Law Review Articles

    • R. Richard Banks, Race-Based Suspect Selection and Colorblind Equal Protection Doctrine and Discourse, 48 UCLA Law Review 1075 (2001)

Richard Banks wrote this law review which was published in 2001. Mr. Banks is a law professor at Stanford Law School and has published several articles on the subject of racial injustice. This article discusses how the use of race-based suspect descriptions disparately impacts innocent members of society that happen to share the same race as suspects. The author discusses how racial profiling has been condemned but law enforcement is using the practice of race-based suspect description without any scrutiny. This article specifically focuses on the impacts this practice is having on African Americans. Mr. Banks calls into question the colorblindness of the equal protection doctrine. He asserts that race-based suspect descriptions lead law enforcement officers to limit their search based on race more so than they would based on every other suspect description. The results leads to race, rather than other physical features, being the predominant suspect description relied upon by law enforcement. The trickle down affect of this reliance is that law enforcement is selecting its suspects based on race without enough consideration of other physical descriptions. The article included a bibliography.

    • Floyd D. Weatherspoon, Racial Profiling of African-American Males: Stopped, Searched, and Stripped of Constitutional Protection, 38 John Marshall Law Review 439 (2004)

Floyd Weatherspoon wrote this law review article which was published in 2004. Mr. Weatherspoon is a law professor at Capital University Law School and is regarded as an expert on African American males, mediation and dispute resolution. This article explores a phenomena in which police officers have developed an idea of what is a prototypical criminal. The article discusses how stereotypical biases towards African American males have impacted law enforcements’ sentiment towards them. The article asserts that African American males are stopped while driving their vehicles and searched disproportionately. The author bridges the gap between the biases that law enforcement has developed towards African American males and the rate at which they are being pulled over. The disproportionate amount of stops transcends car stops to include airport stops. The author attempts to prove that airport security has also developed biases towards African American males. These stereotypes and biases include the notion that African American males are likely drug traffickers and thus are being stopped more in airports to be searched. The author attributes the lack of support from the state to lack of African American political clout. The Article does include a bibliography.

    • Kevin R. Johnson, How Racial Profiling in America Became the Law of the Land: United States v. Brignoni-Ponce and Whren v. United States and the Need for Truly Rebellious Lawyering, 98 Geo. L.J. 1005, 1009 (2010)

Kevin Weatherspoon wrote this law review article which was published in 2004. Mr. Johnson is the Dean of the UC Davis School of Law as well as a professor of public interest law. He is nationally respected as a scholar in civil rights and immigration law. This article explores the notion that racial profiling in law enforcement is permitted if not encouraged by Constitutional law. The essay examines two post civil rights movement decisions that affirmatively contributed to the predominance of racial profiling in modern law enforcement. United States v. Brigoni-Ponce and Whren v. United States were both decided after the civil rights movement of the 1960’s but each, in effect, allow for racial profiling in law enforcement to go unchecked. The author uses these cases to illustrate the difficulties that lawyers face when trying to bring social change and racial justice in regards to this law enforcement practice. The essay aims to promote victims of the practice to become empowered and become their own advocates. The author also challenges attorneys to empower poor clients as through grassroots advocacy programs facilitated by attorneys. The Essay concludes, by contending that, to truly root out racial profiling from law enforcement, the law must impose limits on the consideration of race in law enforcement, restrict law enforcement discretion in making stops, and afford a meaningful remedy for impermissible stops. The article does include a bibliography.

    • Wayne R. LaFave, The "Routine Traffic Stop" from Start to Finish: Too Much "Routine," Not Enough Fourth Amendment, 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1843, 1844 (2004)

Wayne R. LaFave wrote this law review article which was published in 2004. Mr. LaFave is a law professor at the University of Illinois College of Law. He is an extremely active scholar and author and has published several works in this area of the law. This article focuses on how the war on drugs has impacted police behavior with respect to routine traffic stops as a pretext for search a person’s vehicle for drugs or drug paraphernalia. The author asserts that police officers have developed a new tactic to attempt to apprehend drug traffickers. Using the new technique, police officers will first develop a hunch based on arbitrary factors including race and then will find a technical or trivial offense to produce the necessary stop. The law refers to these sorts of stops as pretextual stops. The officer will then run the “routine” criminal history and outstanding warrant search. The officer will ask routine questions about the driver’s identity or what the driver is doing. The officers’ questioning may induce the driver to permit the officer to search the vehicle, the ultimate goal of the officers’ stop. The article examines the Fourth Amendment legalities to traffic stops of this sort and what can legally be done with evidence that is found during searches that occur after these sorts of stops.