race/ethnicity

Australian Broadcasting Co. features Georgia Law Professor Dennis and new coauthored book, “Rap Lyrics on Trial”

A just-published article at ABC News, a digital publication of the Australian Broadcasting Co., features Georgia Law Professor Andrea L. Dennis (right), who holds the law school’s John Byrd Martin Chair of Law.

The article poses this headline question:  “Can violent rap lyrics be evidence of criminality or does the law misunderstand music’s biggest genre?” In seeking an answer, ABC music & pop culture reporter Paul Donoughue focuses on the new book Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America (The New Press 2019), which Dennis, a criminal law expert, has coauthored with University of Richmond Liberal Arts Professor Erik Nielson.

The ABC article notes that the coauthors identified more than “500 cases in the US alone of rap lyrics being used in criminal trials, at times leading to inappropriate or wrongful convictions,” and continues:

“Few would say Johnny Cash’s famous lyric ‘I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die’ was evidence of the country singer’s murderous leanings, they write.

“‘It is quite clear to us that this [rap] is the only fictional art form that is used in this way,’ Professor Dennis said, adding that race was an essential factor in the story.

“There are very limited examples of it being appropriate, Professor Dennis said. For example, when a lyric accurately describes a specific crime.

“‘Usually, what’s happening is the lyrics are somewhat generic — talking about general crime or very common types of behaviour that almost any rap artist might talk about,’ she said.”

Donoghue further compares the U.S. situation to that in Australia, where speech protections are less strong but where no similar prosecution has yet taken place.

The full Australian article is available here; Dennis’ book, here.

Jane Addams and Belva Ann Lockwood, et al., the newest members of ASIL

A warm welcoming of new members highlighted the recent annual meeting of the American Society of International Law.

Those welcomed included two luminaries – a Nobel Peace Prizewinner and a U.S. Presidential candidate – plus untold others, as reflected in this resolution, adopted by ASIL’s General Assembly:

RESOLVED,

That the American Society of International Law, wishing to provide recognition and posthumous redress to women who were excluded from membership in the Society during its early years, hereby confers membership on JANE ADDAMS, BELVA ANN LOCKWOOD, and any other women whose applications for membership were denied from 1906-1921.

FURTHER RESOLVED,

That the Society should undertake additional research to determine which members of other groups also were excluded from membership over the course of the Society’s history, and merit similar redress.

ASIL President Lucinda A. Low (left) introduced the resolutions, one of her last acts before handing the presidency to Professor Sean D. Murphy. Low, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, acted in response to a member inquiry – an inquiry prompted, as Low told ASIL members, by “International Law and the Future of Peace,” the speech I gave upon receiving the 2013 Prominent Woman in International Law award of ASIL’s Women in International Law Interest Group. As I indicated in that speech, original credit is owed to yet another ASIL President: Professor Alona Evans (below left), the 1st woman elected to lead the Society, in 1980, her tenure cut short by her death at age 63 that same year.

Six years earlier, Evans and Carol Per Lee Plumb had published “Women and the American Society of International Law” in the American Journal of International Law. They reported that ASIL, founded in 1906, had refused women’s applications for membership until 1921, the year after the U.S. Constitution was amended to give women the right to vote. Applicants before that time included:

► Lockwood (1830-1917) (top, middle), an attorney-activist who gained admittance to the District of Columbia bar in 1873 thanks to the intervention of U.S. President Ulysses Grant. Thereafter, she became the 1st woman to appear on an official ballot as a candidate for U.S. President, and also the 1st to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

► Addams (1860-1935) (top, right), the Chicago settlement house leader whose achievements including chairing the 1915 International Congress of Women at The Hague and serving and the 1st President of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She would earn the Peace Prize in 1931.

According to Evans’ co-authored article, when Addams sought ASIL membership, she was sent a letter in which she was “invited, instead, to subscribe to the Journal ‘for the same amount as the annual dues ….’” That letter constitutes one of the few remaining records of such applications; it is for this reason that the 2018 Resolution refers to all women, known and unknown, who were denied membership.

Similarly lacking is evidence of how members of other groups fared in ASIL. (The sole African-American person elected ASIL President, C. Clyde Ferguson Jr., served just before Evans.) The Society has further resolved to seek this information and grant redress.

As for Evans, President Low indicated that the Society is considering how best to honor her legacy. These resolutions surely constitute a superb 1st step.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)

Honoring Judge Ward, rights pioneer

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Horace T. Ward, a human rights pioneer, died at age 88 over the weekend in Atlanta.

Described by the New Georgia Encyclopedia as “the first African American to challenge the racially discriminatory practices at the University of Georgia.” To be precise, he sought, unsuccessfully, to study law at the university. The law school paid tribute to him by way of this statement, issued today:

“We at the University of Georgia School of Law mourn the passing of a legal giant, the Honorable Horace Taliaferro Ward. A native of LaGrange, Georgia, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College and a master’s degree from Atlanta University before applying to Georgia Law in 1950. His application was denied, and it would be eleven years before the University of Georgia admitted African Americans as students. In 2014, the University conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree upon Ward – by then, a distinguished federal judge who had represented Martin Luther King, Jr. and others as a civil rights attorney, served in the U.S. Army in Korea, and been a Georgia state legislator. We at Georgia Law remain grateful for Judge Ward’s gracious acceptance of this belated and well-deserved recognition, and we express our sincere condolences to his family.”

(Above, a screenshot from a video of the May 9, 2014, commencement ceremony: Judge Horace T. Ward accepts honorary Doctor of Laws degree from University of Georgia President Jere Morehead, as Rebecca White, then Georgia Law’s dean, looks on. Behind Ward is Maurice Daniels, dean of the university’s School of Social Work and author of a 2001 biography of the judge.)