ABF.

Research Advancing Justice

Home > Archives for Articles

Resource Types: Articles

This article details the history of Black police officers in Chicago organizing to combat the department’s routine mistreatment of the city’s Black communities.

Carol Heimer explores the role of regulated organizations in promoting regulatory success in the context of global HIV treatment and research.

Tera Agyepong argues against the practice of sentencing children to life without parole sentences in this article.

This article, featuring Laura Beth Nielsen, examines the financial strategies of public interest law organizations and how they impact social change efforts.

This article, featuring Carol Heimer, explores the challenges faced by healthcare providers in HIV clinics as they navigate the protocol of regulatory agencies.

In this article John Donohue III compares the national response to gun violence in Australia and the United States.

In this article, Susan Shapiro explores conflicts in the relationships between patients and surrogate decision-makers for medical and end-of-life care.

This paper, featuring Elizabeth Mertz, studies law professors’ perceptions of tenure fairness, revealing differing opinions based on gender and race.

This article, with Laura Beth Nielsen, interviews judges, lawyers, and litigants to examine how the context of employment discrimination litigation affects the perception of justice and fairness.

This article examines the racial disparities in legal representation for plaintiffs in employment civil rights cases.

  • Articles

Race and Representation: Racial Disparities in Legal Representation for Employment Civil Rights Plaintiffs

Laura Beth Nielsen, Robert L. Nelson, Amy Myrick and Laura Beth Nielsen
Protecting Rights and Accessing Justice
2012

From New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy 

Philip Jacobson was a thirty-four-year-old African American man working as an administrator at a government printing plant. After a series of incidents with managers and several denied promotion requests, he became convinced that he was the victim of discrimination. Mr. Jacobson decided to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and later filed a Title VII discrimination claim in federal court. But like a surprisingly high percentage of plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases, he went to court without a lawyer. Long after his case had terminated, Mr. Jacobson believed that it was still pending and that he was merely waiting for a response from the court. Without a lawyer, he lacked basic knowledge of how to advance his claim and came away feeling that the legal system had no interest in serving the goals of people like himself.

Mr. Jacobson’s experience is not unique. This article uses statistical analysis to show that minority plaintiffs in employment discrimination lawsuits—in particular African Americans—are much more likely than white plaintiffs to file without a lawyer. Furthermore, the article shows that pro se plaintiffs tend to misunderstand their legal issues and, like Mr. Jacobson, feel that the courts have failed them. Remarkably, access to justice approaches have largely overlooked race, instead focusing primarily on poverty as a barrier to finding a lawyer. This article fills that gap. It shows that race matters in representation rates and examines possible reasons for this ignored but troubling disparity.