Courts and state action are inherently racialized and work to sustain capitalism

3 While the dearth of race-based data from state civil courts has made it difficult to construct a full picture, existing data show that racialized individuals and communities are impacted disproportionately by civil justice issues. 2 Racialized litigants are less likely to have access to critical resources and more likely to receive negative results. And, as in all systems, the ability to access justice in the civil legal system is influenced by multiple factors, including societal discrimination, economic inequality, and race- based behaviors of individual system actors. 4 The civil court system is characterized by racial disparities in access, treatment, and outcomes, all of which deserve increased attention. At the same time, we view the observation of these disparities as the beginning of a larger and sustained inquiry about how and why such disparities exist. Racial disparities in the civil courts serve as a miner's canary-an invitation to further question the role that race plays in the design, structure, and operation of the civil court system. The responses to that inquiry are critical not only to our understanding of how race affects the administration of civil justice, but also as part of a necessary foundation for contemplating systemic change. 5 This Essay contributes to the above conversation-and offers one possible response to the above inquiry-by exploring how civil courts, as an arm of the state, function as sites of racial capitalism. It argues that theories of racial capitalism help to explain how and why state civil courts are designed and operate to subordinate racialized groups and individuals. In doing so, it also makes an important contribution to the growing racial capitalism literature by expanding its application in legal scholarship. This Essay strengthens the existing literature by examining the racial capitalism conceptual framework in state civil courts, a site commonly understood as nonmarket. More broadly, it advances still nascent conversations about race and access to civil justice that require not only more empirical data on racial demographics but also more theoretical analysis of the social significance of race. 6 8 Racial capitalism is a relatively new concept in legal academia and has its roots in several other disciplines, including Black studies, history, political science, sociology, and cultural studies, where the term has been defined and used differently by a wide range of scholars. 7 While critical race theorists have demonstrated that race is fundamental to and deeply embedded in U.S. law, scholars of racial capitalism have emphasized how racial subordination is fundamental, rather than incidental, to economic exploitation. From a legal perspective, racial capitalism can be understood as a system of racialized "dispossession, extraction, accumulation, and exploitation" for power and profit in which human elements are both commodified and devalued. 10 We argue that through their interpretation and implementation of the law and the processes they impose, the civil courts function as instruments of racial capitalism, facilitating its goals and assisting in its entrenchment. 9 11 Civil cases are typically framed as voluntary disputes among private parties, yet many racially and economically marginalized litigants, particularly Black individuals, enter the civil legal system involuntarily, often in a defensive or vulnerable posture. Even in cases where marginalized plaintiffs initiate litigation, they enter the civil courts due to a lack of other feasible options. They are forced to subject themselves and others to a system designed to devalue them, commodify their needs, and maximize financial extraction. Most of the cases in the civil system involve eviction, debt collection, or family law matters -legal matters likely to target poor and racialized litigants. And in many of those cases, an individual has been sued by the state or a corporation. 14 It is those cases that are the focus of this Essay, where the ability of the party initiating court action to extract capital and exercise control over racialized people is strongest. And it is in these cases that the role of the courts in facilitating the transfer and accumulation of assets from racialized individuals to majority-white corporations or the state itself is most visible. 12 13 16 15 Courts have long played a role in defining race and policing racial order, contributing to the perpetuation of racial inequality and, more specifically, white dominance. The civil courts that are the focus of this Essay are very much a part of that story. They oversee and process case dockets filled by poor people and, as limited available data have shown, disproportionately Black people. In addition, the racialization of poverty in U.S. society has made it impossible to disentangle narratives of the "undeserving poor" from those of Black America. 17 This entwinement of racial and economic status-and the imposition of beliefs and traits suggesting that these individuals are appropriate subjects for state-sponsored discipline -is operationalized through the work of civil courts and provides additional justification for the extraction that racial capitalism requires. 18