Law, Reparations, and Racial Disparities

Friday October 31, 2008
9:00 a.m.-5 p.m.
Green Hall, 1535 W. 15th Street, Lawrence, KS 66045

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently weighed in on reparations for slavery in In re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation, 471 F.3d 754 (7th Cir. 2006). The court raised two vital questions about the matter of enduring harm to present-day blacks in the form of social and economic disparities. How can the purported harms that present-day blacks are alleged to suffer collectively or individually as a result of the enslavement of their ancestors be empirically articulated and quantified? And what are the prospects for connecting these present harms with past harms so as to establish the claim that particular blacks today suffer enduring injury from slavery?

The symposium will gather a distinguished group of scholars to explore what law can learn from empirical research on racial disparities in wealth, health, education, and the criminal justice system, and to assess whether legal reparations for slavery can be a viable means of dealing with these persistent disparities.

Attendance is free and no reservations are required. Please contact Symposium Editor Kelly Foos for more information: kfoos@ku.edu; 785/864-3463.

The sponsors of this program have applied for 6.5 hours of continuing legal education (CLE) credit in Kansas and Missouri. Persons wishing to receive CLE credit can register at the door and obtain materials. There is no charge. To confirm CLE credit approval prior to the symposium date, please contact Todd Rogers at (785) 864-9257 or by e-mail at tarogers@ku.edu.

Papers presented at this symposium will be published in the Kansas Law Review, Volume 57, Issue 4, April 2009. For more information about the articles or to order a copy of the April 2009 edition of the Kansas Law Review, please contact Kelly Foos, Law Review Symposium Editor, at (785) 864-3463 or kfoos@ku.edu.

Agenda

9-10:30 a.m.    PANEL DISCUSSION ON HEALTH AND RACIAL DISPARITIES


  • Kevin Outterson (Boston University School of Law): Reparations for Racial Disparities in Health
  • Daniela Ikawa (Public Interest Law Institute/Conectas Human Rights): Racial Discrimination in Access to Health: The Brazilian Experience
  • Stacy Elmer (University of Kansas): Health Disparities and Historical Injustice in Sierra Leone: A Case for Reparations?
  • Moderator: Elizabeth Weeks Leonard, University of Kansas School of Law

10:45 a.m.-Noon    PANEL DISCUSSION ON ECONOMICS AND RACIAL DISPARITIES


  • William ("Sandy") Darity, Jr. (Duke University): Forty Acres and a Mule in the Twenty-First Century
  • Ronald Caldwell, Jr. (University of Kansas): Expectations and the Black-White Skill Gap: Do Perceptions About Racial Disadvantage Play a Role in the Development of Minority Skill Gaps and What Are the Policy Implications?
  • Moderator: Thomas Stacy, University of Kansas School of Law

Noon-1:45 p.m.    BY INVITATION ONLY: LUNCHEON


  • Roy L. Brooks (University of San Diego School of Law): Toward a Post-Atonement America: The Supreme Court's Atonement for Slavery and Jim Crow

2-3:30 p.m.    PANEL DISCUSSION ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND RACIAL DISPARITIES


  • Cassia Spohn (Arizona State University): Race, Sex & Pre-Trial Detention in Federal Court: Indirect Effects and Cumulative Disadvantage
  • Ruth Peterson (The Ohio State University): Race, Residence, and Crime: A Case for Community Reparations
  • Bruce Western (Harvard University): Punishment, Inequality, and the Future of Mass Incarceration
  • Moderator: Jelani Jefferson Exum, University of Kansas School of Law

3:45-5 p.m.    PANEL DISCUSSION ON LAW, PHILOSOPHY, AND REPARATIONS


  • Derrick Darby (University of Kansas): Educational Inequality and Social Science in Grutter: A Lesson for the Black Reparations Debate
  • Adrienne Davis (Washington University School of Law): Republicanism & Reparations: The Juridical and Political Viability of Black Reparations
  • Moderator: Ann Cudd, University of Kansas Department of Philosophy

Symposium Speakers

Roy L. Brooks (J.D., Yale Law School), Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law

Ronald Caldwell, Jr. (Ph.D., University of Washington), Assistant Professor of Economics & Oswald Scholar, University of Kansas

Derrick Darby (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh), Associate Professor of Philosophy and Affiliated Faculty School of Law, University of Kansas

Adrienne Davis (J.D., Yale Law School), William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law, Washington University School of Law

William ("Sandy") Darity, Jr. (Ph.D., M.I.T.), Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Economics, Arts & Sciences Professor of Public Policy Studies, Professor of African and African-American Studies, Duke University

Stacy Elmer (B.A., Colorado College), Doctoral candidate in Philosophy, University of Kansas

Daniela Ikawa (Ph.D., University of Sao Paolo), Legal Officer, Public Interest Law Institute; Consultant, Conectas Human Rights; Co-Managing Editor, Sur International Journal for Human Rights

Kevin Outterson (J.D., Northwestern University, L.L.M., University of Cambridge), Associate Professor, Boston University School of Law

Ruth Peterson (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin), Professor of Sociology, The Ohio State University

Cassia Spohn (Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Professor and Director of Graduate Programs, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

Bruce Western (Ph.D., University of California Los Angeles), Professor of Sociology and Director of the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy, Harvard University

Sponsored by: University of Kansas School of Law; University of Kansas College of Liberal Arts & Sciences; The Hall Center for the Humanities; University of Kansas Institute for Policy & Social Research; University of Kansas Department of Public Administration; University of Kansas Department of Economics; University of Kansas Department of Sociology