States solve best and avoid the politics link

Meanwhile, the descendants of those enslaved people enjoy precious little of the wealth that birthed this nation. 8Despite glaring and persistent disparities in outcomes for Black people across a wide array of socioeconomic metrics, 9 reparations for the past and present harms of slavery and systemic racism remain overwhelmingly unpopular with the general public. 10Over 150 years of political and legal efforts to secure reparations 11have not resulted in the sort of recompense that could ameliorate and apologize for those harms. 12Therefore, this Essay presents an alternative path to justice for Black people. This Essay proposes that state attorneys general are well-situated to execute a litigative scheme that provides reparative justice to Black people for the historic wrongs and ongoing harms of slavery and systemic racism. Part I first considers the nature of reparations, and [*393] the need for reparations to Black people in order to resolve disparities in health, financial, and educational outcomes. It then provides an overview of political efforts to secure reparations over the years, before concluding with a discussion of the corpus juris of reparations case law. Part II begins by laying out a pragmatic framework for creating reparative lawsuits. It continues by arguing that the special standing and procedural doctrines enjoyed by attorneys general make them the ideal parties to exercise such a framework. Finally, this Essay concludes by contemplating a series of existing and proposed lawsuits as examples of reparative actions that could affect meaningful improvements in the outcomes of Black people.