Black Cities/White Cities: Evaluating the Police

It is well known that African Americans and whites hold different views of the police, but nearly all of the previous research has been conducted in majority white settings. This research examines the relationship between race and evaluations of the police in majority black versus majority white contexts. Social dominance theory and the research on racial threat predict that when the racial majority changes, the relationship between race and attitudes toward police will change. We find that, in majority black contexts, the traditional relationship between being black and having negative evaluations of the police disappears, and it disappears because whites' evaluations of the police become more negative. Black evaluations of the police are relatively consistent across racial contexts. Also, white racial attitudes affect police evaluations in majority black contexts, but not in white contexts, while African American racial attitudes are inconsequential in both contexts. Furthermore, if a white citizen is victimized by crime in a black city, it has greater ramifications for evaluations of the police than if the victimization had occurred in a white city. All of this suggests that whites' views of the police may be more racialized than the views of African Americans.     

Ann Diamond on an Unlimited Constitutional Convention

Ann Diamond has argued that, unless it is called by all thestates, a convention held under Article V of the Constitutionof the United States would be limited to proposing piecemealchanges. Diamond's arguments are flawed. The power of the statesto call a convention to propose amendments is coequal with thepower of Congress to propose amendments and is subject to onlyone explicit limitation. The Convention of 1787 was not attendedby all the states, and it did not delimit two types of futureconventions. Diamond's analysis reflects extreme notions ofindividual state sovereignty that lack historical support andwould, in any event, unduly hobble the states as a whole.     

Permitting States to Rescind Ratifications of Pending Amendments to the U.S. Constitution

Among the troublesome questions still surrounding the U.S. constitutionalamending process is whether states should be allowed to rescindratifications of pending amendments. The Constitution is silentabout this issue. Arguments from fairness and contemporary consensus,and concerns about hasty changes, support the acceptance ofrescissions. Arguments for finality, the desirability of encouragingstate legislatures to make serious decisions, and the difficultyof the current process suggest that rescissions should not bepermitted, but these concerns are not as weighty as they mightappear at first. A law accepting or rejecting all rescissionsis preferable to a system where Congress makes partisan judgmentsin individual cases.