About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


29 Berkeley J. Crim. L. 1 (2024)

handle is hein.journals/bjcl29 and id is 1 raw text is: Introduction: Racial Justice Act Symposium Chesa Boudin* Racial disparities in the criminal legal system are extreme, long- standing, and well-documented.1 To many observers [r]ace and racism seem pervasive in the criminal-justice system.2 Yet, since at least 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that even stark racial disparities are not sufficient to establish an equal protection violation or obtain relief absent proof of discriminatory intent.3 In McCleskey, the majority declined to accept the significance of even clearly-established racial disparities. Since that opinion, courts have been loath to independently reconsider the fairness of criminal justice rules, given the pervasive racial disparities throughout the system and the sheer number of people impacted and implicated.4 In his prescient dissent in McCleskey, Justice Brennan accused the majority of fearing too much justice.5 After all, it is justice, in its legal as well as moral and political senses, that structural racism degrades.6 California has finally taken a bold step away fromMcCleskey and may have overcome the fear of too much justice. In 2020, California's Legislature passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed, a law that explicitly departs from the McCleskey precedent: the California Racial Justice Act (RJA). The RJA represents a highwater mark of the national DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z384746S8N Copyright © 2024 Regents of the University of California. * Chesa Boudin is the executive director of the University of California, Berkeley's Criminal Law & Justice Center. I thank Ariane Walter, Alex MacLennan, Toni Mendocino, and the law firm of Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP for helping to make the Symposium possible. 1 See, e.g., MICHELLE ALEXANDER, THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS (2010) (documenting the history of racism in the criminal legal system). 2 Anthony V. Alfieri, Community Prosecutors, 90 CAL. L. REv. 1465, 1506 (2002). 3 McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 293 (1987). 4 Russell K. Robinson, Unequal Protection, 68 STAN. L. REv. 151, 229 (2016). 5 McCleskey, 481 U.S. at 339 (Brennan, J., dissenting). 6 Ian F. Haney L6pez, Post-Racial Racism: Racial Stratification and Mass Incarceration in the Age of Obama, 98 CAL. L. REV. 1023, 1072 (2010).