Martin, Ghana, and Global Legal Studies

This brief essay uses global legal studies to reconsider Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.\u27s activism after Gayle v. Browder. During this undertheorized portion of King\u27s career, the civil rights leader traveled the world and gained a greater appreciation for comparative legal and political analysis. This essay explores King\u27s first trip abroad and demonstrates how King\u27s close study of Kwame Nkrumah\u27s approaches to law reform helped to lay the foundation for watershed moments in King\u27s own life. In To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr., renowned civil rights scholar and author, Adam Fairclough, offered penetrating and important assessments of Dr. King\u27s civil rights activism from 1957 to 1959. Fairclough asserted that the Montgomery Bus Boycott captured the world\u27s imagination, with King becoming a figure of national and international significance, easily overshadowing the South\u27s other black leadership. Yet after the U.S. Supreme Court\u27s decision in Gayle v. Browder, Fairclough rightfully notes, King attempted, but was unable, to spark Montgomery-style, mass protests elsewhere. The minister\u27s newly established Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) also had serious difficulty in sustaining a formidable political agenda. King\u27s inexperience with organizational management, and more importantly, the organization\u27s loose, top-down structure undermined the SCLC\u27s effectiveness and eventually led to the group\u27s decline. The late 1950s, in Fairclough\u27s view, were the civil rights leader\u27s fallow years. In the wake of Gayle, the racial icon traveled the globe. In 1957, King flew to Accra to celebrate Ghana\u27s independence as a guest of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah. But King\u27s first trip abroad took him far beyond the festivities in Accra. The minister\u27s itinerary was stacked with other foreign capitals. King trekked across West Africa, stopping over in Monrovia, Dakar, and Kano, and he crisscrossed Western Europe, exploring Lisbon, London, Paris, Rome, and Geneva. In 1959, King made a pilgrimage to the land of Gandhi at the request of India\u27s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. And again, King used the foreign leader\u27s invitation as a chance to tour the world. Before King returned to the United States, he ventured to Karachi, Athens, Beirut, Jerusalem, and Cairo. King\u27s overseas travels allowed him to participate in major global events, provided him respite from the day-today toils of the Southern struggle, and gave him the ability to forge stronger transnational ties with other liberation movements. And while King\u27s foreign stays are underappreciated, his close study of these nations\u27 legal and political systems are even more so. These travels created new opportunities for the recently minted Ph.D. to examine foreign law and affairs and apply the lessons he learned abroad to the burgeoning civil rights at home. Martin, Ghana, and Global Legal Studies is part of a larger project which details King\u27s interest in comparative law and politics. This brief essay examines how King used Nkrumah\u27s early approach to constitutional politics in the former Gold Coast to frame his own commitment to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Such a reappraisal of King\u27s experiences in Ghana, in turn, offers a fresh understanding of King\u27s fallow years

Of Protest and Property: An Essay in Pursuit of Justice for Breonna Taylor

In March 2020, Louisville police officers fatally shot Breanna Taylor in her apartment while executing a no-knock warrant. There was great outrage over the killing of the innocent woman, and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron led an investigation of the officer-involved shooting. Activists protested in Louisville after Taylor\u27s killing, and when Cameron\u27s investigation appeared stalled, these activists even conducted a sit-in on Cameron\u27s front lawn. They demanded immediate justice for Taylor. Cameron sharply responded, lecturing the activists on how to achieve justice. He contended that neither trespassing on private property nor escalation in tactics could advance the cause of justice. Cameron\u27s bold assertion invites a discussion of how civil rights activists have and continue to use trespassing and escalation to pursue justice. This Essay explores the relationship between civil rights and property rights and finds parallels between the sit-in movement of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter Movement. This Essay also finds parallels between Cameron\u27s criticisms of the Black Lives Matter Movement and criticisms of the sit-in movement of the 1960s. The Essay concludes by suggesting paths forward in the struggle to find justice for Taylor

Civil Rights as Human Rights

During the early 1960s, government officials in the U.S. Department of State grappled with the following quandary: How could the United States shape and lead a racially diverse world while still denying rights to Black Americans domestically? One way the State Department set out to resolve this disconnect was through diplomacy and negotiations at the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, which crafted the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Although extensive documentation exists on the exchanges between the Sub-Commission, the State Department, and the U.S. civil rights community, existing literature fails to examine these rich exchanges in sufficient detail. This Article explores how the United States shaped international human rights regimes through the Sub- Commission, and, in turn, how international affairs shaped the U.S. civil rights movement. One underexplored aspect of the interplay between the U.S. civil rights movement and the international human rights regime is how the State Department interfaced with the Sub-Commission. By exploring the exchanges between the two high-profile civil rights lawyers the State Department sent to negotiate with the Sub-Commission and other actors at the United Nations, this Article highlights the tension between these lawyers’ values and the U.S. diplomatic agenda. This tension in turn magnifies how the U.S. civil rights movement and the international human rights regime shaped one another. The history of how the U.S. delegation sought to imbue the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination with U.S. values remains central to this Article’s discussion. And, at the heart of this contribution was the importation of the state action doctrine. Thus, the doctrine that had vexed civil rights activists’ domestic litigation for decades became enshrined in the international human rights regime. This Article explores the role that the state action doctrine played in the reciprocal relationship between the U.S. civil rights movement and the international human rights regime

Corporate Racial Responsibility

The 2020 mass protests in response to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor had a significant impact on American corporations. Several large public companies pledged an estimated $50 billion to advancing racial equity and committed to various initiatives to internally improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. While many applauded corporations’ willingness to engage with racial issues, some considered it further evidence of corporate capitulation to extreme progressivism at shareholders’ expense. Others, while thinking corporate engagement was long overdue, critiqued corporate commitment as insincere. Drawing on historical evidence surrounding the passage of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this Article engages with the debate on corporate “racial” responsibility to demonstrate that corporate engagement on race is not new. Indeed, during the struggle to desegregate public accommodations, corporate social responsibility was invoked to encourage voluntary desegregation and avoid federal intervention. Segregation was good business for some; for others, maintaining white supremacy justified any pecuniary losses. While this Article argues that corporations have a role to play in achieving racial equity, it cautions against reliance on corporate social responsibility to advance racial equality. Past and current iterations of corporate racial responsibility have often represented a market-fundamentalist, value-extractive approach to racial equity that reifies existing racial hierarchies. By valuing racial equity in terms of its potential profitability, corporate racial responsibility can subordinate human dignity to wealth maximization. This Article argues for a more meaningful corporate racial responsibility that addresses the structures and laws undergirding racial inequities within corporations and our larger society

An international effort towards developing standards for best practices in analysis, interpretation and reporting of clinical genome sequencing results in the CLARITY Challenge

There is tremendous potential for genome sequencing to improve clinical diagnosis and care once it becomes routinely accessible, but this will require formalizing research methods into clinical best practices in the areas of sequence data generation, analysis, interpretation and reporting. The CLARITY Challenge was designed to spur convergence in methods for diagnosing genetic disease starting from clinical case history and genome sequencing data. DNA samples were obtained from three families with heritable genetic disorders and genomic sequence data were donated by sequencing platform vendors. The challenge was to analyze and interpret these data with the goals of identifying disease-causing variants and reporting the findings in a clinically useful format. Participating contestant groups were solicited broadly, and an independent panel of judges evaluated their performance. RESULTS: A total of 30 international groups were engaged. The entries reveal a general convergence of practices on most elements of the analysis and interpretation process. However, even given this commonality of approach, only two groups identified the consensus candidate variants in all disease cases, demonstrating a need for consistent fine-tuning of the generally accepted methods. There was greater diversity of the final clinical report content and in the patient consenting process, demonstrating that these areas require additional exploration and standardization. CONCLUSIONS: The CLARITY Challenge provides a comprehensive assessment of current practices for using genome sequencing to diagnose and report genetic diseases. There is remarkable convergence in bioinformatic techniques, but medical interpretation and reporting are areas that require further development by many groups

Civil Rights as Human Rights

During the early 1960s, government officials in the U.S. Department of State grappled with the following quandary: How could the United States shape and lead a racially diverse world while still denying rights to Black Americans domestically? One way the State Department set out to resolve this disconnect was through diplomacy and negotiations at the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, which crafted the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Although extensive documentation exists on the exchanges between the Sub-Commission, the State Department, and the U.S. civil rights community, existing literature fails to examine these rich exchanges in sufficient detail. This Article explores how the United States shaped international human rights regimes through the Sub- Commission, and, in turn, how international affairs shaped the U.S. civil rights movement. One underexplored aspect of the interplay between the U.S. civil rights movement and the international human rights regime is how the State Department interfaced with the Sub-Commission. By exploring the exchanges between the two high-profile civil rights lawyers the State Department sent to negotiate with the Sub-Commission and other actors at the United Nations, this Article highlights the tension between these lawyers’ values and the U.S. diplomatic agenda. This tension in turn magnifies how the U.S. civil rights movement and the international human rights regime shaped one another. The history of how the U.S. delegation sought to imbue the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination with U.S. values remains central to this Article’s discussion. And, at the heart of this contribution was the importation of the state action doctrine. Thus, the doctrine that had vexed civil rights activists’ domestic litigation for decades became enshrined in the international human rights regime. This Article explores the role that the state action doctrine played in the reciprocal relationship between the U.S. civil rights movement and the international human rights regime

Corporate Racial Responsibility

The 2020 mass protests in response to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor had a significant impact on American corporations. Several large public companies pledged an estimated $50 billion to advancing racial equity and committed to various initiatives to internally improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. While many applauded corporations’ willingness to engage with racial issues, some considered it further evidence of corporate capitulation to extreme progressivism at shareholders’ expense. Others, while thinking corporate engagement was long overdue, critiqued corporate commitment as insincere. Drawing on historical evidence surrounding the passage of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this Article engages with the debate on corporate “racial” responsibility to demonstrate that corporate engagement on race is not new. Indeed, during the struggle to desegregate public accommodations, corporate social responsibility was invoked to encourage voluntary desegregation and avoid federal intervention. Segregation was good business for some; for others, maintaining white supremacy justified any pecuniary losses. While this Article argues that corporations have a role to play in achieving racial equity, it cautions against reliance on corporate social responsibility to advance racial equality. Past and current iterations of corporate racial responsibility have often represented a market-fundamentalist, value-extractive approach to racial equity that reifies existing racial hierarchies. By valuing racial equity in terms of its potential profitability, corporate racial responsibility can subordinate human dignity to wealth maximization. This Article argues for a more meaningful corporate racial responsibility that addresses the structures and laws undergirding racial inequities within corporations and our larger society