Papers by Rachel D Godsil
A Review of America\u27s Misunderstood Welfare State: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities by The... more A Review of America\u27s Misunderstood Welfare State: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities by Theodore R. Marmor, Jerry L. Mashaw, and Philip L. Harve
How Does Implicit Bias Influence Philanthropic Effectiveness? How well do you know your subconsci... more How Does Implicit Bias Influence Philanthropic Effectiveness? How well do you know your subconscious? Why does it matter? Proven science tells us that our conscious commitments to fairness and equality can be undermined by subconscious assumptions we may not even be aware.This interactive session with Jeanné Isler, Field Director at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; Rachel Godsil, Director of Research at the Perception Institute and Crystal Echo Hawk, President & CEO of Echo Hawk Consulting and a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, explores the definitions of implicit bias, its effect on all of us as individuals, and its influence on the decisions and trends in our philanthropic institutions
Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2008
Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2008
We wish to thank the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation's Campaign for Black Male Achie... more We wish to thank the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation's Campaign for Black Male Achievement, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for their generous support for our work, and for inspiring a national conversation about race and equality. Cover illustration by Thomas Seltzer
Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Climate Commons, Dispute Resolution and Arbi... more Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Climate Commons, Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons, Energy Policy Commons, Environmental Health and Protection Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Environmental Monitoring Commons, Environmental Policy Commons, Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, Indian and Aboriginal Law Commons, International Law Commons, Land Use Planning Commons, Law and Race Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legislation Commons, Litigation Commons, Natural Resources Law Commons, Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons, Politics Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons
Developed by comedian Aasif Mandvi (a former Daily Show correspondent), Moore + Associates, Sweet... more Developed by comedian Aasif Mandvi (a former Daily Show correspondent), Moore + Associates, Sweet 180 Productions, and a coalition of advocacy organizations, Halal in the Family is a web series that presents a sitcom parody featuring a Muslim American family. Designed to combat bias and prejudice against Muslims and to expose a broad audience to the realities of being Muslim in America, the series includes four 4-minute episodes ("The Amazing Race," "B'ully," "Spies Like Us," and "A Very Spooq'y Halloween Special"), each focusing on a different challenge faced by Muslim Americans and their communities. To determine whether watching the episodes would actually affect the way viewers think and feel about Muslim Americans, Moore + Associates engaged a team of scientists through Perception Institute, coordinated by Professor Rachel Godsil, to conduct an evaluation of the efficacy of the the series in reducing anti-Muslim bias, increasing v...
After two decades the issue that continues to bedevil activists, advocates, and scholars is how t... more After two decades the issue that continues to bedevil activists, advocates, and scholars is how to respond to the disparate burden of environmental hazards. To date, the main responsive visions have been calls for more racially equitable distributions of environmental burdens and the empowerment of communities to better resist their fate. 3 Each of these visions presupposes racially segregated communities and posits that people of all races should share the burdens of pollution and waste. The primary contrary argument has been from those who deny that "environmental racism" exists as a problem. 4 According to this view, the disparate burden of environmental hazards upon people of color is simply a result of our market economy. Some of these market adherents contend that Blacks and Latinos bear a greater burden of environmental 3. Luke Cole and Sheila Foster describe the institutionalization of environmental justice principles into federal policy as one lasting success of the environmental justice movement. But Cole and Foster view the transformative potential of environmental justice as more critical than specific government programs.
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 2003
In this article, Professor Godsil argues that the Supreme Court should not limit its application ... more In this article, Professor Godsil argues that the Supreme Court should not limit its application of heightened scrutiny to facially neutral government actions motivated by discriminatory intent, but rather, that the Court should apply such scrutiny when the challenged government action expresses contempt or hostility toward racial, ethnic, and gender groups or constitutes them as social inferiors or stigmatized classes. This article builds upon recent scholarship seeking to transplant this form of expressivism from the Establishment Clause to the Equal Protection context. However, this article contends that this scholarship has misconceived the test to be applied. For any expressive theory, the operative step is determining whether a government action sends a proscribed message. Most expressivist scholars have argued that the meaning of government action should be determined from the perspective of a "universal" objective observer; the standard adopted by Justice O'Connor in the Establishment Clause Cases. Professor Godsil argues that a universalist objective observer standard will underserve the goals of expressivism and the Equal Protection Clause by marginalizing the views of those affected by the government action. This article proposes instead that the meaning be determined from the perspective of a reasonable member of the allegedly affected community. This refined expressive harm test will require the judge to empathize with the affected community to determine how a reasonable member of that community would view the challenged action. A reasonable community member standard will also lead to a greater degree of objectivity in judicial decisions because the individual judge's views will not necessarily prevail.
For more than twenty-five years, property scholars have been applying the theorem developed by Ro... more For more than twenty-five years, property scholars have been applying the theorem developed by Ronald Coase and systematized in the now-classic law review article, Property Rules, Liability Rules and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral, by Guido Calabresi and A. Douglas Melamed. More recently, property theorists and proponents of behavioral law and economics have begun to challenge the assumptions stemming from Coase, Calabresi and Melamed and to develop alternative accounts of nuisance and takings theory. This literature has entirely sidestepped, however, the role of race and poverty in the location of polluting industries. Using the story of Waterfront South, a segregated, environmentally beleaguered community in Camden, New Jersey, I explore the historical role of government in creating racially segregated and polluted inner cities. This article's unique contribution is to fashion a remedy to common law nuisance claims that: (1) forces polluters to internalize the harmf...
Author(s): powell, john a; Tropp, Linda R; Goff, Philip Atiba; Godsil, Rachel D | Abstract: In “T... more Author(s): powell, john a; Tropp, Linda R; Goff, Philip Atiba; Godsil, Rachel D | Abstract: In “The Science of Equality Volume 1: Addressing Implicit Bias, Racial Anxiety, and Stereotype Threat in Education and Health Care,” the Perception Institute, a national consortium of social scientists and legal scholars, begins a series of landmark reports to understand this challenge and to provide empirically tested solutions to address it.
We all like to believe that our qualif icat ions determine whether we are invited for job intervi... more We all like to believe that our qualif icat ions determine whether we are invited for job interviews and that our performance dictates whether our employers think well of us. Obviously, employers are better of f if they hire the most qualif ied applicants. And of course, the goals of business and government goals are furthered when managers rate employees according to how well they perform their jobs. Recent research strongly suggests, however, that implicit bias af fects both whether people are invited to interview for jobs, regardless of their qualif icat ions, as well as how their performance is assessed.
Social Science Research Network, 2012
Given the substantial and growing scientific literature on implicit bias, the time has now come t... more Given the substantial and growing scientific literature on implicit bias, the time has now come to confront a critical question: What, if anything, should we do about implicit bias in the courtroom? The author team comprises legal academics, scientists, researchers, and even a sitting federal judge who seek to answer this question in accordance with “behavioral realism.” The Article first provides a succinct scientific introduction to implicit bias, with some important theoretical clarifications that distinguish between explicit, implicit, and structural forms of bias. Next, the article applies the science to two trajectories of bias relevant to the courtroom. One story follows a criminal defendant path; the other story follows a civil employment discrimination path. This application involves not only a focused scientific review but also a step-by-step examination of how criminal and civil trials proceed. Finally, the Article examines various concrete intervention strategies to coun...
During oral argument in the second round of Fisher v. Texas, Chief Justice Roberts asked counsel ... more During oral argument in the second round of Fisher v. Texas, Chief Justice Roberts asked counsel for the University "what unique perspective a minority student brings to physics class." Counsel sidestepped the question, leaving the impression that the presence of Black and Latino students confers an educational benefit only when their presence enhances "diversity discourse." According to the Supreme Court's jurisprudence and contemporary social science, I argue, this impression is wrong. The Court has included within the educational benefits of diversity: “the lessening of racial isolation and stereotypes” and promoting cross-racial understanding, in addition to robust classroom dialogue. This vision is strongly supported by social science research, which reveals that inter-group interaction is crucial to promoting cross-racial understanding — by decreasing the cognitive phenomena of implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat. In addition, racial an...
Fordham Urban Law Journal, 1994
The environmental justice movement has seen some successes. After years of neglect, the federal g... more The environmental justice movement has seen some successes. After years of neglect, the federal government and several states are directing legislative and executive efforts towards reforming siting processes and remedying discriminatory enforcement of environmental regulations. Community opposition in general has proved to be quite powerful in some instances. Since the passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976, there has been only one new siting of a hazardous waste landfill and few new sitings of hazardous waste incinerators. To a lesser extent, municipal solid waste and medical waste incinerators have also been successfully blocked or delayed. However, certain factors behind these successes suggest that procedural reforms of the siting process, though sorely needed, may not provide a complete solution to disparate dumping unless they also address the conflict over the nature of risk and how it is measured. This Article discusses the issues of perception of ris...
Michigan Law Review, 2006
This article explores a line of cases in the Jim Crow era in which courts ruled against white pla... more This article explores a line of cases in the Jim Crow era in which courts ruled against white plaintiffs trying to use common law nuisance doctrine to achieve residential segregation. These "race-nuisance" cases complicate the view of most legal scholarship that state courts during this era openly eschewed the rule of law in service of white supremacy. Instead, the cases provide rich social historical detail showing southern judges wrestling with their competing allegiance to precedent and the white plaintiffs' pursuit of racial exclusivity. Surprisingly to many, the allegiance to precedent generally prevailed. The cases confound prevailing legal theories, particularly new formalism and critical race theory's interest convergence. While superficially supportive, the article illustrates the limitations of formalism's reach by also exploring the related line of racially restrictive covenant cases. Similarly, while many of the cases appear to support white propert...
Fordham Law Review, 2008
Homeownership is in crisis. Millions of families are at risk of foreclosure as they are caught be... more Homeownership is in crisis. Millions of families are at risk of foreclosure as they are caught between declining housing values and rising interest payments on adjustable-rate mortgages. The primary concern for such families is not that they will become homeless - most families who lose their homes could afford to become renters - but rather that they will lose their status as homeowners. For families required to sell their property by the government's use of eminent domain, a similar issue arises, as the 'fair market value' of some homes (the standard measure of compensation) is generally not enough to allow the family to purchase another home. The harm of losing one's status as homeowner has afar-reaching impact at both the individual and collective levels. Property ownership ties one to the larger community in myriad ways. As compared to renters, homeowners - even those with the same income, education, and other socioeconomic characteristics - tend to be more civi...
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Papers by Rachel D Godsil