.”

This racialization requires us to ask whether the polygamy ban today continues to import those white supremacist values. In another context, states criminalized cocaine and marijuana in the early twentieth century to police and generally demonize Chinese and Mexican immigrants as well as African Americans. By the late twentieth century, that policy, though officially rejected, found expression in federal sentencing guidelines that penalized offenses related to crack cocaine (more common in African American communities), more harshly than powder cocaine (more common in White communities). There, as here, virulent racial motivations that animated a legal rule requires us to examine the law’s current incarnation to ensure it has shed the taint of its origin.

Casting overwhelmingly White Mormons as non-White required rhetorical slights of hand. While Mormons’ distinctive theology and social organization were politically unsettling in many ways, the practice of polygamy justified the larger culture’s demotion of Mormons from full citizenship on the grounds of racial inferiority. This Article tells the story of race in polygamy law through the words of government actors and scholars, using political cartoons to literally illustrate the widespread view of Mormons as race traitors.

It then offers two theoretical frames through which to view nineteenth century perceptions of polygamy as race treason: Orientalism and jurisprudential insights about the tensions between status and contract. Edward Said’s work on Orientalism offer some clues as to why cartoonists might have portrayed Mormon polygamists as Black and Asian. Viewing the discourse as Orientalist—essentially an “us/them” rubric that primarily underpins colonialism—shows that antipolygamy discourse also spoke of Mormon polygamy in “us/them” terms, treating polygamists not as people, but as problems to be solved. The most valuable insight Orientalism offers here is that framing a group as Oriental—an inherently backward, sensual, and therefore subordinated Other—makes its subjection inevitable. Thus the public imagination’s construction of Mormons as members of subject racial groups (Asian and Black, mainly) played a crucial role in subjecting Mormons to federal control…

…This Article uses political cartoons of the day to demonstrate how viscerally the American polity fought against the Mormons’ attempt at private ordering, deploying images of domestic and governmental disorder to rail against the chaotic consequences of abandoning status in marriage. In the cartoons, race and gender served as shorthand for status, the notion of assigned, inherent and unchanging roles. Because marriage was deeply raced and gendered, and not coincidentally defined citizenship, antipolygamists’ equation of polygamy with Asian and Black foreignness reaffirmed the centrality of Whiteness to full citizenship. Equating Whiteness with citizenship mattered enormously in the time of which we speak. Abolitionists and Freedmen pushed hard for full civic membership for the freed slaves. The cartoons here oppose it, using polygamy to beat back African Americans’ claims to civil membership in the wake of the Civil War…

…The cartoon depicts a fierce eagle, stars and stripes on its wings representing the United States, protecting its nest, which is labeled “union.” Inside the nest are eaglets, all White, each labeled for a state. A “carrion crow” labeled “Utah” rises up in their midst, clutching a bone labeled “Mormonism.” Three things bear mentioning. First, the cartoon appeared less than a generation after the end of the Civil War, when most viewers would situate its imagery within the national catastrophe of Confederate Secession. Second, it labeled the bird representing Utah as “Carrion Crow.” This crow gets its name from its habit of eating dead animals, making its presence in the caption depict Mormonism as a harbinger of death. Moreover, the birds representing the other states seem to be eaglets, the same species as the eagle, while the crow represents a new species, black, holding its own bone and defiantly turning its back on the mother. In contrast, the eaglets either beg for food or look out as if guarding the nest.

Integrating these elements, we can interpret the single Black crow White eaglets as signaling political defiance against the Union, racial grounds for denying Utah statehood, and miscegenation. In the decades after Civil War, intense legal, political, and social battles raged over the citizenship of African Americans, generally resulting in severely limited social and political rights for the freed slaves. Consequently, this cartoon, published in that climate, seems to reference both the Civil War and the place of Blacks in America in the wake of emancipation. The Black crow symbolizing Utah, nestled among White eaglets symbolizing the other states, is akin to the Confederacy seceding to protect its own peculiar domestic institution. In this view, depicting Utah as a carrion crow would justify denying “black” Utah membership in the Union just as the Black Codes and other measures denied African Americans full citizenship. The mix of white and black baby birds in the cartoon also raises the specter of miscegenation, which animated the Black Codes.

The nation was struggling over the constitutionality of miscegenation laws at the very moment that Mormon polygamy attracted intense debate and regulation. Many southern states repealed their miscegenation statutes shortly after the Civil War, reasoning that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution allowed African Americans to contract marriages just like White citizens. However, they reinstated miscegenation laws in the 1880s and 1890s, claiming that the ban on interracial marriage did not violate principles of equal protection, since it prevented both Blacks and Whites from marrying outside their race. Indeed, in 1883, a year after “The Carrion Crow,” the U.S. Supreme Court used this rationale to uphold miscegenation laws in Pace v. Alabama. As the sole Black child among White siblings, the crow signifies multiracial families produced by race-mixing. By linking Mormon polygamy with political treason and racialized political and familial degeneration, the cartoon triggers explosive issues far beyond polygamy as a marital variation…

Read the entire article here.

Why Affirmative Action Remains Essential in the Age of Obama

Campbell Law Review
Volume 31, Issue 3 (2009)
pages 503-533

Reginald T. Shuford, Senior Staff Attorney, Racial Justice Program
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation

With the election of Barack Obama to the most powerful position in the world, the presidency of the United States of America, many opined that America finally conquered her racial demons, some trumpeting the term “post-racial” as though it were a fait accompli. That an African-American man-much less one with such a nontraditional name-could ascend to the highest office in the land, they argue, clearly signals that America’s racist history is a thing of the past. Gone. Over. Kaput. Slate wiped clean. Concomitant with their notion of a post-racial America is the strong belief that complaints of racism lack merit, and measures to remedy past and current exclusionary practices are no longer necessary. But saying it is so does not make it so. There can be no doubt that Obama’s election represents a singular moment in American history and demonstrates significant and welcome progress in America’s notoriously fraught racial relations. That said, claims that America is truly post-racial are decidedly premature. Indeed, during this very election season, some voters conceded that Obama’s race was an issue impacting whether they would vote for him.

It also bears noting, at the risk of stating the obvious, while it is true that Obama’s victory shattered the ultimate political glass ceiling, he, black or otherwise, is not your “Average Political Joe.” As such, whether his election portends a future where African-American candidates, and other candidates of color, will be elected to the highest office in the land with any degree of regularity is debatable. For generations, African-American parents preparing their children for the harsh realities of racism have told them that they are required to be twice as good and work twice as hard as everybody else, just to stand a fighting chance at leading successful and productive lives. President Obama may personify that concept better than most. Among his many notable accomplishments, Obama is the graduate of two Ivy League schools, Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude. At Harvard, he served as the first African- American president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama is also the author of two best-selling books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. He was a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. His well-known political successes include his career-defining delivery of the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, which catapulted him onto the national and, perhaps, international stage. During his tenure in the Senate, Obama was the sole African-American.

Beyond his academic and professional accomplishments, President Obama possesses a combination of personal traits-powerful oratorical skills, discipline, equanimity, self-confidence, and the ability to connect with and inspire a broad range of people-that undoubtedly have contributed to his phenomenal success and uniquely qualified him to be the right person for the job at this particular moment in our history. Even Obama’s biracial background advantages him, for example, with the ability, evident in his Speech on Race, to speak credibly from both sides of the racial divide. His background might also have benefited him in another way: Perhaps, he was not “too black” for certain skittish voters. In light of his eminent qualifications, many wondered whether Obama’s racial background at least partly accounted for the relative closeness of much of the race between him and John McCain…

Read the entire article here.

Lawsuit Challenging Obama’s Qualifications Is Tossed Out In Federal Court

AlaskaPublic.org
2012-09-12

Matt Miller, KTOO – Juneau

An Alaska-based federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama’s qualifications to appear as a candidate on the November general election ballot.

Gordon Warren Epperly of Juneau claims that Obama does not have the political right to hold federal office because he’s of mixed race. Epperly filed an objection with the state Division of Elections in April and sued in state Superior Court in July…

…The case was moved to U.S. District Court where Judge Timothy Burgess on August 24th dismissed the lawsuit ‘with prejudice.’ That means it can never be brought up again…

Read the entire article here.

Elections division turns aside Obama nomination challenge

KTOO News: Public Radio at 104.3
Juneau, Alaska
2012-03-06

Matt Miller

The state Division of Elections has turned down a challenge of President Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the election ballot in Alaska. The challenge was filed by a Juneau resident who says the Democratic candidate is not qualified to run for re-election because he’s of mixed race.

It’s not a lawsuit filed in any court. Actually, it’s what’s called a nomination petition objection that was filed directly with the Division of Elections.

Division director Gail Fenumiai referred the objection to election attorneys within the Department of Law for further review.

“This is first time that we’ve received something like this,” says Fenumiai.

Gordon Warren Epperly is a retired bus driver in Juneau. He challenges Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the ballot during Alaska’s presidential primary and general election. He says that Orly Taitz and others who’ve challenged Obama’s qualifications of being a ‘natural born citizen’ because of an alleged birth outside of the country went at it all wrong. He says there is no real requirement for a candidate to produce a birth certificate.

Epperly declined to talk on tape for this story. But in his filing he references the infamous Dred Scott decision which he says has never been overturned by the Supreme Court. He says Negros or Mulattos (he pronounces it mull-EYE-ttos) were not eligible to be citizens until the Fourteen Amendment was ratified in 1868. Even then, what Epperly calls ‘purported’ ratification of the amendment only allowed for civil rights, not political rights that allowed them and their descendants to hold federal office…

Read the entire article here.

Making The Application

Valley Spirit
Franklin County, Virginia
1867-10-02
page 1, column 8

Source: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library

Relates a ficticious story about a conversation between two white men, one Republican the other Democrat, in which the consequences of black suffrage are discussed.

Several days ago a Republican and a Democrat got into conversation on the subject of making voters out of negroes. The Republican contended that negroes should be allowed to vote as a matter of right.

“But,” replied the Democrat, “that will lead to social equality.”

“Let it,” rejoined the Republican, “the only difference between the negroes and the white is the color of skin and in the hair.”

“Then you think,” said the Democrat, “that the negroes should have the same social, as well as the same political privileges the whites enjoy.”

“Certainly,” replied the Republican.

“Now, suppose a negro and your daughter should conclude to contract marriage, what would you do in regard to that?” asked the Democrat.

“Why, I should let her, of course,” responded the Republican.

“And you would enjoy dandling on your knee a mulatto grand-child, would you?” queried the Democrat.

“Oh, no. I should not do that. If my daughter married a negro, I should discard her,” replied the Republican with spirit.

“What,” asked the Democrat, “discard your daughter for believing and practicing the doctrines you teach? Come neighbor, don’t you think you are carrying this negro business too far? If there is no difference really between a negro and white man, excepting the color of hi skin and in the matter of hair, why would you discard your daughter for marrying a negro instead of a white man?”

The Republican hung his head thoughtfully. This is a point all men should thoughtfully think over before they vote on the subject of making the negroes the political equals of the whites. Political equality inevitably leads to social equality, and social equality lays the foundation for the intermarriage of the races.

Cameron reshuffle brings critic of legal aid cuts into ministry of justice

The Guardian
2012-09-05

Owen Bowcott, Legal Affairs Correspondent

New Conservative minister Helen Grant criticised coalition policy on Guardian website last year

One of the new ministerial appointees to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has previously been highly critical of the government’s key policy decision to axe £350m from the civil legal aid budget.

Helen Grant, Conservative MP for Maidstone and The Weald, practised as a legal aid solicitor for 20 years and established her own firm in Croydon helping clients through family and social welfare cases. On Tuesday, she was made a justice minister.

Writing for the Guardian’s law website last year, as the green paper on legal aid began its passage through the Commons, Grant declared: “Our country’s financial health is a priority, but not at the cost of basic social justice.

“It cannot be right that those most in need of support are left without it … We must ensure we protect those most vulnerable here at home and treat this debate with the care it deserves.” She eventually voted for the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act after it was altered through successive amendments.

Grant, 50, who has a Nigerian father and English mother, should be able to defend herself ably in political infighting: she was under-16 judo champion for the north of England and Scotland. She was briefly a member of the Labour party before becoming the Conservative party’s first black female MP. She has worked with Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice…

Read the entire article here.

The Aborigines Act, 1911 [Australia]
1911-12-07
Number 1048
Source: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

An Act to make provision for the better Protection and Control of the Aboriginal and Half-caste Inhabitants of the State of South Australia.

1. This Act may be cited as ‘‘ The Aborigines Act, 1911.”
2. The Ordinance No. 12 of 1844, being an Ordinance to provide for the protection, maintenance, and up-bringing of orphans and other destitute children of the aborigines, is hereby repealed : Provided that such repeal shall not alter the effect of the doing or omission of any thing before the passing of this Act, and shall not affect any right granted, obligation imposed, liability incurred, or any offence committed by, under, or against the said Ordinance, or any proceedings commenced before or after the passing of this Act with respect to any of such matters or things…

• …10. (1) The Chief Protector shall be the legal guardian of every aboriginal and every half-caste child, notwithstanding that any such child has a parent or other relative living, until such child attains the age of twenty-one years, except whilst such child is a State child within the meaning of ‘‘ The State Children Act, 1895,” or any Act amending or substituted for that Act. (2) Every Protector shall, within his district, be the local guardian of every such child within his district. (3) Such local guardian shall have and exercise the powers and duties prescribed…

Read the entire act here.

Brazil Enacts Affirmative Action Law for Universities

The New York Times
2012-08-30

Simon Romero, Brazil Bureau Chief

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s government has enacted one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws, requiring public universities to reserve half of their admission spots for the largely poor students in the nation’s public schools and vastly increase the number of university students of African descent across the country.

The law, signed Wednesday by President Dilma Rousseff, seeks to reverse the racial and income inequality that has long characterized Brazil, a country with more people of African heritage than any nation outside of Africa. Despite strides over the last decade in lifting millions out of poverty, Brazil remains one of the world’s most unequal societies.

“Brazil owes a historical debt to a huge part of its own population,” said Jorge Werthein, who directs the Brazilian Center for Latin American Studies. “The democratization of higher education, which has always been a dream for the most neglected students in public schools, is one way of paying this debt.”…

…But while affirmative action has come under threat in the United States, it is taking deeper root in Brazil, Latin America’s largest country. Though the new legislation, called the Law of Social Quotas, is expected to face legal challenges, it drew broad support among lawmakers.

Of Brazil’s 81 senators, only one voted against the law this month. Other spheres of government here have also supported affirmative action measures. In a closely watched decision in April, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the racial quotas enacted in 2004 by the University of Brasília, which reserved 20 percent of its spots for black and mixed-race students…

…Brazil’s 2010 census showed that a slight majority of this nation’s 196 million people defined themselves as black or mixed-race, a shift from previous decades during which most Brazilians called themselves white…

Read the entire article here.