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Framework For The Next Civil Rights Act: What Tort Concepts Reveal About Goals, Results, And Standards, Derek W. Black
Framework For The Next Civil Rights Act: What Tort Concepts Reveal About Goals, Results, And Standards, Derek W. Black
Faculty Publications
This article anticipates that the next president and the current Congress will likely pursue civil rights legislation for the first time since 1991. Their most significant and difficult task will be determining whether to retain the Supreme Court’s intentional discrimination standard. Because this issue has so often led to polemic debates and court decisions in the past, this article attempts to provide a neutral framework for that discussion. Relying on tort concepts and their longstanding connection to constitutional torts, it demonstrates that the attempt to create a standard to prohibit immoral or “wrongful” conduct is both misguided and will prove …
The Contradiction Between Equal Protection's Meaning And Its Legal Substance: How Deliberate Indifference Can Cure It, Derek W. Black
The Contradiction Between Equal Protection's Meaning And Its Legal Substance: How Deliberate Indifference Can Cure It, Derek W. Black
Faculty Publications
This Article highlights the inherent ambiguities of racial antidiscrimination’s core legal language: “equal protection under the law” and “discrimination based on race.” It then analyzes how and why the Court has never answered fundamental questions regarding the meaning of these terms. Thus, this Article answers these fundamental questions itself by exploring the original intent behind the Equal Protection Clause. Against this backdrop, this Article reveals how the Court’s standard for assessing discrimination claims, the intent doctrine, assumes a meaning for equal protection that is inconsistent with its original meaning. Rather than reflecting equal protection’s meaning, the standard lacks any basis …