Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Integrative Research Institute Law & Society (LSI)

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | Faculty of Law | Integrative Research Institute Law & Society (LSI) | Joy Milligan: Racial Inequality and the American Administrative State: Can the Past be Undone?

Joy Milligan: Racial Inequality and the American Administrative State: Can the Past be Undone?

  • When Dec 14, 2021 from 06:15 to 07:45
  • Where tba, Registration: lsi(at)rewi.hu-berlin.de
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It took U.S. activists decades of sometimes-violent struggle to achieve even a modest framework of limited federal protections for workers, the poor, and other vulnerable groups. But constructing this limited welfare state came at a high—and often unseen—cost: twentieth-century liberal reformers periodically bargained with Southern white supremacists to form the coalitions necessary to pass key legislation and create new federal agencies and programs. In this talk, Joy Milligan argues that while these redistributive programs helped secure a robust white middle-class that could accrue and pass down financial capital to future generations, they also deepened racial disparities and supported apartheid-like systems throughout America that blocked the creation of wealth and human capital for African Americans and other racial minorities. Can the U.S. administrative state be redeemed? Milligan argues that it can and must be reconstructed if the racial harms it has caused are to be repaired, and that the power of the federal administrative apparatus is crucial if racial equity is ever to be achieved.

 

Joy Milligan, Professor of Law, University of Virginia Law School