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The reparations movement remains torn on how reparations should be distributed if the federal government ever moves forward on repair for Black Americans. One camp argues reparations should be race-based, meaning all Black people in America would be eligible. The other camp argues reparations should go to the descendants of Black American slaves.
The latter camp seems to be a legal stamp of approval from George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley, who often appears on conservative news channel Fox News.
In an opinion piece for The Hill published on Feb. 11, Turley wrote, “The decision to narrow programs like focusing on the descendants of slaves or on housing deprivations will certainly be better for constitutional review than a general reparations measure.”
In the article, Turley examines California’s landmark decision to base its reparations program on lineage.
A nationally recognized legal scholar, Turley has written more than three dozen academic articles on a range of topics, from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. After a stint at Tulane Law School, Professor Turley joined the George Washington University Law School faculty in 1990 and, in 1998, was given the prestigious Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law, the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history, according to his website.
In addition to teaching, Turley is still a practicing attorney and has worked on a number of high-profile cases.
In 2011, Turley filed a challenge to the Libyan War on behalf of 10 members of Congress. In November 2014, he was lead counsel to the House of Representatives in its constitutional challenge to changes ordered by President Obama to the Affordable Care Act.
In his opinion piece for The Hill, Turley noted the debate in California over reparations based on race and linage-based reparations.
“The state task force voted to limit it to descendants of slaves; there are almost 3 million potentially eligible Californians,” he wrote, adding that legally, lineage-based reparations would face fewer challenges in court.
“However, even liberal scholars like Erwin Chemerinsky seem to concede that these reparation measures would face serious legal headwinds in the courts. The likely legal challenges are not often considered in discussions of reparations — but they could create a highly combustible situation, if large reparations guarantees were suddenly negated,” he wrote.
Photo: George Washington University Law School Law Professor Jonathan Turley, testifies June 29, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington, during the House Natural Resources Committee hearing on the police response in Lafayette Square. (Michael Reynolds/Pool via AP)
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