Digital Commons Network^™

Book Review: Michele Goodwin's Black Markets: The Supply And Demand Of Body Parts, Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

The Author reviews Michele Goodwin’s book BLACK MARKETS: THE SUPPLY AND DEMAND OF BODY PARTS, published by Cambridge University Press, 2006. The book discusses the shortage of cadaveric organs available for transplantation. It argues that the shortage disproportionately impacts racial minorities. It then analyzes existing organ procurement laws and proposed alternatives, with a focus on market solutions.

BLACK MARKETS is impeccably researched and persuasively argued, though some of its points are certainly controversial. The book is aimed at and very accessible to a general audience, but it will also prove interesting and informative to legal, medical and public health academic …

Constitutional Tipping Points: Civil Rights, Social Change, And Fact-Based Adjudication, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers an account of how courts respond to social change, with a specific focus on the process by which courts "tip" from one understanding of a social group and its constitutional claims to another. Adjudication of equal protection and due process claims, in particular, requires courts to make normative judgments regarding the effect of traits such as race, sex, sexual orientation, or mental retardation on group members' status and capacity. Yet, Professor Goldberg argues, courts commonly approach decisionmaking by focusing only on the 'facts" about a social group, an approach that she terms 'fact-based adjudication." Professor Goldberg critiques …