Explaining Supreme Court Policymaking in Civil Rights: The Influence of the Solicitor General, 1953–2002

What factors explain Supreme Court policymaking in civil rights cases? Despite the importance of this question of law and policy, few empirical studies have explored the problem on the area of racial and ethnic discrimination. This study seeks to fill this gap by assessing the importance of the solicitor general, the federal government's representative before the Supreme Court, as a litigant and in the filings of amicus curiae briefs. The findings confirm that the solicitor general's presence in civil rights cases does matter when explaining whether the Supreme Court reaches a liberal or conservative outcome. This research demonstrates the significance of executive‐judicial interaction in explaining Supreme Court policymaking in civil rights cases.     

Immigration and Net Migration in New York City 1980–90

The relationship between immigration and the net migration of the native-born is an important component of the overall impact of immigration. Prior analyses of cross-sectional state and Metropolitan Statistical Area data suggest that a negative relationship exists, particularly among those with relatively little education. At the national level, much attention has been paid to the potential ethnic segregation of the population as primarily non-White immigrants displace primarily White native-born residents from certain areas, but there are important state and local policy issues as well, as this population shift has potentially significant implications for demand for municipal services and school enrollment. Yet until now, there has been no attempt to examine this relationship for a particular metro area. This article provides some preliminary estimates of the relationship between immigration and the migration of the native-born in New York City between 1980 and 1990 using a census survival methodology and zip code-level data. Initial results suggest a statistically significant negative relationship between immigration and net migration of the native-born. The policy implications of this phenomenon are discussed briefly.     

Between Borinquen and the Barrio: Environmental Justice and New York City's Puerto Rican Community, 1969–1972

The last decade has seen an upsurge of both scholarly and popular interest in the US environmental justice movement. What is largely missing from this contemporary discussion is any sense of the historical roots of this new wave of environmental activism. This paper explores the emergence of a radical Puerto Rican organization called the Young Lords that was active in a number of US cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In New York City, the Young Lords successfully mobilized their community through a series of direct actions devoted to improving public services, the creation of new community spaces and the assertion of cultural identity. I examine the internal tensions within the organization as it sought to extend its role beyond community-based concerns such as sanitation and health care towards more abstract political goals, including demands for Puerto Rican independence. It is argued that the ultimate disarray of this radical phase of Latino political activism cannot be understood separately from a series of wider developments, including the gathering pace of urban decline, the marginalization of the US left and the dissolution of the New Deal era. Although the movement faded away in the 1970s, a legacy of diasporic environmentalism dedicated to the transformation of the urban environment has provided a powerful degree of political continuity with contemporary struggles for environmental and social justice.