Seminar IV: Courts

From slave codes to the Muslim ban, the law has been a key instrument for exclusion and inclusion. How have laws targeting race been redeployed in the context of religion, and vice versa? What critical understanding of the law emerges when we examine its authority not only over life and death, but also over precedent, dividing and filiating such histories? Indeed, as Moustafa Bayoumi recounts, it was in Michigan that courts racialized religion in immigration cases, coding Islam and Muslims' skin color as indices of difference, belonging, and humanity. This keynote lecture with Dr. Rabiat Akande intergoates moments in which courts and legal systems produce and reflect these dynamics locally, across the world, and at the international scale