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Full-Text Articles in Law

Racial Diversity And Law Firm Economics, Jack Thorlin Apr 2023

Racial Diversity And Law Firm Economics, Jack Thorlin

Arkansas Law Review

There is an eternal temptation to think that if one recognizes a moral problem and does something about it, then one is blameless even if the action taken does not solve the problem. We usually recognize that it is absurd to credit intent when the disconnect from results is vast—consider the rightfully mocked tendency of people to respond to tragedies by declaring that their “thoughts and prayers” are with the victims rather than taking any meaningful step to ameliorate their suffering. People still engage in such posturing because the behavior benefits them in several ways: (a) others see that the …


Hitting The Wall: The Next Step In Addressing The Pink Tax, Danielle A. Essary Feb 2023

Hitting The Wall: The Next Step In Addressing The Pink Tax, Danielle A. Essary

Arkansas Law Review

For thirty-some-odd years, scholars and consumer advocates have called for the elimination of gender-based price discrimination, also known as the “Pink Tax.” Efforts to address this issue have included studies demonstrating the phenomenon’s existence, social movements incited to garner public support for the cause, consumer attempts to bring the issue before courts in hopes of judicial intervention, and legislative undertakings at both the state and federal level to craft legislation prohibiting the practice. Yet, gender-based price discrimination has proven evasive of regulation, outside the scope of judicial reach, and difficult to isolate in terms of hard proof. Even agreeing on …


Mental Health, Law School, And Bar Admissions: Eliminating Stigma And Fostering A Healthier Profession, Natalie C. Fortner Jan 2023

Mental Health, Law School, And Bar Admissions: Eliminating Stigma And Fostering A Healthier Profession, Natalie C. Fortner

Arkansas Law Review

Part II of this Comment explores the current state of mental health in the legal profession and the shortcomings of state bar associations, lawyer assistance programs “LAPs”), and courts applying the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) in combating the profession’s mental health problem. Part III then examines practical steps the profession can take at the law school level that will aid in eliminating the stigma associated with seeking mental health treatment in the legal profession, thus addressing the problem at its source.


Importing Indian Intolerance: How Title Vii Can Prevent Caste Discrimination In The American Workplace, Brett Whitley Apr 2022

Importing Indian Intolerance: How Title Vii Can Prevent Caste Discrimination In The American Workplace, Brett Whitley

Arkansas Law Review

"If Hindus migrate to other regions on [E]arth, [Indian] Caste would become a world problem." - Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1916) Imagine it is the year 2020. You are one of the more than 160 million people across India that are labeled as Dalits, formerly known as the “Untouchables." Most Hindus view Dalits as belonging to the lowest rung in the ancient system of social stratification that impacts individuals across the globe called the caste system. Your people have endured human rights abuses for centuries, but luckily, neither you nor a loved one have ever been the victim of one of …


Korematsu’S Ancestors, Mark A. Graber Dec 2021

Korematsu’S Ancestors, Mark A. Graber

Arkansas Law Review

Mark Killenbeck’s Korematsu v. United States has important affinities with Dred Scott v. Sandford. Both decisions by promoting and justifying white supremacy far beyond what was absolutely mandated by the constitutional text merit their uncontroversial inclusion in the anticanon of American constitutional law.3 Dred Scott held that former slaves and their descendants could not be citizens of the United States and that Congress could not ban slavery in American territories acquired after the Constitution was ratified.5 Korematsu held that the military could exclude all Japanese Americans from portions of the West Coast during World War II.6 Both decisions nevertheless provided …


Disestablishing "The Last Plantation": The Need For Accountability In The United States Department Of Agriculture, Seth L. Ellis Aug 2021

Disestablishing "The Last Plantation": The Need For Accountability In The United States Department Of Agriculture, Seth L. Ellis

Journal of Food Law & Policy

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. At the signing ceremony, President Lincoln declared the Department of Agriculture to be the "people's Department" because he said it governed an industry "in which [citizens felt] more directly concerned than in any other. .. ." Today, many American citizens do not share Abraham Lincoln's view of the USDA as being the "people's Department"; rather, they identify it as being "the last plantation" due to its long history of open discrimination against African-American farmers. While this discrimination has occurred throughout America's history, perhaps …


A Government Of Laws That Is A Government Of Men And Women, Mark Tushnet Jun 2021

A Government Of Laws That Is A Government Of Men And Women, Mark Tushnet

Arkansas Law Review

I take Mark Killenbeck’s “provocative” article as an occasion for some informal comments about what Korematsu and Trump v. Hawaii tell us about the saying, “a government of laws, not a government of men and women.” My basic thought is that the “not” in the saying has to be replaced “but also.” And, in some sense we have always had to have known that the saying was wrong as stated. Whatever the laws are, they don’t make themselves. Nor do they administer themselves, nor interpret themselves. Men and women appear at the stages of enactment, application, and adjudication. So, for …


A Proper Burial, Robert L. Tsai Jun 2021

A Proper Burial, Robert L. Tsai

Arkansas Law Review

In his article, Professor Mark Killenbeck defends both Korematsu v. United States and Trump v. Hawaii on their own terms, albeit on narrow grounds. He goes on to conclude that comparisons of the two decisions don’t hold up. Killenbeck has authored a thoughtful and contrarian paper, but I’m not sold. In my view, Korematsu simply isn’t worth saving; in fact, a more complete repudiation of the internment decisions is overdue. Trump v. Hawaii, too, must also be revisited at the earliest opportunity and its more alarming features that abet presidential discrimination against non-citizens rejected. Moreover, I believe that comparisons between …


There Was Nothing "Neutral" About Executive Order 9066, Eric L. Muller Jun 2021

There Was Nothing "Neutral" About Executive Order 9066, Eric L. Muller

Arkansas Law Review

There is no more appropriate place to discuss the Japanese American cases of World War II than in the pages of the Arkansas Law Review. This is not only because Arkansas was the only state outside the Western Defense Command to host not one but two of the War Relocation Authority’s (WRA) concentration camps for Japanese Americans. It is because one of the most important lawyers to oversee the development and administration of all the WRA camps was the dean under whose leadership this law review was founded: Robert A. Leflar. Leflar’s is not a name that constitutional lawyers are …


Tainted Precedent, Darrell A.H. Miller Jun 2021

Tainted Precedent, Darrell A.H. Miller

Arkansas Law Review

We have a common law system of constitutional adjudication, at least in the sense that constitutional practice in the United States relies on prior rulings rather than reasoning from first principles in each case. If there’s controlling precedent on point, it’s binding. Neither “inferior courts” in the federal system, nor state courts adjudicating federal law, are permitted to start anew with the “original public meaning” of the First Amendment or pronounce a fresh Dworkinian “moral reading” of the Fourth. Even the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States, for reasons of reputation, stability, and rule …


Korematsu, Hawaii, And Pedagogy, Sanford Levinson Jun 2021

Korematsu, Hawaii, And Pedagogy, Sanford Levinson

Arkansas Law Review

I begin with some reflections on my own career in teaching—or, perhaps, attempting to teach—American constitutional law to generations of students from 1975 to the present. Or, more accurately, until about three years ago, when I taught introductory constitutional law for the last time. I am quite happy to no longer be teaching that course, whatever joys it did provide me in the past, for a very simple reason: I became more and more frustrated by the demands of coverage, i.e., the duty to take up a variety of topics—including attendant cases and collateral materials—and the unfortunate certainty that what …


Korematsu As The Tribute That Vice Pays To Virtue, Jack M. Balkin Jun 2021

Korematsu As The Tribute That Vice Pays To Virtue, Jack M. Balkin

Arkansas Law Review

Mark Killenbeck wants to (partially) rehabilitate the reputation of one of the Supreme Court’s most despised legal decisions, Korematsu v. United States. He argues that “[w]e should accept and teach Korematsu as an exemplar of what thelaw regarding invidious discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and national origin should be.” In both Korematsu (and Hirabayashi v. United States) the Court asserted that classifications based on race were subject to strict scrutiny. But “[t]he majority,” Killenbeck explains, “refused to heed their own mandate. In Hirabayashi they held that the government policy was ‘reasonable.’ In Korematsu, . . . they failed …


Sober Second Thought? Korematsu Reconsidered, Mark R. Killenbeck Jun 2021

Sober Second Thought? Korematsu Reconsidered, Mark R. Killenbeck

Arkansas Law Review

How to best describe and treat Korematsu v. United States? A self-inflicted wound? It is certainly an exemplar of a case that in key respects tracks Justice Stephen Breyer’s caution about decisions that have “harm[ed] not just the Court, but the Nation.” Part of an “Anticanon,” resting on “little more than naked racism and associated hokum” and “embod[ying] a set of propositions that all legitimate constitutional decisions must be prepared to refute”? Perhaps. Or is it simply an opinion and result that “has long stood out as a stain that is almost universally recognized as a shameful mistake”?


Symposium: Giving Korematsu V. United States A Sober Second Thought, Nick Bell, Emily Levy, Julian Sharp Jun 2021

Symposium: Giving Korematsu V. United States A Sober Second Thought, Nick Bell, Emily Levy, Julian Sharp

Arkansas Law Review

We are elated to present Professor Mark Killenbeck’s thought provoking article, Sober Second Thought? Korematsu Reconsidered. Killenbeck dives into the Korematsu opinion and its history with great care to determine whether it truly “has no place in law under the Constitution” as Chief Justice John Roberts declared in Trump v. Hawaii.1 While Korematsu’s result provides an understandable “impulse to condemn” it, Killenbeck shows us that focusing solely on the case’s result “stands apart from and in stark contrast to its most important place in the constitutional order: articulation of precepts and terminology that provide the foundations for strict scrutiny.”


Foreseeably Uncertain: The (In)Ability Of School Officials To Reasonably Foresee Substantial Disruption To The School Environment, Maggie Geren Sep 2020

Foreseeably Uncertain: The (In)Ability Of School Officials To Reasonably Foresee Substantial Disruption To The School Environment, Maggie Geren

Arkansas Law Review

“Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met.” While the name of this Facebook page is perhaps a bit harsh, most would hardly view it as grounds for school suspension. The very heart of the First Amendment, and indeed the notion for which our Framers drafted it, is the right of citizens to “think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.” Without this fundamental freedom—one that has persevered despite countless efforts to narrow its reach—the American people would live in constant fear of backlash and suppression for merely voicing their opinions.


Recent Developments, Peyton Hildebrand Aug 2020

Recent Developments, Peyton Hildebrand

Arkansas Law Review

The Eighth Circuit upheld preliminary injunctive relief in favor of the plaintiffs who challenged Arkansas's anti-loitering law for violating their free speech rights. Though Arkansas claimed that it would not enforce the anti-loitering statute against "'polite' and 'courteous' beggars like [plaintiffs]," because the law's plain language applied to the plaintiffs' intended activities, they had an objectively reasonable fear of prosecution.' Thus, they had a constitutional injury as required for standing.


Pandora's Cake, Mark R. Killenbeck Aug 2020

Pandora's Cake, Mark R. Killenbeck

Arkansas Law Review

Most of us are familiar with the spectre of Pandora's Box, the "present which seems valuable, but which in reality is a curse."' Robert Graves described Pandora as "the most beautiful [woman] ever created.",2 She was sent by Zeus as a gift to Epimetheus, who initially "respectfully" declined to marry her.3 But chastened by the fate of his brother Prometheus, he changed his mind and wed a women who was "as foolish, mischievous, and idle as she was beautiful.",4 She opened a jar that she and her husband had been "warned. .. to keep closed in which"5 Prometheus had "imprison[ed …


Expanding Peña-Rodriguez V. Colorado To Protect Criminal Defendants From Explicit Gender Animus, Katie Hicks Jan 2020

Expanding Peña-Rodriguez V. Colorado To Protect Criminal Defendants From Explicit Gender Animus, Katie Hicks

Arkansas Law Review

In 2017, the United States Supreme Court extinguished explicit racial animus expressed during juror deliberations criminal trials. Though courts have repeatedly cloaked the jury’s deliberation room—essentially, “black box”—in impenetrable armor, Miguel Angel Peña-Rodriguez leveraged the American promise of equality, piercing a juror’s animus and bringing it within reach of the Court. His case established that protection of the jury’s black box decision making must yield to an even more fundamental protection: the equal protection of the law and the right to a fair and impartial trial by jury.


Recent Developments: The Right To A Fair Cross-Section Of The Community And The Black Box Of Jury Pool Selection In Arkansas, Raelynn J. Hillhouse Aug 2019

Recent Developments: The Right To A Fair Cross-Section Of The Community And The Black Box Of Jury Pool Selection In Arkansas, Raelynn J. Hillhouse

Arkansas Law Review

A Washington County, Arkansas court conducted a hearing on October 15, 2018 on a criminal defendant’s motion to compel discovery to assure a fair and accurate cross-section of the community for the jury as guaranteed by the United States and Arkansas Constitutions. At the hearing, the jury coordinator for the Circuit Clerk’s office testified that counties may elect to use a state-sponsored jury selection computer program, or they may use proprietary programs. Washington County uses a proprietary computer program to select the jury pool from a list of registered voters. The clerk described how her office takes an extra step …


A Constellation Of Benefits And A Universe Of Equal Protection: The Extension Of The Right To Marry Under Pavan V. Smith, Brad Aldridge Jul 2019

A Constellation Of Benefits And A Universe Of Equal Protection: The Extension Of The Right To Marry Under Pavan V. Smith, Brad Aldridge

Arkansas Law Review

In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges recognized the constitutional right of all persons, including same-sex couples, to lawfully marry. In 2017, in Pavan v. Smith, the Court recognized that Obergefell extends that right to much more than the act of marriage in itself. Any person who would have been denied the right to marry the person of her choice before Obergefell now enjoys not only the rights of marriage licensing and recognition, but also the full “constellation” of rights and responsibilities that attend marriage among traditional opposite-sex couples. The Court believed that this …


What Fema Should Do After Puerto Rico: Toward Critical Administrative Constitutionalism, Yxta Maya Murray Jul 2019

What Fema Should Do After Puerto Rico: Toward Critical Administrative Constitutionalism, Yxta Maya Murray

Arkansas Law Review

The 200th anniversary of the 1819 Supreme Court decision McCulloch v. Maryland offers scholars a special opportunity to study the shortcomings of the federal The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, as they were revealed by FEMA’s failures in Puerto Rico during and after Hurricane Maria. Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, as it has been interpreted by McCulloch, a law passed by Congress must be necessary and proper for executing its powers. In light of the expansive capacities allotted for disaster relief under the Stafford Act, and the catastrophic failure of FEMA to provide …


Recent Developments, Raelynn J. Hillhouse Feb 2019

Recent Developments, Raelynn J. Hillhouse

Arkansas Law Review

No abstract provided.