Cardozo Law Review
Abstract
This Article shifts the question of how to achieve integration away from the technocratic questions of planning and policy devices, however important, to the equally important questions of political economyhow to move a legal and political infrastructure that is engineered for segregation towards integration. No doubt this question is not fully answerable in a short Article and perhaps at all. Yet, it might be possible to gather some of what is already known about the dynamics of social change towards integration, build on that knowledge, and find openings in current law, politics, and social movements for charting a future course of action. The spirit of the Article is against the prevailing narrative of despair in fair housing, examining (1) where top-down litigation might have contributed to enduring housing reform; (2) local governments that reject the incentives towards exclusion to adopt inclusionary legal and regulatory infrastructures and regulation; and (3) where communities are organizing for bottom-up legal and regulatory reforms outside of courts.
Part I begins by assessing the barriers to achieving racial and ethnic integration, specifically the longstanding political resistance to integration remedies. Part II turns to the limits and promise of institutional reform litigation. Part III considers the incentives localities might have to promote integration rather than externalize through segregation-producing practices. And Part IV assesses the once and future politics of advancing integration in communities.
Disciplines
Housing Law | Law | Law and Society
Recommended Citation
Olatunde C. Johnson,
"Social Engineering": Notes on the Law and Political Economy of Integration,
40
Cardozo L. Rev.
1149
(2019).
Available at:
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol40/iss3/5