Devon W. Carbado

The Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law

  • B.A. UCLA, 1991
  • J.D. Harvard, 1994
  • UCLA Faculty Since 1997

A Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law, Professor Carbado has also held the Honorable Harry Pregerson Chair in Law.  He earned his BA in History from UCLA and his Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. Professor Carbado writes and teaches in the areas of Constitutional law, Constitutional Criminal Procedure, and Race and the Law. His publications have appeared in the California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Texas Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal, among others. He is the author or editor of several books, including Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment (New Press, 2022), Acting White? Rethinking Race in “Post Racial” America (Oxford University Press, 2013) (with Mitu Gulati), The Long Walk to Freedom: Runaway Slave Narratives (Beacon Press, 2012) (with Donald Weise), Race Law Stories (Foundation Press, 2008) (with Rachel Moran), and Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin (Cleis Press, 2003) (with Donald Weise).

The winner of two lambda literary awards, the Prose Prize from the Association of American Publishers, and the John Hope Franklin Prize from the Law and Society Association, Professor Carbado is an inaugural recipient of the Fletcher Foundation Fellowship, which, modeled on the Guggenheim, is awarded to scholars whose work furthers the goals of Brown v. Board of Education.  Professor Carbado has also received two awards from the Minority Group Section of the Association of American Law Schools—the Derrick A. Bell Award, which  is reserved for Professors who have made an extraordinary contribution to legal education, the legal system, or social justice, and the Clyde Ferguson Award, which is awarded to an outstanding law teacher, who has achieved excellence in the areas of public service, teaching, and scholarship.

At UCLA, two graduating classes elected him Professor of the Year, and he received both the Law School's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching and the university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award, with special notation as the recipient of the Eby Award for the Art of Teaching.

Professor Carbado has served in several administrative capacities at UCLA, including in the roles of vice dean, associate provost, and associate vice chancellor.  He has held the Neukom Chair (at the American Bar Foundation), the Culverhouse Chair (at Stetson Law School), and he was the Shikes Fellow in Civil Liberties and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Professor Carbado is a former board member of the African American Policy Forum and the Society of American Law Teachers. Part of the inaugural cohort of Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity, Professor Carbado is currently a Global Atlantic Fellow.  He is also the Elihu Root Professor of Law at NYU Law School.

Bibliography

  • Books
    • Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment. The New Press (2022).
    • Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law (edited by Bennett Capers, R. A. Lenhardt, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig). Cambridge University Press (2022).
    • Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America (with Mitu Gulati). Oxford University Press (2013).
    • Race Law Stories (with Rachel Moran). Foundation Press (2008).
    • Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin (edited by Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise). Cleis Press (2003).
    • Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual African American Fiction (edited by Devon W. Carbado, Dwight McBride and Donald Weise). Cleis Press (2002).
    • Black Men on Race, Gender and Sexuality: A Critical Reader (edited by Devon W. Carbado). New York University Press (1999).
  • Articles And Chapters
    • Strict Scrutiny & The Black Body, 69 UCLA Law Review 2 (2022). Full Text
    • Critical Race Theory Meets Third World Approaches to International Law (with E. Tendayi Achiume), 67 UCLA Law Review 1462 (2021). Full Text
    • Stop-And-Strip Violence: The Doctrinal Migrations of Reasonable Suspicion, 55 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 467 (2020).
    • Colorblind Intersectionality, in Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines, (edited by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz, University of California Press, 2019).
    • Footnote 43: Recovering Justice Powell’s Anti-Preference Framing of Affirmative Action, 53 UC Davis Law Review 1117 (2019). Full Text
    • An Intersectional Critique of Tiers of Scrutiny: Beyond “Either/Or” Approaches to Equal Protection (with Kimberlé W. Crenshaw), 129 The Yale Law Journal Forum 108 (2019). Full Text
    • Intersectionality at 30: Mapping the Margins of Anti-Essentialism, Intersectionality, and Dominance Theory (with Cheryl I. Harris), 132 Harvard Law Review 2193 (2019). Full Text
    • States of Continuity or State of Exception? Race, Law and Politics in the Age of Trump, 34 Constitutional Commentary 1 (2019).
    • Book Review: The Black Police, Policing Our Own (with L. Song Richardson), 131 Harvard Law Review 1979 (2018). Reviewing Locking up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, by James Forman Jr. Full Text
    • From Stop and Frisk to Shoot and Kill: Terry v. Ohio's Pathway to Police Violence, 64 UCLA Law Review 1508 (2017).
    • Predatory Policing, 85 UMKC Law Review 548 (2017). Full Text
    • From Stopping Black People to Killing Black People: The Fourth Amendment Pathways to Police Violence, 105 California Law Review 125 (2017). Full Text
    • Blue-on-Black Violence: A Provisional Model of Some of the Causes, 104 Georgetown Law Journal 1479 (2016). Full Text
    • Privileged or Mismatched: The Lose-Lose Position of African Americans in the Affirmative Action Debate (with Kaytee Turetsky & Valerie Purdie-Vaughns), 64 UCLA Law Review Discourse 174 (2016). SSRN | Full Text
    • Critical Race Theory Meets Social Science (with Daria Roithmayr), 10 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 149 (2014). Abstract
    • The Diversity Feedback Loop, 2014 University of Chicago Legal Forum 345 (2014). Also published in A Nation of Widening Opportunities? The Civil Rights Act at Fifty (edited by Samuel Bagenstos and Ellen Katz, University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2014).  Full Text
    • Race Law Cases in the American Story (with Rachel Moran), in Civil Rights in American Law, History, and Politics, (edited by Austin Sarat, Cambridge University Press, 2014).
    • Colorblind Intersectionality, 38 (4) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 811-845 (Summer 2013). Full Text
    • Intraracial Diversity, 60 UCLA Law Review 1130 (2013). Full Text
    • Implicit Bias in the Courtroom (with Jerry Kang, Judge Mark Bennett, Pam Casey, Nilanjana Dasgupta, David Faigman, Rachel Godsil, Anthony G. Greenwald, Justin Levinson & Jennifer Mnookin), 59 UCLA Law Review 1124-86 (2012). Full Text
    • Critical What What?, 43 Connecticut Law Review 1593-1643 (2011). Full Text
    • Undocumented Criminal Procedure (with Cheryl Harris), 58 UCLA Law Review 1543-1616 (2011). Full Text
    • Yellow by Law, 97 California Law Review 633-92 (2009).
    • The New Racial Preferences (with Cheryl Harris), California Law Review 1139-1214 (2008).
    • The Story of Law and American Racial Consciousness: Building a Canon One Case at a Time (with Rachel Moran), 76 University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review 851 (2008).
    • Foreword: Making Makeup Matter (with Catherine Fish and Mitu Gulati), 14 Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy 1 (2007).
    • The Story of Jesperson v. Harrah's: Makeup and Women at Work (with G. Mitu Gulati and Gowri Ramachandran), in Employment Discrimination Stories, (edited by Joel W. Friedman, Foundation Press, 2006).
    • Racial Naturalization, 57 American Quarterly 633-58 (2005).
    • Race to the Top of the Corporate Ladder: What Minorities Do When They Get There (with G. Mitu Gulati), 61 Washington and Lee Law Review (2004). Full Text
    • Tenure (with G. Mitu Gulati), 53 Journal of Legal Education 157-73 (2003).
    • What Exactly is Racial Diversity? (with G. Mitu Gulati), 91 California Law Review 1149-65 (2003).
    • The Law and Economics of Critical Race Theory (with G. Mitu Gulati), 112 Yale Law Journal 1757-1828 (2003). Full Text
    • (E)Racing Education, 35 Equity and Excellence in Education 181-94 (2002).
    • (E)Racing the Fourth Amendment, 35 Michigan Law Review 946-1044 (2002).
    • The Harlem Renaissance (with Dwight McBride and Donald Weise), in Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual African American Fiction, 1-27 (edited by Devon W. Carbado, Dwight McBride and Donald Weise, Cleis Press, 2002).
    • The Protest Era (with Donald Weise), in Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual African American Fiction, 107-36 (edited by Devon W. Carbado, Dwight McBride and Donald Weise, Cleis Press, 2002).
    • Coming Out, Black Like Us (with Donald Weise), in Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual African American Fiction, 267-88 (edited by Devon W. Carbado, Dwight McBride and Donald Weise, Cleis Press, 2002).
    • Race to the Bottom, 49 UCLA Law Review 1283-313 (2002).
    • The Fifth Black Woman (with G. Mitu Gulati), 11 The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 701-29 (2001). Anthologized in Critical Race Feminism: A Legal Reader (edited by Adrien Katherine Wing, NYU Press, 2002).
    • Interactions at Work: Remembering David Charny (with G. Mitu Gulati), 17 Harvard Blackletter Law Journal 13-22 (2001).
    • Conversations at Work (with G. Mitu Gulati), 79 Oregon Law Review 103-45 (2000).
    • Black Rights, Gay Rights, Civil Rights, 47 UCLA Law Review 1467-519 (2000). Shorter version appears in Black Men on Race, Gender and Sexuality:  A Critical Reader (edited by Devon W. Carbado, NYU Press, 1999).
    • Men in Black, 3 The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice 427-38 (2000). An earlier version appears as Introduction in Black Men on Race, Gender and Sexuality: A Critical Reader (edited by Devon W. Carbado, NYU Press, 1999).
    • Race and Sex in Antidiscrimination Law, in Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, 2nd ed. (edited by Leonard W. Levy, Kenneth L. Karst, et al., Macmillan, 2000).
    • Working Identity (with G. Mitu Gulati), 85 Cornell Law Review 1259-1308 (2000).
    • Straight Out of the Closet, 15 UC Berkeley Women’s Law Journal 76-124 (2000). Shorter version appears in Epilogue, Black Men on Race, Gender and Sexuality:  A Critical Reader (edited by Devon W. Carbado, NYU Press, 1999) and redacted in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (edited by Richard Delgado, 1999).
    • Motherhood and Work in Cultural Context: One Woman’s Patriarchal Bargain, 21 Harvard Women’s Law Journal 1 (1998). Earlier version appeared in Critical Race Feminism: A Legal Reader (NYU Press, 1997). 
    • The Ties That Bind, 19 Chicano/Latino Law Review 283-95 (1998).
    • The Construction of O.J. Simpson as a Racial Victim, 32 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 49-103 (1997). Reprinted in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (edited by Richard Delgado, 1999), Black Men on Race, Gender and Sexuality:  A Critical Reader (edited by Devon W. Carbado, NYU Press, 1999), and as Black Male Racial Victimhood, 21 Callaloo (1998).
  • Other
    • Tenure: The Shadow Work of Service, 6 Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal 144-51 (2002).
    • Airport Profiling: Cost-Benefit Calculus and Beyond (with G. Mitu Gulati), Economic and Political Weekly (June, 2002).

Courses Available

LAW 202

Criminal Procedure: Investigations
LAW 266

Critical Race Theory
LAW 653

Critical Race Studies Scholarship Workshop
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