Academic

A Second Look at Professor Obama's "Current Issues in Racism and Law"

By propertyprof

Yesterday was a most, most extraordinary day, spent over at Mitu Gulati's symposium on judging,  at Duke.   In addition to the usual sparkling commentary from the usual suspects, I had the chance to visit with a couple of people of much importance to me--Judge Gerard Lynch, who taught me constitutional law lo' those many years ago (back when he was Professor Lynch--I wrote about him in connection with barbecue last fall) and Judge Robert Henry, who hired me for my first teaching more years ago than I'd like to think.  Judge Henry was a dean back then--and he's chief judge of the Tenth Circuit now, so that gives some sense of how much time's passed....  

But be that as it may, in celebration of the first anniversary of the faculty lounge, I thought I'd post a little on a topic I've been meaning to go back to....  Obama's spring 1994 syllabus on "Current Issues in Racism and Law" from the University of Chicago.  I wrote a little bit about it when the New York Times first put the syllabus up on the net last fall.

What to make of it?  First, it has the hallmarks of a young professor.  It goes overboard to make students feel welcome.  ("I recognize that I have assigned a lot of reading for a seminar.  Before many of you to go the registrar about dropping out, let me explain. ...  Some of you will already be familiar with the material others will find the material new.  As a result, I've made at least half of the material optional.  ... Those with the time and inclination can read the entire packet, while those with tighter schedules or a strong background in civil rights law can confine themselves to the required reading.")  Good for him for doing so.

The class only discussed readings on four days; there were sections on theory and historical foundations; Reconstruction and Jim Crow; black response; civil rights and backlash; and the current debate.  The rest of the meetings involved group presentations.

What to make of the readings?  There is a close to a limitless number of cases and issues you could cover in this class.  Not surprisingly, the hand of history lies heavy upon the course, though I'm not sure that's required for a course on contemporary racism.   As to the theoretical and historical material (the latter I'm considering as everything up through the Civil Rights movement)--there are some works of secondary scholarship--excerpts from George Frederickson, Anthony Appiah.  There are also a lot of primary materials--Andrew Jackson on Indian removal; Hugh Henry Brackenridge; lots of cases (State v. Mann, Hudgins v. Wrights, Gobu v. Gobu--a case I was shamefully ignorant of before his syllabus), and excerpts from Frederick Douglass.  In place of several of the cases, students could read Derrick Bell's summary of Dred Scott, the Slaughterhouse Cases, Cruickshank, and Giles v. Harris or excerpts from the cases themselves.

For "black response" there are readings from Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey.

The "Civil Rights Movement and Retrenchment" (also called "backlash" at one point in the syllabus) includes Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Robert Bork's Civil Rights--A Challenge, two lectures from Malcolm X, a couple of excerpts from Derrick Bell, Lino Graglia's essay "From Prohibiting to Requiring Racial Discrimination," and Chuck Cooper's essay on Ward's Cove, "A Step Towards Eliminating Quotes," in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and Randall Kennedy's response to Cooper, "Competing Considerations of 'Racial Discrimination.'"

There aren't a lot of readings, other than cases, post-1970.  Derrick Bell casts a long shadow over this, but otherwise there are no critical race scholars.  There are a few readings from the popular press; I guess that's understandable for a seminar in "current issues in racism and law."

Where did this stuff come from?  Apparently from his own readings, though I'd like to know if some of this came from a course with either Derrick Bell or Randall Kennedy.  ("I apologize for not giving you cleaner copies--it's a consequence of not having a teaching assistant.  (On the other hand, my wife tells me that she wouldn't have minded getting the professor's notations on her reading material when she was in law school.)").  A lot of the structure seems to have come from Derrick Bell's Race, Racism, and American Law. 

What did he expect of students?  This is one of the most interesting aspects: he tell students what he expects.   And what he expects of them may tell us what he expects of himself.  Get this

I'll be looking for: a) a focused, tightly-crafted argument, and analytic rigor in working through the legal or policy problems raised by your topic; 2) a thorough examination of the diversity of opinion that exists on the issue or theme; 3) a willingness, after having looked at the various facets of the topic, to take a stand and offer concrete proposals or approaches to the problem.

The first two are familiar to us all; we're going to see Mr. Obama take concrete stands on a bunch of issues very shortly.

Alfred Brophy

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on February 07, 2009 (boomark / email).