Milwaukee’s Residential Segregation – It’s Not Simply Black and White

The Milwaukee metropolitan area is taking what seems to be its annual beating in the media because of its racially segregated housing patterns.  According to a new report from the Brookings Institution based on 2005-09 census data, the City of Milwaukee and the surrounding area including Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha Counties is virtually tied for first  (or last!) with Detroit and New York City for the highest degree of black-white residential segregation.  A second study conducted by John Logan of Brown University ranked Milwaukee second in residential segregation by race to only the New York City metropolitan area.  Newark, Detroit, and Chicago were next on Logan’s list.

To what extent are the troubling rankings and the patterns to which they point truly based on race?  American racism is hardly dead and buried, but in our society race often obscures the equally pernicious workings of socioeconomic class inequality. 

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New Issues of Marquette Law Review

Two recently published issues of the Marquette Law Review are now available at the Law Review’s website.  Issue 3 of Volume 93 features a lead article by Carol Necole Brown on racial discrimination in the home mortgage market.  Issue 4 features papers presented at the Law School’s Legacies of Lincoln Conference, as well as Joshua Dressler’s Barrock Lecture on feminist critiques of self-defense law.  The full tables of contents appear after the jump.  Congratulations to the editors! 

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Speech Rights of Public Employees: Contextualizing Garcetti

Since its recognition of the right of public employees to speak on matters of public concern in Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968), the Supreme Court has proven less than generous in protecting that right.  Of particular importance, the Supreme Court held in Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), that if employees speak pursuant to their official work duties, they are not speaking as “citizens,” and their speech enjoys no First Amendment protection.  The holding thus substantially restricts constitutional safeguards for government whistleblowers.

Paul Secunda helpfully places Garcetti‘s formalism in a broader jurisprudential context in a new paper on SSRN, “Neoformalism and the Reemergence of the Rights/Privilege Distinction in Public Employment Law.”  

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