Law Commons^™

Power, Economics And The 'Islamic Terrorism' Narrative, Alev Dudek

Alev Dudek

Acting Gay, Acting Straight: Sexual Orientation Stereotyping, Luke Boso

Luke A. Boso

What does it mean to discriminate "because of sexual orientation?" This legal question will arise increasingly as many states and municipalities enact laws that prohibit discrimination because of sexual orientation. Without evidence of animus, plaintiffs will likely resort to evidence of sexual orientation stereotyping. How should courts determine whether evidence is of sexual orientation stereotyping, and therefore evidence of sexual orientation discrimination? This question is important for courts and litigants who will increasingly face the question, as well as for those invested in anti-essentialist antidiscrimination law more broadly. When the law attempts to define identity categories by offering universalizing definitions, …

The Way Of Colorinsight: Understanding Race And Law Effectively Through Mindfulness-Based Colorinsight Practices., Rhonda Magee

Rhonda V Magee

Most of us know that, despite the counsel of the current Supreme Court, colorblindness is not, by itself, an effective remedy against racism. This is so because it does not comport with our cognitive (or social) experience of the real world. Thus, legal scholars, backed by cognitive scientists, have called for a move from colorblindness to color insight -- defined as an understanding of race and its pervasive operation in our lives and in the law. This Article is the first to explore the role of research-grounded mindfulness-based contemplative practices in enhancing what may be called ColorInsight, and to suggest …

"Immigrants Are Not Criminals": Respectability, Immigration Reform, And Hyperincarceration, Rebecca Sharpless

Rebecca Sharpless

Marital Status And Privilege, Laura Rosenbury

Laura A. Rosenbury

This essay challenges the privilege attaching to marriage as a distinct form of relationship. Responding to Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s new book, According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family, the essay identifies the legal and extralegal privileges flowing not just to monoracial marriage but to marriage. States recognize and support one form of relationship between adults to the exclusion of all others, creating privilege that flows outside of the home into the workplace and beyond. Instead of arguing that such privilege should be distributed more equally between monoracial and multiracial couples, this essay seeks to …

Catholic Parents Object To Hhs Mandate For Their Daughters, Open New Legal Front, Gerard Bradley

Gerard V. Bradley

Gerard Bradley, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, believes the case is unlikely to win on the merits because the court will not view the enrollment and premiums for the Wielands’ new health plan as a substantial burden on the parents’ religious freedom.

The Respectable Dignity Of Obergefell V. Hodges, Yuvraj Joshi

Yuvraj Joshi

In declaring state laws that restrict same-sex marriage unconstitutional, Justice Kennedy invoked “dignity” nine times—to no one’s surprise. References in Obergefell to “dignity” are in important respects the culmination of Justice Kennedy’s elevation of the concept, dating back to the Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In Casey, “dignity” expressed respect for a woman’s freedom to make choices about her pregnancy. Casey laid the foundation for Lawrence v. Texas, which similarly respected the freedom of choice of homosexual persons. Yet, starting in United States v. Windsor and continuing in Obergefell, the narrative began to change. Dignity veered …

The New Battleground For Same-Sex Couples Is Equal Rights For Their Kids, Tanya Washington

Tanya Monique Washington

No abstract provided.

Are Same-Sex Marriage Statutes The New Anti-Gay Initiatives?, Barbara Cox

Barbara Cox

No abstract provided.

Confessions Of A Commentator: Recognizing One’S Own Exclusion Of Race And Ethnicity From Sexual Orientation Scholarship, Barbara Cox

Barbara Cox

In this piece, introducing the January 1998, panel on "Race and Sexual Orientation in Legal Scholarship" at the American Association of Law Schools conference, Professor Cox reflects on her own scholarship, concluding that "[w]e need to change the whiteness of gay and lesbian scholarship...to eliminate a notion that, when we talk of issues concerning gay and lesbian liberation, we are only talking about liberating white people from the heterosexism of our society."

"Coming Out": The Practical Battles From Being Visible As A Lesbian, Barbara Cox

Barbara Cox

No abstract provided.

But Why Not Marriage: Some Thoughts On Vermont’S Civil Unions Law, Same-Sex Marriage, And Separate But (Un)Equal, Barbara Cox

Barbara Cox

This article is divided into three sections. Section one considers the positive results from the civil unions law. It recognizes that this legislation represents an important step along the path toward full recognition of same-sex couples by extending significant rights, benefits, and responsibilities beyond opposite-sex marriage." With these benefits, however, come several problems. Section two places the civil unions law along side other examples of "separate but equal" restrictions in the race and sex contexts and considers it within the sexual orientation context. This section explains how government-sponsored segregation has always caused damage to both groups that are taught they …

Same-Sex Marriage And The Public Policy Exception In Choice-Of-Law: Does It Really Exist?, Barbara Cox

Barbara Cox

No abstract provided.

A (Personal) Essay On Same-Sex Marriage, Barbara Cox

Barbara Cox

In this article Barbara Cox examines the institution of marriage in the gay and lesbian community from a personal perspective. Prof. Cox reviews recent articles in the gay and lesbian literature arguing both for and against marriage as a political goal for homosexuals. She then relates experiences arising out of her marriage to her partner, Peg. The author advocates same- sex unions as a way to radically restructure the institution of marriage while challenging heterosexual assumptions about gay and lesbian love.

Using An “Incidents Of Marriage” Analysis When Considering Interstate Recognition Of Same-Sex Couples’ Marriages, Civil Unions, And Domestic Partnerships, Barbara Cox

Barbara Cox

Despite discussions for over ten years, we still do not have any decisions on interstate or international recognition of marriages by same-sex couples. We do have, however, six cases in the United States on the interstate recognition and validation of Vermont civil unions. In these six cases, same-sex couples from six different states who had entered into Vermont civil unions came to their courts seeking resolution of legal issues that arose in their relationships. The rest of this article now turns to these six decisions and considers how each court dealt with the same-sex couple seeking legal assistance with the …

Amicus Curiae Brief To The Supreme Court Of Wisconsin In Holtzmann V. Knott On Behalf Of The National Center For Lesbian Rights, Barbara Cox

Barbara Cox

This brief, with an introduction by Prof. Barbara Cox, was written by her and filed with the Wisconsin Supreme Court on behalf of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. That case involved a custody and visitation claim filed by a non-biological parent of H.S.H-K, who had participated in the decision to have and raise the child with the child's biological parent. The court granted the petition and in doing so, became the first state supreme court to recognize the visitation rights of a non-biological lesbian parent.

Love Makes A Family--Nothing More, Nothing Less: How The Judicial System Has Refused To Protect Nonlegal Parents In Alternative Families, Barbara Cox

Barbara Cox

Part I of this article discusses the legal system's recognition of parental rights and enumerates the possible constitutional, statutory, and equitable theories available for protecting the parental rights of nonlegal parents. Part II considers the cases that have rejected the attempts by members of alternative families to use these theories to obtain this protection. Part III discusses the barriers to political power that will make it extremely difficult and time-consuming to achieve legislative change in these areas, and argues that the courts should use the means available to them currently to protect these nonlegal parents and their children while the …

All Americans Not Equal: Mistrust And Discrimination Against Naturalized Citizens In The U.S., Alev Dudek

Alev Dudek

The Constitutional Rhetoric Of White Innocence

Cecil J. Hunt II

This article discusses the Supreme Court’s use of the rhetoric of white innocence in deciding racially inflected claims of constitutional shelter. It argues that the Court’s use of this rhetoric reveals that it has adopted a distinctly white-centered-perspective which reveals only a one-sided view of racial reality and thus distorts its ability to accurately appreciate the true nature of racial reality in contemporary America. This article examines the Court’s habit of consistently choosing a white-centered-perspective in constitutional race cases by looking at the Court’s use of the rhetoric of white innocence first in the context of the Court’s concern with …

Reimagining Democratic Inclusion: Asian Americans And The Voting Rights Act, Ming Chen, Taeku Lee

Taeku Lee

No abstract provided.

Free To Be Biased?, Melissa Murray, Russell Robinson

Russell K Robinson

No abstract provided.

Boy Scouts & Burning Crosses: Bringing Balance To The Court’S Lopsided Approach To The Intersection Of Equality And Speech

Russell K Robinson

This article identifies a previously-ignored pattern of Supreme Court decisions that privilege one competing constitutional value, either speech or equality, and subordinate the other—with little or no reasoning explaining its choice. In adjudicating such cases, including two cases decided last term, the Supreme Court has steadfastly treated these disputes as either a basic equality case or a simple speech case. This dichotomy is a problem because once the Court places a case within either a speech or equality paradigm, it is constrained by certain rigid analytical presumptions. These presumptions threaten to stunt the analysis and to deprive the Court of …

Black Childhood And Philosophy | Panel Discussion, Sarah Forman, Odeana Neal, Spearit, Phyllis Taite, Tsedey Tedla, Cedric Powell, Anthony Farley

SpearIt It

On November 21, 2014, the University of Kentucky College of Law hosted the James and Mary Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor Conference. Anthony Paul Farley, the 2014 Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor, led a group of prominent speakers through the day's events. The Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor conference focused on the four freedoms and race. Black childhood is in danger. What is freedom of speech without the right to an education? What is freedom of worship amidst nihilistic erasures of black childhood? What is freedom from want when most of black childhood is lived below the poverty line? What is freedom from …

On Brown V. Board Of Education's 50th Anniversary: To Integrate Or Separate Is Not The Question

Thomas Kleven

By ending official apartheid, Brown represented a great victory in the struggle for racial justice in the United States. Following more than a decade of inaction as a result of its “all deliberate speed” formulation, and in response to the then prevailing sentiment among the proponents of Brown, the Supreme Court began to push for the integration of school districts that engaged in segregation by law or practice. This integrationist push lasted from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Beginning in the mid-1970s the Court began to limit the remedies for segregation by law or practice, and beginning in …

Marriage Equality Decision Was Not Just An Intellectual Exercise, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

Deferred Action, Supervised Enforcement Discretion, And The Rule Of Law Basis For Executive Action On Immigration, Anil Kalhan

Anil Kalhan

In November 2014, the Obama administration announced the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) initiative, which built upon a program instituted two years earlier, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. As mechanisms to channel the government’s scarce resources toward its enforcement priorities more efficiently and effectively, both DACA and DAPA permit certain individuals falling outside those priorities to seek “deferred action,” which provides its recipients with time-limited, nonbinding, and revocable notification that officials have exercised prosecutorial discretion to deprioritize their removal. While deferred action thereby facilitates a highly tenuous form of quasi-legal recognition …

Better Safe? Why Obergefell Matters Before Court Rules, Tanya Washington

Tanya Monique Washington

No abstract provided.

A Layperson's Guide To Fair Housing Law (2014), F. Caruso, Michael Seng, Alison Bethel

F. Willis Caruso

Housing discrimination can take many forms. Laws have been passed at the federal, state, and local levels to prohibit housing discrimination, and attorneys and many fair housing groups are working to eradicate the problem. But the solution to the fair housing problem will not come solely through the work of attorneys and fair housing agencies and organizations; it will also have to come from an educated public that is unwilling to tolerate the cost of housing discrimination. Housing discrimination affects every individual in the United States. Realtors and brokers, bankers and mortgage lenders, insurance companies and developers, real estate buyers …

Civil Rights In Crisis: The Racial Impact Of The Denial Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel, Richard Klein

Richard Daniel Klein

Whereas in 2013 there had been widespread celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, much has been written in subsequent years about the unhappy state of the quality of counsel provided to indigents. But it is not just defense counsel who fail to comply with all that we hope and expect would be done by those who are part of our criminal courts; prosecutorial misconduct, if not actually increasing, is becoming more visible. The judiciary chooses to focus on the rapid processing of cases, often ignoring the rights of those being prosecuted …

U.S. Immigration Policy: Contract Or Human Rights Law?, Victor Romero

Victor C. Romero

The current immigration debate often reflects a tension between affirming the individual rights of migrants against the power of a nation to control its borders. An examination of U.S. Supreme Court precedent reveals that, from our earliest immigration history to the present time, our immigration policy has functioned more like contract law than human rights law, with the Court deferring to the power of Congress to define the terms of that contract at the expense of the immigrant's freedom.