Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer 1844-1944 by Clay Smith, Jr.
- "Emancipation is an important and impressive work; one cannot read it without being inspired by the legal acumen, creativity, and resiliency these pioneer lawyers displayed. . . . It should be read by everyone interested in understanding the road African-Americans have traveled and the challenges that lie ahead."--From the Foreword, by Justice Thurgood Marshall
Raising the Bar: Diversifying Big Law by Debo Adegbile
- In Raising the Bar, four partners of color from leading law firms engage in a no-holds-barred conversation about what it takes to make it in big law using their own journeys to the top to discuss how law firms can do a better job of attracting and holding on to a more diverse set of young attorneys. They also offer advice to the attorneys themselves on how to succeed in a culture that has long excluded them, including finding mentors among those who don’t look like you, building a portable toolkit of skills, establishing key connections outside the firm, and staying “true to you,” even as young associates of color navigate the foreign terrain of insular firm culture.
Getting a Lawyer While Black: A Field Experiment by Libgober, Brian in Lewis & Clark Law Review 24 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. (2020)
- The author presents new evidence that African-Americans face unique impediments in obtaining access to counsel. Using a randomized audit design, the author shows that those with black-sounding names receive only half the callbacks of those with white-sounding names in response to requests for legal representation. A larger, follow-up experiment evaluates variations on the theory of "statistical discrimination "-that lawyers are merely responding to economically relevant signals correlated with race. The author finds no evidence supporting the expectations of the statistical discrimination theory but some evidence that racial preferences matter. The author concludes by presenting a more nuanced theory of racialized service rationing that is consistent with the body of experimental evidence presented and is supported by observational data and discusses the implications of these theories for potential policy responses, including debates about affirmative action and the size of the legal profession.
Race, Racism, and American Law: A Seminar from the Indigenous, Black, and Immigrant Legal Perspectives by Capulong, Eduardo R. C.; King-Ries, Andrew; Mills, Monte in The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice 2
- Paper on a seiminar taught on the issues of Race, Racism, and American Law. Paper outlines the teaching of the seminar.
A Perilous Path: Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law by Ifill, Sherrilyn A., Lynch, Loretta, Stevenson, Bryan, Thompson, Anthony C., 2018.
- A frank discussion on race and the law in America today, from some leading legal minds. Drawing on their collective decades of work on civil rights issues as well as personal histories of rising from poverty and oppression,they discuss the importance of working for justice in an unjust time. Covering topics as varied as “the commonality of pain,” “when ‘public' became a dirty word,” and the concept of an “equality dividend” that is due to people of color for helping America brand itself internationally as a country of diversity and acceptance, Sherrilyn Ifill, Loretta Lynch, Bryan Stevenson, and Anthony C. Thompson engage in a deeply thought-provoking discussion on the law's role in both creating and solving our most pressing racial quandaries.
