![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 from McCleskey 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).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/bjcl29&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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