Ronen Avraham & Kimberly Yuracko, Torts and Discrimination, 78 Ohio St. L.J. 661 (2017)Addresses how tort law's remedial damage scheme perpetuates existing racial and gender inequalities by compensating individuals (especially children) based on their race and gender and additionally creates creates ex ante incentives for potential tortfeasors to engage in future discriminatory targeting of women and minorities.
Martha Chamallas and Lucinda M. Finley, eds. Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tort Opinions (Cambridge University Press, 2020) (online)By rewriting both canonical and lesser-known tort cases from a feminist perspective, this volume exposes gender and racial bias in how courts have categorized and evaluated harm stemming from pre-natal malpractice, pregnancy loss, domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, invasion of privacy, and the award of damages. . . .Bringing this implicit bias to the surface can make law students, and lawyers and judges who craft arguments and apply tort doctrines, more aware of inequalities of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation.
Martha Chamallas, "Race and Tort Law," FORTHCOMING in Oxford Handbook on Race and the Law (Khiara Bridges, Devon Carbado, & Emily Houh, eds.) (Available on SSRN)"This overview of the contemporary “race and torts” legal landscape borrows frames from critical race and interdisciplinary scholarship to organize the key cases, issues and debates into four, somewhat overlapping categories: (1) racial discrimination, harassment and insult; (2) stereotyping and racialized contexts; (3) racial devaluation; and (4) racially disparate effects. The portrait that emerges is of a flawed system that tends to reproduce rather than ameliorate racialized harms, while never quite losing its potential to change course and advance racial justice."
[TEACHING GUIDE] Cardozo's Law Teaching Guide: Module 11 on Reparations & Tort Legal TheoryModule 11 explores the ways in which reparations, whether compensatory or symbolic, may offer restitution and restorative justice to the Black community in the United States. Tort legal theory is utilized to present an understanding, framework, and establishment of the causal link between the enslavement of Black Americans and the ongoing systemic racism, injustice, and inequality that Black Americans face today.
Possibilities for Additional Student Reading / Listening