The Color of Law A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (z-lib.org).epub

Christopher Edley, then dean of the University of California (Berkeley)
School of Law, he offered to host me as a senior fellow at the law school’s
Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy. Although the
position was unpaid (my support came from the Economic Policy Institute),
the Warren Institute provided me with academic library privileges and a
series of wonderfully talented research assistants. I’ll say more about these
terrific students further on, but here I want to stress in the strongest possible
terms that without Dean Edley’s and the Warren Institute’s support, this
book would not have been possible. Thanks, Chris.
The Warren Institute ceased to operate in December 2015. At that point,
the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of
California, led by director john powell and assistant director Stephen
Menendian, enthusiastically agreed to a similar appointment, also with
library privileges and graduate research assistants. Early in my research,
Professor powell was particularly influential when he insisted that I pay
more attention to the implications of the discussion in Jones v. Mayer
regarding the Thirteenth Amendment. I did, and the result should be
apparent.
Collaboration with Stephen Menendian has been especially fruitful, and I
am gratified to be able to thank him. On one occasion, on behalf of a
national group of housing scholars, we collaborated to draft an amicus brief
submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court for the case in which it upheld the use
of a “disparate impact” standard for evaluating violations of the Fair
Housing Act (Texas Dept. of Housing v. Inclusive Communities Project).
Much of our brief drew on an early draft of this book, and Justice Anthony
Kennedy’s majority opinion in June 2015 cited the brief in support.
On several occasions I had the opportunity to make joint presentations
on the themes I was developing in The Color of Law with Sherrilyn Ifill, the
thoughtful, charismatic president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund (LDF). As our collaboration developed, the LDF named me a
fellow of its recently established Thurgood Marshall Institute in April 2016,
and this fellowship supported me in the final editing of the book. I am
grateful for this honor and support to Ms. Ifill and to the other friends and
colleagues I have made at the LDF during this fellowship.
The Color of Law makes the argument that government actions to create
a system of de jure segregation were explicit, never hidden, that they were