Racial Justice and Peace

• Author: Yuvraj Joshi
• Position: Fellow, Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights; Faculty Affiliate, UCLA Promise Institute for Human Rights; Assistant Professor of Law, University of British Columbia Allard School of Law; J.S.D., Yale Law School
• Pages: 1325-1390

Racial Justice and Peace

YUVRAJ JOSHI*

The United States recently saw the largest racial justice protests in its

history. An estimated 15 to 26 million people took to the streets over the

police killings of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, and

countless other Black people. This Article explores how these protests

and their chants of “No Justice! No Peace!”should lead us to reconsider

American equality law.

This Article surfaces legal claims—here called “peace–justice claims”—

that address the relationship between ameliorating racial inequality and

achieving peace. Using unpublished archival documents, it tells the story of

how Americans embroiled in early desegregation debates sought competing

visions of peace that either included or excluded justice. Furthermore, it dem-

onstrates how the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Cooper v. Aaron

arbitrated those claims in favor of integration. This Article also traces how

those claims have evolved and how the Court has used peace and justice con-

siderations to limit rather than advance minority rights. This analysis shows

that intertwined arguments about justice and peace lie at the heart of equal

protection doctrine.

Using sources of both legal and social history to identify peace–justice

claims, this Article contributes to a “new civil rights history,”expanding

the scope of legal actors beyond lawyers and judges to include policy-

makers, social activists, and lay people. Juxtaposing minority claims

with court-developed legal doctrine highlights the Supreme Court’s inad-

equate recognition of the peace–justice interests at stake. Proposing “No

Justice! No Peace!”as a corrective to the law, this Article argues that

courts should recognize the exclusion and estrangement of Black people

* Fellow, Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights; Faculty Affiliate, UCLA Promise Institute for

Human Rights; Assistant Professor of Law, Universityof British Columbia Allard Schoolof Law; J.S.D.,

Yale Law School.©2022, Yuvraj Joshi. This Article benefitedfrom conversations with Kathryn Abrams,

Tendayi Achiume, RebeccaAviel, Josh Blecher-Cohen,Jessica Bulman-Pozen,Khiara Bridges, Guy-Uriel

Charles, Andrew Coan, Emilia Jocelyn-Holt Correa, Dan Epps, Daniel Farber, Catherine Fisk, Laurel

Fletcher, Daniel Harawa, Ben Heath, Luke Herrine, Darren Hutchinson, Osamudia James, Maryam

Jamshidi, Lucas Janes, Olatunde Johnson, Paul Kahn, Andrea Katz, Pauline Kim, Liora Lazarus, Rachel

Lopez, Elliot Mamet, Peter Margulies, Rachel Moran, Sam Moyn, Colleen Murphy, Doug NeJaime, Danieli

Evans Peterman, Ximena Benavides Reverditto, Reva Siegel, Shirin Sinnar, Matiangai Sirleaf, Bat Sparrow,

and Robert Tsai, and with participants at the Association of American Law Schools, Cornell Law School,

Georgetown University Law Center, Harvard Kennedy School, Law and Society Association, National

Conference of Constitutional Law Scholars at the University of Arizona Law, University of British

Columbia Allard School of Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law, UCLA School of Law,

University of Florida Levin College of Law, University of Oxford Faculty of Law, University of Texas

Department of Government, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Yale Institution for Social and Policy

Studies, and Yale Law School. Special thanks to Merran Hergert, Lynn Momprevil, Thea Udwadia, and

Liana Wang for excellent research assistance and to the editors of The Georgetown Law Journal (especially

Agnes Lee and Jesús Rodrı

´guez) for selecting this piece and thoughtful and meticulous editing.

1325

as a basis for minority-protective interpretations of the Constitution.

This attention to peace–justice claims is enriched by insights from

transitional justice, a field that aims to help societies to overcome conflict

and oppression. Although societies require both peace and justice, these

values sometimes appear in tension, leading to what is internationally

known as the “peace versus justice dilemma.”Viewing American legal

cases as sites of this dilemma draws attention to whether courts seek a

“negative peace”based on the suppression of social conflict or a “posi-

tive peace”grounded in the pursuit of social justice. This Article demon-

strates why and how American law should strive for positive peace by

addressing structural inequalities.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION..................................................... 1327

I. PEACE–JUSTICE FRAMEWORKS................................... 1334

A. TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE THEORY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1334

B. RACIALJUSTICEMOVEMENTS............................... 1340

II. PEACE–JUSTICE CLAIMS IN COOPER V.AARON ................... 1347

A. BROWN AND THE SOUTHERN MANIFESTO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1349

B. THELITTLEROCKCRISIS................................... 1350

C. COOPER V. AARON ........................................ 1355

1. District Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1355

2. Court of Appeals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1356

3. Supreme Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1357

III. PEACE–JUSTICE CLAIMS AFTER COOPER V.AARON ................ 1363

A. RACIALINTEGRATION..................................... 1364

B. AFFIRMATIVEACTION..................................... 1368

C. PEACE–JUSTICEIMBALANCE................................ 1372

IV. BETTER JURISPRUDENCE AND NON-COURT-CENTERED PATHS.......... 1378

A. AFFIRMATIVEACTION..................................... 1378

B. VOTINGRIGHTS.......................................... 1381

C. FIRSTAMENDMENT....................................... 1382

1326 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 110:1325

D. FOURTHAMENDMENT..................................... 1384

E. NON-COURT-CENTERED PATHS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1386

CONCLUSION...................................................... 1390

“I pledge my heart and my mind and my body . . . to the achievement of social

peace through social justice.”

—Pledge signed at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963

1

“No Justice! No Peace!”

—Chant at the March on Washington, August 28, 2020

2

INTRODUCTION

Questions of justice and peace are entangled in conversations about social

unrest. In June 2020, an estimated 15 to 26 million Americans took to the streets

over the killings of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, Ahmaud

Arbery, and countless other Black people.

3

Protestors chanting “No Justice! No

Peace!”—a rallying cry for racial justice since the 1980s

4

—demanded a reckon-

ing with white supremacy in the United States.

5

These protestors were over-

whelmingly peaceful in the face of brutal responses by police and white

1. Pledge, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (Aug. 28, 1963) (on file with the Library of

Congress), https://hv.proquest.com/pdfs/001473/001473_019_0528/001473_019_0528_From_1_to_276.

pdf [https://perma.cc/CLW5-YH48].

2. Brakkton Booker, Thousands Gather for March on Washington to Demand Police Reform and

Racial Equality, NPR (Aug. 28, 2020, 4:13 PM), https://www.npr.org/2020/08/28/905914974/

thousands-gather-for-march-on-washington-to-demand-police-reform-and-racial-equa [https://perma.cc/

666K-JSPE].

3. Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui & Jugal K. Patel, Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest

Movement in U.S. History, N.Y. TIMES (July 3, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/

us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

4. Linguist Ben Zimmer traces “No Justice! No Peace! ”to protests following the December 1986

murder of Michael Griffith, a 23-year-old Black man, by a white mob. Ben Zimmer, No Justice, No

Peace,L

ANGUAGE LOG (July 15, 2013, 10:13 AM), https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5249

[https://perma.cc/PB4T-TDCE]. The New York Times first reported on the slogan’s use in March 1987

after a police officer was acquitted for murdering Eleanor Bumpurs, a 66-year-old Black woman with a

disability, in her own home. Mary Connelly & Carlyle C. Douglas, Bumpurs Trial Ends in Acquittal and

Anger, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 1, 1987, at E6. A few months later, a profile of activist Sonny Carson described

“No Justice! No Peace!”as the rallying cry for his cause, quoting him as saying: “You don’tgive us any

justice, then there ain’t going to be no peace.”Dena Kleiman, Limelight Shines Again on Sonny Carson,

N.Y.TIMES, July 6, 1987, at 33.

5. See infra Section I.B. Although this Article concerns the United States, the 2020 protests and their

aftermath had important transnational dimensions. See generally E. Tendayi Achiume, Transnational

Racial (In)Justice in Liberal Democratic Empire, 134 HARV.L.REV. F. 378 (2020) (describing

transnational advocacy in the wake of George Floyd’s murder).

2022] RACIAL JUSTICE AND PEACE 1327