From Civil Rights to Multiculturalism ... - Berkeley Law



From Civil Rights to Multiculturalism: Political and Legal Incorporation of Language Minorities in the United States

PI: Ming Hsu Chen (PhD Candidate, Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program)

Dissertation Committtee: Taeku Lee, Sarah Song, Robert Kagan

Funders: Center for Latino Policy Research

How did regulatory agencies manage to expand upon rights enacted in federal civil rights legislation from 1964-79 to produce a minority rights revolution? Using language rights as a proxy for political and legal integration of Asians and Latinos in the civil rights era, I

will use in-depth interviews and archival research to explain the process by which language rights developed in the absence of statutory mandates in three settings: education, employment and voting. My hypothesis is that public interest law firms forged sustained rights campaigns that targeted administrative agencies' interpretation of

federal civil rights laws. Through their interventions into agency implementation of statutory mandates, they increased the agency's organizational capacity and strengthened the comprehensiveness of its regulatory benefits. As such, public interest law firms comprised a crucial part of the institutional support structure that generated a new form of coalition politics that transcend state-nonstate divides.

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