Atuahene is the author of We Want What's Ours:Learning from South Africa's Land Restitution Program,a 2014 ethnography of the post-apartheid land restitution program,and won the 2020 John Hope Franklin Award from the Law and Society Association for her California Law Review article "Predatory Cities," based on her 2018 ethnography of property tax assessments in Detroit. She has also advocated with community groups in Detroit for government action on property taxes.
As part of the grassroots Coalition to End Unconstitutional Tax Foreclosures in 2018,Atuahene called for government action to redress what she described as "unconstitutional assessments,which have led to illegally-inflated property taxes that people could not afford to pay,and so they were evicted from their homes in record numbers for property taxes they weren't supposed to be paying in the first place."[9] In January 2020,The Detroit News published an investigation that found overassessments and overtaxation of Detroit homeowners between 2010 and 2016.[12]
In 2020,Atuahene was an organizer and advocate for the Detroit grassroots community organization Coalition for Property Tax Justice,which lobbied for the creation of a property tax compensation fund for overtaxed homeowners.[12][14] In 2021,she described the creation of the Detroit Tax Relief Fund as "a good first step."[15] In 2022,she continued to advocate with the Coalition for Property Tax Justice for an end to property tax overassessments.[10]
In 2022,Atuahene became the inaugural James E. Jones Chair at the University of Wisconsin Law School.[2] Her next book,Predatory Cities:Replenishing the Public Purse Through Racist Policy,is expected in 2023.[16]
As of 2025 she holds the Duggan Chair at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.[17]
Her book,Plundered:How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America was released January 28,2025.[17]
We Want What's Ours:Learning from South Africa's Land Restitution Program
The research conducted by Atuahene included interviews with land restitution claimants and government workers who administered the program.[6]:2–6 Laura Seay writes in The Washington Post,"Plenty of academic works have been written on the problem of land rights in South Africa,but Atuahene's contribution is unique" and "She explores an aspect of property rights that is too often ignored,but that is of particular importance in considering the full effects,physical and psychological,of systems of oppression."[7]
In a review for the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights,Jonnette Watson Hamilton writes,"Atuahene's starting premise is that more than financial well-being and property were lost as a result of apartheid and the highly racialized deprivations of land in South Africa;there were harms to human dignity as well",and that Atuahene has "coined the term "dignity takings" for situations "when a state directly or indirectly destroys or confiscates property rights from owners or occupiers whom it deems to be sub persons without paying just compensation and without a legitimate public purpose.""[18]:131
Eleanor Marie Lawrence Brown writes in a review for Michigan Law Review that Atuahene built upon previous work by Carol M. Rose,who has examined other "extraordinary" takings,where "the state takes away property without just compensation and simultaneously makes a point about a person or a group's standing in the community of citizens."[19]:1037–1038
Awards
LSA 2024 Annual Awards,Law and Society Association Article Prize for “A Theory of Stategraft”[20]
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