UC Law to host lecture on the Fourth Amendment, racial inequality

Devon W. Carbado, associate vice chancellor of BruinX for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at UCLA and the Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law at UCLA School, will discuss how Fourth Amendment law produces and legitimizes racial inequality in his lecture “Constitutionalizing Racial Inequality.”   

The event will be held at 12:15 P.M., Wednesday, April 3, in Room 114 at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. This event is the 2019 Robert S. Marx lecture.

Much of the scholarly and public debate about race and the U.S. Constitution focuses on the Fourteenth Amendment. Perhaps this should not surprise us. After all, the Fourteenth Amendment contains three clauses that bear directly on the persistent problem of racial inequality: the Citizenship Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause.

However, the Fourteenth Amendment is not the only constitutional context where questions of racial equality are doctrinally negotiated; the Fourth Amendment is another.

Professor Carbado’s presentation will highlight the profound and disturbing ways in which Fourth Amendment law produces and legitimizes racial inequality. Significantly, the story he will tell is not first and foremost about intentional racist behavior. Nor is his account centrally about implicit racial bias.

Broadly articulated, Carbado’s aim is to map the structural features of Fourth Amendment law—in clear and accessible terms—and explain how they combine to create a constitutional field in which racial inequality can legally grow.

The Robert S. Marx Lecture was established by Judge Marx to enrich the curriculum of the College of Law by bringing to the law school the scholarship and learning of eminent persons in various fields of law. Judge Marx was a graduate of the College of Law and an outstanding member of the Cincinnati Bar for 51 years. The lecture was endowed in 1989 through the generosity of the Robert S. Marx Testamentary Trustees.