Additional Resources - Dismantling Bias - LLNE & SNELLA Fall 2020 Virtual Conference - Research Guides at University of Connecticut School of Law

Dismantling Election Bias

Citizenship delays imperil voting for hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the 2020 election This article discusses the backlog of applications for naturalization, which will impact the November 2020 election results.
How Libraries Can Save the 2020 Election They are among our last trusted institutions. Expanding early voting at local branches may be our best hope for a trusted outcome.
Systematic Inequality and American Democracy This report examines how lawmakers continue to protect discriminatory policies and enact new flawed ones that preserve barriers to voting for people of color. Promoting full participation, therefore, will require intentional public policy efforts to dismantle long-standing barriers and protect the right to vote for all Americans.
‘So much work still to be done.’ Silent Sentinels celebrate women’s suffrage centennial in Branford The Silent Sentinels in Branford, CT stood in silence during a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

Barriers to the Ballot Box: Implicit Bias and Voting Rights in the 21st Century by Arusha Gordon There is a scarcity of scholarship examining how implicit bias impacts voting rights and how advocates can move courts to recognize evidence of implicit bias within the context of a voting rights claim. This Article aims to address that scarcity. After reviewing research on implicit bias, this Article examines how implicit bias might impact different stages of the electoral process. It then argues that "results test" claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) present an opportunity for plaintiffs to introduce evidence regarding implicit bias in the electoral process. In addition, this Article explores policy solutions to reduce the impact of implicit bias in elections.
Publication Date: 2015

Election Law in a Nutshell by Daniel Tokaji This Nutshell provides a succinct and thorough description of the law governing elections, the right to vote, and the political process in the United States. The topics addressed include "one person, one vote," gerrymandering, minority voting rights, ballot access, voter identification, recounts, direct democracy, and campaign finance.
Call Number: KF4886 .T64 2017
ISBN: 9781634602761
Publication Date: 2016-11-07
Representation by Jack H. Nagel (Editor); Rogers M. Smith (Editor) Representation: Elections and Beyond brings together leading international scholars from a wide range of disciplines to explore the twenty-first-century innovations--in voting laws and practices, in electoral systems, in administrative, political, and civil organizations, and in communication processes and new technologies--that are altering how we understand democratic representation.
ISBN: 9780812245141
Publication Date: 2013-08-07
America Votes! by Benjamin E. Griffith (Editor); John Hardin Young (Editor) Watergate brought us the modern era of campaign finance regulation. Government by the consent of the governed has become government by the consent of the rich. After Citizens United, dark money has become the currency for political engagement. At the same time, the Supreme Court in Selby County ushered in a return to limits on access to registration and voting. The Supreme Court also continues to struggle to define unconstitutional gerrymandering America Votes!, Fourth Edition confronts these issues. The authors challenge us to think of a political system in new ways with a focus on our founders' goal of a more perfect union. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned about our political future.America Votes!, Fourth Edition addresses important electoral issues, including:* Voter qualifications, registration, immigration and citizenship, language minority participation, and Native American voting;* The voting process, early voting, same day registration, cybersecurity threats, campaign finance pitfalls, and Maine's experiment with ranked-choice voting;* Voting rights litigation, section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, criminal enforcement, the impact of Shelby County and legislation to reform the voting process;* Recounts and audits and the legacy of Gore v. Bush; and* Redistricting equal protection and fair districts math and partisan gerrymandering.
Call Number: KF4886 .A45 2020
ISBN: 9781641055543
Publication Date: 2020-09-01
Election Law in the American Political System by James A. Gardner; Guy-Uriel E. Charles The second edition of Election Law in the American Political System offers an easy to teach, student-friendly, intellectually rich casebook with comprehensive coverage of the legal rules and doctrines that shape democratic participation in the 21st century American political system. The second edition of this casebook is updated throughout with new material including identity theory of voting behavior, alternative electoral systems, emerging metrics for evaluating the quality of election administration, and developments concerning the advent of "fake news" in election campaigns. Election Law in the American Political System also includes expanded coverage of developments regarding independent districting commissions, judicial elections, legal standards to adjudicate partisan gerrymandering, and the concept of "wisdom of the multitude." With redesigned coverage and a thoughtful selection and careful editing of cases, the second edition contextualizes legal doctrine by providing insightful background readings and using expository material to introduce topics. New to the Second Edition: New coverage: Identity theory of voting behavior. Alternative electoral systems, including limited and cumulative voting and the single transferable vote. Evolution of judicial review of democratic processes. Developments concerning the advent of "fake news" in election campaigns. The emerging law of "ballot selfies." Emerging metrics for evaluating the quality of election administration.   Expanded coverage of: Concept of "wisdom of the multitude" Legal standards to adjudicate partisan gerrymandering. Developments regarding independent districting commissions, including an extended excerpt from Arizona State Legislature Judicial elections.  
Call Number: KF4886 .G37 2018
ISBN: 9781454883319
Publication Date: 2017-09-15

Elections in a Time of Pandemic: A UConn Legal Expert Explains The Covid-19 pandemic is already having an impact on elections in the United States, with more questions arising as November draws nearer. We asked Professor Douglas Spencer, a professor of law and public policy at UConn, to explain what is happening and what the long-term implications may be.
Passive Voter Suppresion: Campaign Moblization and the Effective Disfranchisment of the Poor A recent spate of election laws tightened registration rules, reduced convenient voting opportunities, and required voters to show specific types of identification in order to vote. Because these laws make voting more difficult, critics have analogized them to Jim Crow Era voter suppression laws. We challenge the analogy that current restrictive voting laws are a reincarnation of Jim Crow Era voter suppression. While there are some notable similarities, the analogy obscures a more apt comparison to a different form of voter suppression-one that operates to effectively disfranchise an entire class of people, just as the old form did for African Americans. This form of suppression excludes the poor.
Administering Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act After Shelby County Until the Supreme Court put an end to it in Shelby County v. Holder, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was widely regarded as an effective, low-cost tool for blocking potentially discriminatory changes to election laws and administrative practices. The provision the Supreme Court left standing, section 2, is generally seen as expensive, cumbersome, and almost wholly ineffective at blocking changes before they take effect. This Article argues that the courts, in partnership with the Department of Justice, could reform section 2 so that it fills much of the gap left by the Supreme Court's evisceration of section 5. The proposed reformation of section 2 rests on two insights:first, that national survey data often contains as much or more information than precinct-level vote margins about the core factual matters in section 2 cases; and second, that the courts have authority to regularize section 2 adjudication by creating rebuttable presumptions.
The Geography of Racial Stereotyping: Evidence and Implications for VRA Preclearance After Shelby County The Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) effectively enjoined the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act. The Court deemed the coverage formula, which determines the jurisdictions subject to preclearance, insufficiently grounded in current conditions. This Article proposes a new, legally defensible approach to coverage based on between-state differences in the proportion of voting age citizens who subscribe to negative stereotypes about racial minorities and who vote accordingly. The new coverage formula could also account for racially polarized voting and minority population size, but, for constitutional reasons, subjective discrimination by voters is the essential criterion. We demonstrate that the racial-stereotyping, polarized-voting, and population-size criteria would yield similar patterns of coverage, at least with respect to African Americans, and we show, ironically, that the new pattern of coverage would coincide with historic coverage under the "outdated" formula invalidated by Shelby County.
Are Ballot Titles Biased? Partisanship in California's Supervision of Direct Democracy This study investigates whether and if so under what conditions the California attorney general (AG), who authors the ballot title and summary (label) for statewide ballot initiatives, writes ballot language that is biased rather than impartial. State law demands an impartial label, but commentators frequently complain that the AG chooses misleading language to bolster (undermine) measures that the AG or the AG's party supports (opposes). In this Article, using a convenience sample of students from several universities, we measure ordinary observers' perceptions of bias in ballot labels for initiatives dating back to 1974. Separately, we calculate an objective measure of bias using a readability algorithm. We then test hypotheses about AG strategy, examining whether the extent of bias in ballot labels varies with the closeness of the election and the degree to which the measure elicits partisan division. We also examine the correlation between bias perceptions and observer characteristics such as support for the ballot measure, trust in government, and social trust.

We March On - Women's Suffrage Exhibit
by Maryanne Daly-Doran Last Updated Aug 22, 2023 434 views this year

Dismantling Library Collection Bias

Creating a Social Justice Mindset: Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice in the Collections Directorate of the MIT Libraries The Collections Directorate of the MIT Libraries sponsored a task force to identify opportunities for archives, technical services, preservation, scholarly communication, and collections strategy staff to manifest the values of diversity, inclusion, and social justice in their daily work. In this report the Collections Directorate Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice (DISJ) task force describes some of the overarching social and economic contexts for academic libraries, as well as the core professional values that guide us, and offers recommendations to the Directorate for operationalizing the values of diversity, inclusion, and social justice. The task force aims to demonstrate, through our recommendations, how DISJ values might guide every aspect of our work. We look forward to working together to foster a social justice mindset throughout the MIT Libraries’ Collections Directorate.
Managing Bias When Library Collections Become Data Drawing on the work of the AI initiative within Stanford Libraries, the Fantastic Futures conference on AI for libraries, archives, and museums, and recent scholarship on data bias and algorithmic bias, this article encourages libraries to engagecritically with AI and help shape applications of the technology to reflect the ethos of libraries for the benefit of libraries themselves and the patrons they serve. A brief examination of two core concepts in machine learning, generalization and unstructured data, provides points of comparison to library practices in order to uncover the theoretical assumptions driving the different domains. The comparison also offers a point of entry for libraries to adopt machine learning methods on their own terms.
An Annotated Bibliography on Bias in Library Services and Collections This annotated bibliography provides a selection of resources that delve into the topic of bias as it relates to library services and collections in the 21st century. Globalization, corporate hegemony, Internet search engines, and technologies such as virtual reference contribute to an environment where the librarian must be aware of personal and external biases in order to make appropriate decisions. The resources presented touch on ethics, neutrality, social responsibility, advocacy, selection and censorship. This broad spectrum of bias related topics will be especially helpful for librarians providing reference services and collection development in today’s library information environment.
Collection Development and the Psychology of Bias The library literature addressing the role of bias in collection development emphasizes a philosophical approach. It is based on the notion that bias can be controlled by the conscious act of believing in certain values and adhering to a code of ethics. It largely ignores the psychological research on bias, which suggests that bias is a more complex and subtle phenomenon. Bias is not always conscious and cannot always be consciously controlled. Countering bias requires an understanding of both its conscious and unconscious influences on selectors and the selection process. This article examines the psychological research that has been conducted on bias and shows how it applies to selectors and the selection process in collection development.
Browsing through Bias: The Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings for African American Studies and LGBTQIA Studies The knowledge organization system prepared by the Library of Congress (LC) and widely used in academic libraries has some disadvantages for researchers in the fields of African American studies and LGBTQIA studies. The interdisciplinary nature of those fields means that browsing in stacks or shelf lists organized by LC Classification requires looking in numerous locations. As well, persistent bias in the language used for subject headings, as well as the hierarchy of classification for books in these fields, continues to “other” the peoples and topics that populate these titles. This paper offers tools to help researchers have a holistic view of applicable titles across library shelves and hopes to become part of a larger conversation regarding social responsibility and diversity in the library community.
Artificial Intelligence & Implicit Bias: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility We are all familiar with news headlines pointing out the flaws and biases of AI. Systems, procedures, and workflows using artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming more common at every level of our judicial system. Given their decisive significance and the life-altering decisions they often make, it is important that all of us understand what is really taking place when these automated systems become a standard and, eventually, indispensable part of our legal system.

Unequal Profession by Meera E. Deo This book is the first formal, empirical investigation into the law faculty experience using a distinctly intersectional lens, examining both the personal and professional lives of law faculty members. Comparing the professional and personal experiences of women of color professors with white women, white men, and men of color faculty from assistant professor through dean emeritus, Unequal Profession explores how the race and gender of individual legal academics affects not only their individual and collective experience, but also legal education as a whole. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative empirical data, Meera E. Deo reveals how race and gender intersect to create profound implications for women of color law faculty members, presenting unique challenges as well as opportunities to improve educational and professional outcomes in legal education. Deo shares the powerful stories of law faculty who find themselves confronting intersectional discrimination and implicit bias in the form of silencing, mansplaining, and the presumption of incompetence, to name a few. Through hiring, teaching, colleague interaction, and tenure and promotion, Deo brings the experiences of diverse faculty to life and proposes a number of mechanisms to increase diversity within legal academia and to improve the experience of all faculty members.
Call Number: KF272 .D47 2019x
ISBN: 9781503604308
Publication Date: 2019-02-05

The Art Of Effective Facilitation: Reflections from Social Justice Educators The authors illuminate the art and complexity of facilitation, describe multiple approaches, and discuss the necessary and ongoing reflection process. They emphasize the need to prepare by taking into account such considerations as the developmental readiness of the participants, and the particular issues and historical context of the campus, before designing and facilitating a social justice training or selecting specific exercises.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire's work has helped to empower countless people throughout the world and continues to possess a special urgency as the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in urban centers around the world continues.
Are Prisons Obsolete? Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.
Killing Rage: Ending Racism bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race. Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it.
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court Feminist Judgments brings together a group of scholars and lawyers to rewrite, using feminist reasoning, the most significant U.S. Supreme Court cases on gender from the 1800s to the present day. The twenty-five opinions in this volume demonstrate that judges with feminist viewpoints could have changed the course of the law.
Teaching Race: How to Help Students Unmask and Challenge Racism The need to educate students about race and racism is felt acutely across higher education. This book addresses some of the most common questions that teachers raise about how to teach students racial awareness at predominantly White institutions. This book will focus on practical tips, tools and techniques that teachers can use in their own teaching.
Vulnerable Populations and Transformative Law Teaching: A Critical Reader The essays included in this volume began as presentations at the March 19-20, 2010 'Vulnerable populations, economic realities' teaching conference organized and hosted by Golden Gate University School of Law and co-sponsored by the Society of American Law Teachers, SALT. That conference, generously funded by a grant from The Elfenworks Foundation, brought together law faculty, practitioners, and students to reexamine how to infuse issues of race, gender, sexual identity, nationality, disability, and poverty into law school courses.

Selection Bias in Collection Development PowerPoint discussing bias in selecting items for a library's collection.
We Have Never Been Neutral: Search, Discovery, and the Politics of Access Dr. Kimberly Christen addresses the concept that library and archive practices are neutral and non-biased, trace the often violent histories of collecting and the construction of the public domain, unpack their connections to the foundations of libraries and archives, and open a space to provide a framework for ethical engagements and reciprocal practices through culturally responsive tools and engagements.

Dismantling Implicit Bias

Implicit Racial Bias Across the Law by Justin D. Levinson (Editor); Robert J. Smith (Editor) Despite cultural progress in reducing overt acts of racism, stark racial disparities continue to define American life. This book is for anyone who wonders why race still matters and is interested in what emerging social science can contribute to the discussion. The book explores how scientific evidence on the human mind might help to explain why racial equality is so elusive. This new evidence reveals how human mental machinery can be skewed by lurking stereotypes, often bending to accommodate hidden biases reinforced by years of social learning. Through the lens of these powerful and pervasive implicit racial attitudes and stereotypes, Implicit Racial Bias across the Law examines both the continued subordination of historically disadvantaged groups and the legal system's complicity in the subordination.
Call Number: KF 384 .I46 2012
ISBN: 9781107010956
Publication Date: 2012-04-23
Enhancing Justice by Sarah E. Redfield (Contribution by) Enhancing Justice: Reducing Bias was written by an exceptional and diverse team of authors, all with expertise relevant to understanding and improving implicit biases. Judges, lawyers, social scientists, professors, and experienced trainers worked together to bring cutting-edge research and thinking to this effort. The result offers both perspective and practical advice from their disciplines and their collaboration. While not all the authors would agree on each possible approach, the focus is on best practices, as we know them today, which can enable courts to lessen the impact of implicit bias. The book seeks to help "break the bias habit" by increasing knowledge and awareness of implicit bias, improved understanding and practice of procedural fairness and of culturally competent communication across cultures, and a sustained commitment to mindfulness.
Call Number: KF 384 .E446 2017
ISBN: 9781634258371
Publication Date: 2018-03-07

Implicit Bias, Moods, and Moral Responsibility by Alex Madva This article explores the implications of the evidence of partial awareness of implicit biases for individuals' moral responsibility. It uses an analogy to a close relative of implicit bias: moods.
Publication Date: April 2018
A Bird's Eye View of Civilians Killed by Police in 2015: Further Evidence of Implicit Bias by Justin Nix, Bradley A. Campbell, Edward H. Byers, Geoffrey P. Alpert We analyzed 990 police fatal shootings using data compiled by The Washington Post in 2015. After first providing a basic descriptive analysis of these shootings, we then examined the data for evidence of implicit bias by using multivariate regression models that predict two indicators of threat perception failure: (1) whether the civilian was not attacking the officer(s) or other civilians just before being fatally shot and (2) whether the civilian was unarmed when fatally shot. The results indicated civilians from 'other" minority groups were significantly more likely than Whites to have not been attacking the officer(s) or other civilians and that Black civilians were more than twice as likely as White civilians to have been unarmed.
Publication Date: February 2017
The Bias of Crowds: How Implicit Bias Bridges Personal and Systemic Prejudice by Keith B. Payne, Heidi A. Vuletich, Kristjen B. Lundberg As public awareness of implicit bias has grown in recent years, studies have raised important new questions about the nature of implicit bias effects. First, implicit biases are widespread and robust on average, yet are unstable across a few weeks. Second, young children display implicit biases indistinguishable from those of adults, which suggests to many that implicit biases are learned early. Yet, if implicit biases are unstable over weeks, how can they be stable for decades? Third, meta-analyses suggest that individual differences in implicit bias are associated weakly, although significantly, with individual differences in behavioral outcomes. Yet, studies of aggregate levels of implicit bias (i.e., countries, states, counties) are strongly associated with aggregate levels of disparities and discrimination. These puzzles are difficult to reconcile with traditional views, which treat implicit bias as an early-learned attitude that drives discrimination among individuals who are high in bias. We propose an alternative view of implicit bias, rooted in concept accessibility. Concept accessibility can, in principle, vary both chronically and situationally. The empirical evidence, however, suggests that most of the systematic variance in implicit bias is situational. Akin to the "wisdom of crowds" effect, implicit bias may emerge as the aggregate effect of individual fluctuations in concept accessibility that are ephemeral and context-dependent. This bias of crowds theory treats implicit bias tests as measures of situations more than persons. We show how the theory can resolve the puzzles posed and generate new insights into how and why implicit bias propagates inequalities.
Publication Date: 2017

Implicit Bias in the Law
by Tanya Johnson Last Updated Feb 16, 2021 2730 views this year