The struggle to eradicate discrimination on the basis of race and gender has a long history in American law. Based on the widely held belief that such discrimination will occur only in markets in which racial or gender animus distorts competition, regulatory efforts have been limited to areas in which interpersonal relations are significant and ongoing, such as housing and employment. In this Article, Professor Ayres offers empirical evidence that seriously challenges faith in the ability of competitive market forces to eliminate racial and gender discrimination in other markets. His Chicago-based research demonstrates that retail car dealerships systematically offered substantially better prices on identical cars to white men than they did to blacks and women. Professor Ayres details the nature and startling degree of the discrimination his testers encountered and evaluates various theoretical explanations for their disparate treatment. Based on his conclusions, Professor Ayres explores routes by which "fair driving" plaintiffs might bring suits against dealerships and mechanisms through which regulators might effectively rid the retail car market of such discrimination.
The Harvard Law Review publishes articles by professors, judges, and practitioners and solicits reviews of important recent books from recognized experts. Each issue also contains pieces by student editors. Published monthly from November through June, the Review has roughly 2,000 pages per volume. All articles--even those by the most respected authorities--are subjected to a rigorous editorial process designed to sharpen and strengthen substance and tone. The November issue contains the Supreme Court Foreword (usually by a prominent constitutional scholar), the faculty Case Comment, twenty-five Case Notes (analyses by third-year students of the most important decisions of the previous Supreme Court Term), and a compilation of Court statistics. The February issue features the annual Developments in the Law project, an in-depth treatment of an important area of the law.
Founded in 1887 by future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, the Harvard Law Review is an entirely student-edited journal that is formally independent of the Harvard Law School. Approximately ninety student editors make all editorial and organizational decisions and, together with a professional business staff of four, carry out day-to-day operations. Aside from serving as an important academic forum for legal scholarship, the Review is designed to be an effective research tool for practicing lawyers and students of the law. The Review also provides opportunities for its members to develop their own editing and writing skills. All student writing is unsigned, reflecting the fact that many members of the Review, in addition to the author and supervising editor, make a contribution to each published piece.
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