Law, power, conflict, and residential segregation in the United States

Housing accommodations continue to be among the most crucial and pressing issues in contemporary American society since residential location determines a number of significant conditions, which affect the lives of immediate, adjacent, and distant interrelations. Research on residential location may be grouped into two major lines that are not mutually exclusive of each other---those that are influenced by spatial assimilation theory and those influenced by racial and residential stratification (or place stratification) models. Currently, there is a lack of research in the United States that uses law as the primary method of analysis to uncover the existing patterns of segregation. Specifically, this dissertation seeks to fill the gap by focusing on how the law is used to create and maintain exclusionary land-uses that practically affect the legal, political, cultural, and social conditions of selected groups. In carrying out the enterprise, Bourdieu's theorizing on four forms of capital is used to illustrate the utilization of power and capital in the housing market. Donald Black's formal theorizing on law is adapted in proposing solutions to residential segregation. Finally, arguing from a constitutional perspective-solution, John H. Ely and Ronald Dworkin are invoked to rectify problems in residential accommodations, procedurally and substantively.