The Misunderstood Consequences of Shelley v. Kraemer University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Sociology
Richard H. Sander University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) -
School of Law July 16, 2010 UCLA School of Law Research Paper
No. 10-27 5th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper
Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) is one of the most celebrated
decisions in the history of the United States Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, some have argued that it was largely superfluous,
because blacks lacked the capacity to enforce their rights and
white neighborhoods and institutions had other methods available
to stop black entry. Oddly enough, despite continuing strong
scholarly interest in restrictive covenants, there has been very
little empirical analysis of how Shelley changed housing
opportunities of African Americans. In this paper, we attempt
such an evaluation, and we find strong support for the
proposition that Shelley had a dramatic impact upon the housing
opportunities available to blacks.