by Dr. Donald F. Tibbs
These essays serve as a powerful reminder
to those who uncritically consider racial policing as
happenstance, accidental, or the product of a few rogue police
officers. Together, they offer us a panoramic view of the intersections
between law, race, social movements, and the science
infiltrating our deep critiques of how “the way things are” is
simply more of the way they have always been. In the end, their analyses compellingly link the multiple forms of state violence—
domestic and imperialist—with sexual violence, focusing
our attention on how race and policing is a process, learned
and instituted. In the end, we all can agree that with attention,
intention, and effort, racialized policing can be and needs to be
reversed if American really truly wants to become great.
10 Drexel L. Review 567
by andré douglas pond cummings
This article proposes a radical restructuring of United States
law enforcement policies, procedures, and applications in order
to address this critical challenge. After comparing some of the
nation’s most innovative police reform efforts, this article will
provide policymakers, legislators, officers, leaders, judges, and
lawyers the most effective reform efforts and best thinking that
have been implemented to date in connection with saving the
lives of residents who face danger from those trained to protect
and serve them. This article may serve as a signal to a potential
sea change in failed police practices that have endured for decades
in the United States.
10 Drexel L. Review 573
by Tryon P. Woods
This Article’s position regarding implicit bias theory is that
implicit bias theory does indeed describe a consequential reality.
This author has no quarrel with the cognitive science referenced
in the various studies, and I know that the unconscious
racism to which it refers is endemic to our society. The problem,
however, is that implicit bias theory bears an implicit bias
of its own that leaves it fatally compromised in charting the way
forward to social transformation. Implicit bias theory misrecognizes
the nature of racism and thus underestimates the scale
of the breach to be crossed through anti-racist agitation. In particular,
implicit bias theory displaces the singular position of black people under racial regime. For this reason, this Article
suggests that implicit bias theory is particularly inept in dealing
with the racist violence of the law. There is an onto-epistemic
structure—the basis of our understanding of existence and
knowledge—more fundamental than the dynamics revealed in
cognitive science. In other words, scientific inquiry into the nature
of racism is itself in fee to the prevailing anti-black image
of humanity.
10 Drexel L. Review 631
by P. Khalil Saucier
This Article explores the ways in which antiblackness haunts nationwide
breed-specific legislation of today. Dogs have long featured
as a constitutive element in the antiblack dynamics of police power.
Central to slave patrols of the past, dogs remain essential to current
law enforcement practices. The blackening of breed-specific legislation
in legal and political discourse is a critical, subtle, and sophisticated
way in which white Americana enacts its humanity and continues to
regulate blackness. In bringing together historical and legal material,
this Article explores how breed-specific legislation intervenes to define
the boundaries of blackness. In other words, this Article investigates
how breed-specific legislation helps make blackness legible and familiar
in an era defined by shifts in racial identity. Ultimately, this Article
is concerned with how racial slavery lives on in modern times and
how breed-specific legislation is part of a long unbroken sequence of
antiblack violence, punishment, and surveillance.
10 Drexel L. Review 673
by Stephanie Singer
In 2016 the Supreme Court held in
Montgomery v. Louisiana that Miller’s holding was retroactive
and that juvenile lifers whose sentences were final before Miller were
entitled either to a resentencing or to immediate parole eligibility.
Miller affected more juvenile lifers in Pennsylvania than any other
state, with nearly 500 individuals in need of resentencing. Pennsylvania
is currently grappling with how to conduct these resentencings,
particularly considering that sentencing laws passed after
Miller do not apply to these individuals. There are numerous, significant
issues associated with conducting a retrospective Miller analysis
that put juvenile lifers at a severe disadvantage, particularly because they entered prison without the hope of release. Consequently,
juvenile lifers in Pennsylvania should—after serving their current
mandatory minimums—automatically be eligible for parole. This solution
addresses the unfairness that juvenile lifers are likely to face at
resentencing without compromising public safety, promotes efficient
use of resources, and remains consistent with the rehabilitative purpose
of the juvenile justice system.
10 Drexel L. Review 695