The Colonial Borders Within: Racial Profiling, Language, and Civil Juries

Jasmine B. Gonzales Rose - Boston University School of Law
Vol. 59
June 2026
Page 2677

This Article builds on the scholarship of Kevin R. Johnson, whose work has long illuminated how immigration law and constitutional doctrine have enabled the subordination of Latines through racial profiling, language discrimination, and exclusion from civic institutions, like juries. His analyses of juror exclusion and the importance of a diverse judiciary underscore how the composition of civil and criminal factfinders shapes both recognition of harm and the remedies afforded. Long before the current period of intensified, abusive immigration enforcement, his scholarship traced the historical roots of these practices, examined their contemporary manifestations, and revealed the ways in which the law itself has sanctioned their persistence. In honoring that work, this Article seeks not only to document a moment of crisis, but to emphasize a broader truth: the most enduring borders in U.S.-American life are not always at the nation’s edge, but are embedded within its laws, its institutions, and its legal and social understanding of who belongs.

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