Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Judicial selection (37)
- Discrimination (14)
- Women (14)
- Title VII (11)
- Diversity (10)
-
- Judges (10)
- Abortion (9)
- Gender (9)
- Laws (9)
- Regulations and rules (9)
- Sex discrimination (9)
- Supreme Court (9)
- Qur'an (8)
- Constitutional law (7)
- Federal courts (7)
- United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (7)
- Civil rights (6)
- Divorce (6)
- Family law (6)
- Marriage (6)
- Race (6)
- Same-sex marriage (6)
- Sexual harassment (6)
- Americans with Disabilities Act (5)
- Appellate court (5)
- Elder law (5)
- Islam (5)
- Judicial vacancies (5)
- Labor & employment law (5)
- Nominations (5)
Articles 1 - 30 of 315
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Filling The Red State Federal Judicial Vacancies, Carl Tobias
Filling The Red State Federal Judicial Vacancies, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
District vacancies without nominees that plague red jurisdictions deserve emphasis in this Essay for several reasons. First, there are myriad district court jurists who trigger greater numbers of empty posts when they assume senior status, retire, or die, which triggers more issues. Legislators have created 677 active trial court positions, which dwarf the 179 active court of appeals judicial posts. The trial courts are tribunals of last resort for most cases; their numerous jurists are the only court members that many litigants encounter, and significantly more district court openings lack nominees. In contrast, appellate courts explicitly articulate considerable policy, include …
Patriarchal Violence, Rona Kaufman
Patriarchal Violence, Rona Kaufman
Law Faculty Publications
For over a century, feminist theorists and activists have sought equality for women. They have aimed their efforts at the many distinct and related causes of women's inequality, among them gendered violence, sexual violence, domestic violence, and violence against women. Recognizing the need to understand problems in order to solve them, feminist theorists have devoted decades to conceptualizing various manifestations of such violence, ranging from private acts, such as sexual assault and intimate partner abuse, to public acts, such as the incarceration of mothers and the criminalization of pregnancy. In this article, I argue in favor of conceptualizing the many …
Privacy: Pre- And Post-Dobbs, Rona Kaufman
Privacy: Pre- And Post-Dobbs, Rona Kaufman
Law Faculty Publications
The United States Supreme Court has interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to include a fundamental right to familial privacy. The exact contours of that right were developed by the Court from 1923 until 2015. In 2022, with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Supreme Court abruptly changed course and held that the right to terminate a pregnancy is no longer part of the right to privacy previously recognized by the Court. This essay seeks to place Dobbs in the context of the Court’s family privacy cases in an effort to understand the Court’s …
Fighting For Whiteness In Ukraine, Marissa Jackson Sow
Fighting For Whiteness In Ukraine, Marissa Jackson Sow
Law Faculty Publications
Teri McMurtry-Chubb’s Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plantation Economy offers groundbreaking insights into the gendered economic hierarchies internal to the body politic of whiteness through its examination of the limitations that plantation overseers’ contracts in the American Deep South placed on their ability to exercise the proprietorship and contracting authority prerequisite to white identity. This Essay uses the Ukrainian campaign to be recognized as a liberal white nation, and formally become a member of the West, as a contemporary case study of how whiteness remains hegemonized and subject to the ability …
Evidence Rules For Decarceration, Erin Collins
Evidence Rules For Decarceration, Erin Collins
Law Faculty Publications
Two observations about the operation of the criminal legal system are so widely accepted that they are seem undeniable: First, it is a system of pleas, not trials. Second, the system is too punitive and must be reformed. One could easily think, therefore, that the Rules of Evidence, which apply intentionally and explicitly only to the adjudicatory phase of criminal procedure, have nothing to do with the solution. And legal scholarship focusing on decarceration largely reflects this assumption: while many have explored reforms that target front end system actors and processes that lead people into the system (e.g. police, prosecutors, …
Biden, Bennet, And Bipartisan Federal Judicial Selection, Carl Tobias
Biden, Bennet, And Bipartisan Federal Judicial Selection, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
"The U.S. Constitution plainly assigns to the Senate the profound duties of rendering critical advice and consent related to all specific federal judicial nominees whom the President selects. The dynamic roles of senators who directly represent jurisdictions where vacant posts materialize have perennially been crucial to appropriately discharging these essential responsibilities. Senators identify excellent candidates—individuals who possess diversity in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, independence, experience, and ideology, as well as the character and measured judicial temperament to be exceptional jurists—assemble complete applications, comprehensively review the prospects, and interview choices whom the senators duly recommend to the President. After …
Reimagining Langdell's Legacy: Puncturing The Equilibrium In Law School Pedagogy, Laura A. Webb
Reimagining Langdell's Legacy: Puncturing The Equilibrium In Law School Pedagogy, Laura A. Webb
Law Faculty Publications
For more than 150 years, legal education has largely followed the course charted by Christopher Columbus Langdell when he became dean of Harvard Law School in 1870. Langdell’s innovations included the case method, high-stakes summative assessments, and preferences for faculty members with experience in “learning law” rather than practicing it. His proposals were innovative and responsive to challenges in legal education at the time, but this Article argues that taking Langdell’s approach to reform—including a willingness toimplement radical changes in the face of institutional shortcomings—requires reimagining his methods for the benefit of today’s students. We identify key deficiencies of the …
Who Watches The Watchmen? Using The Law Governing Lawyers To Identify The Applicant Duty Gap And Hold Bar Examiner Gatekeepers Accountable, Ashley M. London
Who Watches The Watchmen? Using The Law Governing Lawyers To Identify The Applicant Duty Gap And Hold Bar Examiner Gatekeepers Accountable, Ashley M. London
Law Faculty Publications
The legal profession holds lawyers to high standards in their personal and professional lives and expects aspiring members to follow the ethical rules with scrupulous precision and candor. Yet the profession, and those monitoring admission to the profession, afford no protections or recourse to this class of young professionals during that critical period between graduation and successful bar passage.
Without reform, this previously unacknowledged duty gap will continue to demoralize and potentially harm future lawyers and reflect negatively on the profession as a whole. Supervising bodies, discussed within, treat applicants as if they have already committed an ethical breach. Indeed, …
Confirm Julie Rikelman For The First Circuit, Carl Tobias
Confirm Julie Rikelman For The First Circuit, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
Now that the United States Senate has reconvened after pauses for holidays, the upper chamber must expeditiously appoint designee Julie Rikelman to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which is the smallest, albeit critical, appellate court. The nominee, whom President Joe Biden tapped during late July 2022, would supply remarkable experiential, gender, and ideological diversity gleaned from pursuing much cutting-edge reproductive freedom litigation, which included arguing Dobbs before the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. The nominee has definitely excelled in law’s highest echelon over twenty-plus years, most recently as the U.S. Litigation Director in the …
How Biden Can Continue Making The Federal Courts Better, Carl Tobias
How Biden Can Continue Making The Federal Courts Better, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
From 2017 until 2020, former President Donald Trump and the Republican Senate majority nominated and confirmed record-breaking numbers of appellate court judges. This emphasis undermined ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, and experiential diversity as well as ideological balance on these courts and neglected to address persistent district court and emergency vacancies. Moreover, to achieve these historic confirmation levels, the GOP Senate majority eviscerated or altered certain rules and customs of regular order, which included the creation of a circuit-level exception to the blue slip process. President Joe Biden, in turn, has pledged to rectify the damage to the courts and the …
Confirm Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez To The Fifth Circuit, Carl Tobias
Confirm Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez To The Fifth Circuit, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
The United States Senate must expeditiously confirm United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas Magistrate Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, who has definitely earned appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and will become the appellate court’s initial Latina member. This regional circuit effectively resolves substantial appeals, enjoys a large judicial complement, and certainly possesses a reputation as the nation’s most conservative appellate court. Ramirez, whom President Joe Biden nominated in mid-April, decidedly provides remarkable gender, experiential, ideological, and ethnic judicial diversity and has rigorously served as a Magistrate Judge and Assistant United …
Confirm Rachel Bloomekatz To The Sixth Circuit, Carl Tobias
Confirm Rachel Bloomekatz To The Sixth Circuit, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
Now that the United States Senate is convening after the July Fourth holiday, the upper chamber must promptly appoint Rachel Bloomekatz to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The nominee, whom President Joe Biden selected in May 2022, provides remarkable experiential, gender, and ideological expertise that she deftly realized in litigating high-profile gun control, environmental, and other significant cases in federal appellate courts and district courts. Over fifteen years, the nominee has reached law’s pantheon across a broad spectrum from extremely prestigious clerkships with Justice Stephen Breyer and particularly distinguished federal court and state court jurists to …
Appoint Judge Ana De Alba To The Ninth Circuit, Carl Tobias
Appoint Judge Ana De Alba To The Ninth Circuit, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
The United States Senate must rapidly appoint Eastern District of California Judge Ana de Alba to the Ninth Circuit. This appellate tribunal is a preeminent regional circuit, which faces substantial appeals, has the largest complement of jurists, and clearly includes a massive geographic expanse. The nominee, whom President Joe Biden designated in spring 2023, would offer remarkable gender, experiential, ideological, and ethnic diversity realized primarily from serving productively with the California federal district, and state trial, courts after rigorously litigating for one decade in a highly regarded private law firm. For over fifteen years, she deftly excelled in law’s upper …
Beyond Problem-Solving Courts, Erin Collins
Beyond Problem-Solving Courts, Erin Collins
Law Faculty Publications
Problem-solving courts were borne out of a well-meaning experimentalist spirit, one that inspired judges to attempt to close the so-called “revolving door” to the courthouse by providing treatment instead of, or in addition to, incarceration. The problem-solving court movement is now more than thirty years old and the results of this experiment in court reform are underwhelming. Viewed in the most favorable light, studies suggest that problem-solving courts can modestly reduce the likelihood that some court participants will be arrested or convicted again. Meanwhile, the 40% to 60% of people who begin but do not complete problem-solving court programs often …
Technology - Revealing Or Framing The Truth? A Jurisprudential Debate, Dana Neacsu
Technology - Revealing Or Framing The Truth? A Jurisprudential Debate, Dana Neacsu
Law Faculty Publications
Technology is so much more than a prosthetic. But how much more? And what else is it? In the legal realm, its role is not yet clear. Such a lack of elucidation becomes problematic, especially when technology has the ability to convert assumptions into facts, and it takes on a truth-making, rather than a mere truth-revealing mission. This Article argues that it is problematic to enable technology to stand in for reflective thinking, and calls attention to the fact that evidentiary rules enable technology to decide what can be proven, ergo what truth is. Technology is a fork in the …
How Biden Could Keep Filling The Federal Circuit Court Vacancies, Carl Tobias
How Biden Could Keep Filling The Federal Circuit Court Vacancies, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
In October 2020, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speculated that the fifty-four talented, extremely conservative, and exceptionally young, appellate court judges whom then-President Donald Trump and two relatively similar Grand Old Party (GOP) Senate majorities appointed had left the federal appeals courts “out of whack.” Problematic were the many deleterious ways in which Trump and both of the upper chamber majorities in the 115th and 116th Senate undermined the courts of appeals, which are the courts of last resort for practically all lawsuits, because the United States Supreme Court hears so few appeals. The nomination and confirmation processes which Trump …
Reckoning With Structural Racism In Legal Education: Methods Toward A Pedagogy Of Antiracism, Doron Samuel-Siegel
Reckoning With Structural Racism In Legal Education: Methods Toward A Pedagogy Of Antiracism, Doron Samuel-Siegel
Law Faculty Publications
There is an empty quality to much of what passes as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” work in legal education. Despite a robust body of scholarship on teaching law consistent with the goals of antiracism, many legal educators struggle to put theory into practice. This Article responds to that struggle, offering a holistic, methodical approach to a pedagogy of antiracism whose goal is twofold: create conditions in which racially minoritized students learn to their full potential, free from the harms of traditional legal education; and equip all students, regardless of identity, to contribute to the dismantlement of structural racism. Absent such …
Home Of The Dispossessed, Allison Anna Tait
Home Of The Dispossessed, Allison Anna Tait
Law Faculty Publications
The objects that people interact with on a daily basis speak to and of these people who acquire, display, and handle them—the relationship is one of exchange. People living among household objects come to care for their things, identify with them, and think of them as a constituent part of themselves. A meaningful problem arises, however, when people who have deep connections to the objects that populate their lived spaces are not those who possess the legal rights of ownership. These individuals and groups—usually excluded from the realm of property ownership along lines of gender, race, and ethnicity—live on an …
Inheriting Privilege, Allison Anna Tait
Inheriting Privilege, Allison Anna Tait
Law Faculty Publications
All families may be created equal, so to speak. But differences between families in terms of economic wealth, resource networks, and access to cultural capital are both severe and stark. A large part of what shapes this scenery of economic possibility is the legal framework of wealth transfer. Wealth travels through generations and sticks, crystallizing in predictable places and shapes, thereby embedding complex forms of inequality within and between families. The family trust, in particular, is a mode of transfer that facilitates wealth preservation as well as wealth inequality. Family trusts are tailored to convey and defend complex patrimonies in …
Filling Lower Court Vacancies In Congress' Lame Duck Session, Carl Tobias
Filling Lower Court Vacancies In Congress' Lame Duck Session, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
In this midterm election year of 2022, the nation’s divided political parties are in a battle royale to win the exceedingly close Senate majority. One important explanation for the fight is that the party which assumes the next Senate majority will necessarily have considerable power to affect the confirmation of federal judges. For example, during Donald Trump’s presidency, Republicans controlled the Senate; therefore, the chief executive and the upper chamber proposed and confirmed fifty-four accomplished,
extremely conservative, young appeals court, and 174 district court, jurists. The Republican White House and Senate majority confirmed judges by rejecting or deemphasizing the rules …
Debt Governance, Wealth Management, And The Uneven Burdens Of Child Support, Allison Anna Tait
Debt Governance, Wealth Management, And The Uneven Burdens Of Child Support, Allison Anna Tait
Law Faculty Publications
Child support is a ubiquitous kind of debt, common to all income and wealth levels, with data showing that approximately 30% of the U.S. adult population has either been subject to paying child support or has received it. Across this field of child support debt, however, unpaid obligations look different for everyone, and in particular the experiences around child support debt diverge radically for low-income populations and high-wealth ones. On the low-income end of the spectrum, child support debt is a sophisticated and adaptive governance technology that disciplines and penalizes those living in or near poverty. Being in child support …
The Promise And Perils Of Private Enforcement, Luke Norris
The Promise And Perils Of Private Enforcement, Luke Norris
Law Faculty Publications
A new crop of private enforcement suits is sprouting up across the country. These laws permit people to bring enforcement actions against those who aid or induce abortions, against schools that permit transgender students to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identities, and against schools that permit transgender students to play on sports teams consistent with their gender identities. Similar laws permit people to bring enforcement actions against schools that teach critical race theory and against those who sell restricted firearms. State legislatures are considering a host of laws modeled on these examples, along with other novel regimes. These are …
Changing Lanes: Tax Relief For Commuters, Hayes R. Holderness
Changing Lanes: Tax Relief For Commuters, Hayes R. Holderness
Law Faculty Publications
Tax law reaches all parts of life, and societal expectations about life's activities often affect how the law is applied. As those expectations change, application of the law should be expected to change in turn. This essay highlights changing societal views about commuting, particularly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, to demonstrate how even long-standing positions under the tax law can be quickly uprooted. Specifically, as working from home becomes standard, taxpayers should be afforded tax relief when required to commute into the workplace, despite the fact that the tax law traditionally has rejected such relief.
Social Services And Mutual Aid In Times Of Covid-19 And Beyond: A Brief Critique, Dana Neacsu
Social Services And Mutual Aid In Times Of Covid-19 And Beyond: A Brief Critique, Dana Neacsu
Law Faculty Publications
May 19, 2021, marked a crucial point in the United States’ fight against the COVID-19 pandemic: sixty percent of U.S. adults had been vaccinated. Since then, Americans have witnessed the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, but its long-term effects are here to stay. Ironically, some are unexpectedly welcome. Among the lasting positive changes is an augmented sense of individual involvement in community well-being. This multifaceted phenomenon has given rise to #BLM allyship and heightened interest in mutual aid networks. In the legal realm, it has manifested with law students, their educators, lawyers, and the American Bar Association …
Entrenched Racial Hierarchy: Educational Inequality From The Cradle To The Lsat, Kevin Woodson
Entrenched Racial Hierarchy: Educational Inequality From The Cradle To The Lsat, Kevin Woodson
Law Faculty Publications
For my contribution to this special issue of the Minnesota Law Review, I will attempt to situate the problem of black underrepresentation at America’s law schools within the broader context of racial hierarchy in American society. The former has generated an extensive body of legal scholarship and commentary, centering primarily on the racial impact of law schools’ admissions criteria and procedures, particularly the substantial weight placed upon the Law School Admissions Test (“LSAT”). This focus is understandable: given the substantial racial disparities in LSAT performance and the test’s relatively limited value in predicting academic and professional outcomes, it makes sense …
How Biden Began Building Back Better The Federal Bench, Carl Tobias
How Biden Began Building Back Better The Federal Bench, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
In October 2020, Democratic presidential nominee Joseph Biden famously expressed regret that the fifty-four accomplished, conservative, and young federal appellate court jurists and the 174 comparatively similar district court judges whom former– Republican President Donald Trump and the recent pair of analogous Grand Old Party Senate majorities in the 115th and 116th Congress appointed had left the courts of appeals and the district courts “out of whack.” Lamentable were the numerous detrimental ways in which President Trump and these Republican Senate majorities attempted to undercut the appeals courts and district courts, which actually constitute the tribunals of last resort in …
Three Observations About The Worst Of The Worst, Virginia-Style, Corinna Lain
Three Observations About The Worst Of The Worst, Virginia-Style, Corinna Lain
Law Faculty Publications
Much could be said about Virginia’s historic decision to repeal the death penalty, and Professor Klein’s essay provides a wonderful starting point for any number of important discussions. We could talk about how the decision came to be. Or why the move is so momentous. Or what considerations were particularly important in the decision‑making process. Or where we should go from here. But in this brief comment, I’ll be focusing not on the how, or the why, or the what, or the where, but rather on the who. Who are condemned inmates, both generally and Virginia‑style?
Filling Judge Flaum's Vacant Seventh Circuit Seat, Carl Tobias
Filling Judge Flaum's Vacant Seventh Circuit Seat, Carl Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
"On November 30, 2020, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Judge Joel Flaum assumed senior status after completing more than forty years in public service as one of the nation’s preeminent jurists. By then, Judge Flaum had compiled the longest active status tenure provided by a federal appellate court jurist, serving over practically thirty-eight years, six as chief judge of the prominent tribunal. On this day, the Senate also promptly resumed Congress’ lame duck session, which the upper chamber had begun after voters chose Joe Biden as President yet concomitantly appeared to retain a close Grand Old …
Bostock, The Crown Acts, And A Possible Right To Self-Expression In The Workplace, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.
Bostock, The Crown Acts, And A Possible Right To Self-Expression In The Workplace, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.
Law Faculty Publications
Employment at-will is the default rule in American law. In the absence of an employment contract, employers are generally free to discharge workers for any reason not barred by statute or public policy. Typically, an employee can be fired when an employer dislikes an employee's self-expression that is not specifically protected by law. However, recent developments in employment discrimination law may provide the foundation for a burgeoning right to self-expression in the workplace. In its recent case Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court ruled sexual orientation discrimination and transgender discrimination necessarily involve sex discrimination under Title VII. The Court's …
Foreword: A Century Since Suffrage: How Did We Get Here? Where Will We Go? How Will We Get There?, Rona Kaufman
Foreword: A Century Since Suffrage: How Did We Get Here? Where Will We Go? How Will We Get There?, Rona Kaufman
Law Faculty Publications
One hundred years have passed since (white) women attained the right to vote. In the century since the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, American women have transitioned from an existence as mere objects of history to becoming active subjects of history. In 2019 and 2020, many programs and conferences were organized to celebrate the achievements of America's women and commemorate the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage. The Section on Women in Legal Education hosted a program at the January 2020 American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting titled, “A Century Since Suffrage: How Did We Get Here? Where Will We …