Carlton Waterhouse, Abandon All Hope Ye That Enter?  Equal Protection, Title VI, and the Divine Comedy of Environmental Justice, 20 Fordham Envtl. L. Rev. 51 (2009).

• Summary: “This article explores the attempts to use civil rights law as a means of addressing racial bias, perceived and otherwise, in environmental decision making. Its primary contribution is its development and use of an “environmental racism” rubric to explain why civil rights based challenges to pollution permits and waste facility siting decisions have uniformly failed in the federal courts. Pending congressional legislation, the article concludes, offers little assistance to community members concerned about the effects of additional pollution sources in their neighborhoods. If congress intends to aide communities facing racially discriminatory and adverse effects from polluting facilities the article maintains that comprehensive legislative action is needed. At a minimum, the article contends, Congress should legislatively overturn Alexander v. Sandoval in the environmental context and allow private citizens to enforce EPA’s Title VI regulations.“

Chris Guthrie,  Sheri Lynn Johnson, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Hon. Andrew J. Wistrich, Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Judges?, 84 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1195 (2009).

• Summary: This Article “report[s] the results of the first study of implicit racial bias among judges. [It]  set[s] out to explore whether judges hold implicit biases to the same extent the general population and to determine whether those biases correlate with their decisionmaking in court. [The] results are both alarming and heartening: (1) Judges hold implicit racial biases; (2) These biases can influence their judgment; (3) Judges can, at least in some instances, compensate for their implicit biases.”