Civil Rights Microviolations

Authors

• Michael Kagan, University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law
• Alissa Cooley Yonesawa, University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

Comments

This essay is an attempt to name and define a certain kind of civil rights problem. Namely: Rights violations that are small enough that the rational thing for the victim to do might be to just cope with them, but when allowed to fester and repeat, do significant damage. We call these problems microviolations. To define them, we borrow from the idea of a microaggression, a concept that developed to understand an analogous challenge in workplace and school discrimination. We offer a diagnosis of why microviolations are both problematic and difficult to address, and arguments that they should be a higher priority in civil rights work. 

Publication Citation

94 U. Cin. L. Rev. 620 (2026).

Recommended Citation

Kagan, Michael and Cooley Yonesawa, Alissa, "Civil Rights Microviolations" (2026). Scholarly Works. 1498.
https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub/1498