The DC@UB Law Faculty Contributions to Books collection includes information on books, book chapters, encyclopedia entries and other contributions published in books by all current and emeritus University at Buffalo School of Law faculty members. Links to purchase books are included where the books are still in print. Full text chapters are included where publisher policies permit their inclusion.
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Theorizing Progressive Black Masculinities
Athena D. Mutua
Published as Chapter 1 in Progessive Black Masculinities, Athena D. Mutua, ed.
In this Chapter, I propose a definition of progressive black masculinities as the unique and innovative performances of the masculine self that, on the one hand, personally eschew and ethically and actively stand against social structures of domination. And. on the other hand, they validate and empower black humanity, in all its variety, as part of the diverse and multicultural humanity of others in the global family. I argue that this definition is grounded in the twin concepts of progressive blackness and progressive masculinities. I suggest that both of these are political projects committed to eradicating relations of domination that constrain and reduce human potential. However, each project is directed toward different but overlapping groups of people - black people and men – and focuses on the edification and empowerment of black people as part of a larger antiracist struggle and part of a still larger antidomination or antisubordination project. The project of progressive masculinities is similar but centers its efforts on reorienting men’s concepts and practices away from ideal masculinity, which, by definition, requires the domination of men over women, children, and, yes, other subordinate, or “weaker” men as Patricia Hill Collins examines.
Black men are the focal point of this project. I suggest two basic points in discussing these projects. First that black men’s embrace of ideal masculinity not only hurts black women, but also hurts black men and black communities as a whole. Second, I suggest that black men are not only oppressed by racism but their oppression is gendered. In other worlds, they are oppressed by gendered racism.
The first part of this chapter lays out my tentative definition of progressive black masculinities. It then explores the ethical component of the project of progressive blackness. The section on the American Masculine Ideal, seeks to explain in some detail what the masculine ideal is, how it operates as part of the sex-gender system, the way in which boys are socialized into it, and its relationship to the patriarchal order as a site of power. Here I argue that the central feature of masculinity is the domination and the oppression of others; namely women, children, and other subordinated men. The section draws on insights from feminist theory, masculinities studies, and gay and queer theory as a way of defining the project of progressive masculinities.
The second part of the chapter analyzes a number of theories that seek to answer the question of where black men stand in relationship to hegemonic masculinity given their subjugation by racial oppression. Are they privileged by gender or oppressed by gender? Here the case is made that they both benefit and are disadvantaged by gender. The focus is the gendered racial oppression of black men. Specifically, the section looks at three theories: 1), black nationalist insights that suggest that racism precludes male privileges to black men; 2), intersectionality theory, which initially seemed to posit that black men are privileged by gender and oppressed by race; and 3) multidimensionality theory, which recognizes that black men are not homogeneous but rather are diverse by class, sexuality, religion, and other systems of subordination, and are seen as a single multidimensional positionality.
The final parts of the chapter suggest reasons why black men should engage in a project of progressive black masculinities. It looks at the political and intellectual projects of various groups concerned with the welfare of black people, including black nationalism; Afrocentricity; black feminist thought; black gay and lesbian theory, critical race theory; and black transformationalist ideas, as well as, relying on the experiential knowledge and history of black people.
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Political Parties in Transitions: The Kenyan Experience
Makau wa Mutua
Published as Chapter 8 in Political Succession in East Africa: In Search for a Limited Leadership, Chris Maina Peter & Fritz Kopsieker, eds.
Political parties, as the sole organs that rule the state, must understand, advance, and defend the country’s national interests. Although political parties will differ in ideology and philosophy, they nevertheless must espouse and abide by core national interests. Many East African states, including Kenya, lack a progressive-or even a clear unambiguous – political party’s law that would set strict and fair criteria to govern political parties. The lessons to be drawn from the Kenyan experience are several and include the observation that political parties in East Africa are generally fragile, lack a national outlook, are not driven by clearly differing ideologies in the context of the same state, and woefully lack a viable resource base. But in general, even with these debilitating factors, political parties seem to be committed, at least rhetorically, to the creation of liberal democratic, open market states. This orientation represents the consensus of elites in the region. The problem has been the inability of the elites to translate these aspirations into reality because of the countervailing interests entrenched in corruption, ethnic politics, narrow personal agendas, and underdeveloped economies.
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Beyond Competitive Victimhood: Abandoning Arguments That Black Women or Black Men Are Worse Off
Stephanie L. Phillips
Published in Progressive Black Masculinities, Athena D. Mutua, ed.
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Looseleaf Services Exercises
Elizabeth G. Adelman
Published in Legal Research Exercises Following the Bluebook, Nancy P. Johnson & Susan T. Phillips, eds.
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"An Injury to One…": Transnational Labor Solidarity and the Role of Domestic Law
James B. Atleson
Published as Chapter 8 in Workers' Rights as Human Rights, James A. Gross, ed.
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The Corps Administrative Appeal Process
Kim Diana Connolly
Published as Chapter 11 in Wetlands Law and Policy: Understanding Section 404, Kim Diana Connolly, Stephen M. Johnson & Douglas R. Williams, eds.
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Law and Religion: Law and Religion in Buddhism
Rebecca Redwood French
Published in Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition.
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Power, Autonomy, and Politics under Local Government Charters in the United States
James A. Gardner
Published in Statuty jednostek samorządu terytorialnego : regulacje Europejskie i Amerykańskie [Local Government Charters : European and American Regulations], Wieslaw Kisiel, ed.
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Dartmouth College v. Woodward
Alfred S. Konefsky
Published in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, second edition, Kermit L. Hall, ed.
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Courts in American Popular Culture
Lynn M. Mather
Published as Chapter 9 in The Judicial Branch, Kermit L. Hall & Kevin T. McGuire, eds.
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Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia
Lynn M. Mather
Published in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, second edition, Kermit L. Hall, ed.
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Cameras in Courtrooms
Lynn M. Mather and S. L. Alexander
Published in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, second edition, Kermit L. Hall, ed.
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Deconstructing the State–Market Divide: The Rhetoric of Regulation from Workers' Compensation to the World Trade Organization
Martha T. McCluskey
Published in Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus: Gender, Law, and Society, Martha A. Fineman & Terence Dougherty, eds.
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The Politics of Economics in Welfare Reform
Martha T. McCluskey
Published in Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus: Gender, Law, and Society, Martha A. Fineman & Terence Dougherty, eds.
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Collateral Civil Penalties as Techniques of Social Policy
Christopher Mele and Teresa A. Miller
Published as Chapter 1 in Civil Penalties, Social Consequences, Christopher Mele & Teresa A. Miller, eds.
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El Litigio Supranacional de los Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales: Avances y Retrocesos en el Sistema Interamericano
Tara J. Melish
Published in Los Derechos Económicos, Sociales Y Culturales.
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By Any Means Necessary: Collateral Civil Penalties of Non-U.S. Citizens and the War on Terror
Teresa A. Miller
Published as Chapter 4 in Civil Penalties, Social Consequences, Christopher Mele & Teresa A. Miller, eds.
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Federal Wetlands Regulation: An Overview
Douglas R. Williams and Kim Diana Connolly
Published as Chapter 1 in Wetlands Law and Policy: Understanding Section 404, Kim Diana Connolly, Stephen M. Johnson & Douglas R. Williams, eds.
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The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994
Lucinda M. Finley
Published in Major Acts of Congress, Brian K. Landsberg, ed.
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The Story of Roe v. Wade: From a Garage Sale for Women's Lib, to the Supreme Court, to Political Turmoil
Lucinda M. Finley
Published in Constitutional Law Stories, Michael C. Dorf, ed.
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Workers' Compensation
Martha T. McCluskey
Published in Poverty in the United States : An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, and Policy, Gwendolyn Mink & Alice O’Connor, eds.
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Law and Constitutionalism in the Mirror of Non- Governmental Standards: Comments on Harm Schepel
Errol E. Meidinger
Published as Chapter 10 in Transnational Governance and Constitutionalism, Christian Joerges, Inger-Johanne Sand & Gunther Teubner, eds.
This paper examines some of the potential constitutional implications of the growing reliance on, and apparent increasing legitimacy, of non-state standard setting, as documented in the work of Harm Schepel. It argues, among other things, that private standard setting increasingly exhibits the procedural characteristics of public law processes; that increasing reliance is being placed on the invocation of principles to achieve a modicum of regulatory coordination; and that the reliance on private standard setting, which in fact has many “public” elements, may be changing what it means to be “public,” and indeed what it means to be constitutional. The paper concludes by suggesting that these developments may challenge the conventional definition of what it means to be a legal scholar.
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African Human Rights Organizations: Questions of Context and Legitimacy
Makau wa Mutua
Published as Chapter 13 in Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa, Gaby Oré Aguilar & Felipe Gómez Isa, eds.
The human rights movement is largely the product of the horrors of World War II. The development of its normative content and structure is the direct result of the abominations committed by the Third Reich during that war. Drawing on the Western liberal tradition, the human rights movement arose primarily to control and contain state action against the individual. It is ironic that it was the victors of the war, most of whom held colonies in Africa, who determined and prevailed upon the United Nations to give form and content to the human rights movement. It is this exclusionary beginning and lack of genuine universality – the absence of major cultures and geographically specific historical perspectives – that are the source of serious tensions within the human rights movement today. This chapter examines the problems raised by the transplantation of this movement – which is uniquely a creature of the North – to Africa and the prospects for viable nongovernmental human rights organizations (NGOs) on the continent. There is no future for the human rights movements in Africa unless it can secure domestic ideological, financial, and moral support from interested constituencies.
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Proselytism and Cultural Integrity
Makau wa Mutua
Published as Chapter 28 in Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook, Tore Lindholm, W. Cole Durham Jr. & Bahia G. Tahzib-Lie, eds.
On March 12, 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a historic statement in which the Catholic Church publicly acknowledged for the first time some of the gross human rights violations that it has committed, perpetrated, condoned, or tolerated over its two thousand year history. While a step in the right direction, the confession and plea for forgiveness failed to address the basic contradictions between proselytizing, universalist faiths and indigenous religions and cultures, and the underlying arrogant and inflexible assumption of the moral, ethical, and racial superiority of the former over the latter. It is this vexed relationship between imperial faiths and the indigenous beliefs and moral universes of non-white, non-European, and non-Arabic peoples of Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas that is subject of this inquiry. Using Africa as an illustration, this chapter deconstructs the meaning of the freedom of religion or belief at the point of conflict between the universalist faiths and African religions. It argues that the meeting of the two universes resulted in cultural genocide. It problematizes the concept of the right to the free exercise of religion, which includes the right to proselytize in the presumed marketplace of religions.
