White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race
Abstract Mellinger reviews "White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race" by Ian F. Haney
Lopez. Full Text White by Law: The Legal Constructon of Race, by Ian F. Haney Lopez. New
York: New York University Press, 1996. 296 pp. $24.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-8147-5099-0. WAYNE
MARTIN MELLINGER Ventura College In the past few years, a new generation of legal scholars
has challenged racial orthodoxy, shaking up the academy, questioning liberal premises …

66 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY Vol. XLII community of" whiteness"
scholars, and of the NYU Press's efforts to list of innovative scholarship on race, particularly
by scholars of color. The book's main empirical and normative arguments are valuable and
suasive, with one major qualification. Haney L6pez gives the often amor invocation of race
as a" social construction" more content by showing ho have constructed racial identities and
statuses. He focuses on naturalization cases in the late 19th and early 20th century in which …