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The Pregnancy Discrimination Act: Legitimating Discrimination Against Pregnant Women In The Workforce, Judith G. Greenberg Mar 2018

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act: Legitimating Discrimination Against Pregnant Women In The Workforce, Judith G. Greenberg

Maine Law Review

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) has been effective in making the most egregious and obvious forms of pregnancy discrimination illegal. Unfortunately, the PDA has also acted as a shield behind which employers can hide as they discriminate against their pregnant employees. The result is that the PDA permits discrimination based on the very sort of stereotyping that it was expected to eradicate. There are two dominant stereotypes of pregnant women. Both are inconsistent with the image of a good worker. One stereotype connects pregnant women with the home. In one form or another it says, “Pregnant women are/should be preoccupied …


What If The Butchers In The Slaughter House Cases Had Won?: An Exercise In "Counterfactual" Doctrine, Jane L. Scarborough Mar 2018

What If The Butchers In The Slaughter House Cases Had Won?: An Exercise In "Counterfactual" Doctrine, Jane L. Scarborough

Maine Law Review

In a recent Harvard Law Review commentary, two well-known constitutional scholars called into question not only what Supreme Court cases are “canonized” in casebooks, but whether the “Court-centeredness” of our scholarship and teaching about constitutional law has led to an impoverishment of the discourse on justice. The authors document how “[c]ases become important to teach and remember because they serve as the icons (and demons) of an invented constitutional tradition” --a tradition that “comes into being at a particular point in history, and then regards itself as always having been there.” There is no better example of such an icon …


Grounded Applications: Feminism And The Law At The Millennium, Katharine Silbaugh Mar 2018

Grounded Applications: Feminism And The Law At The Millennium, Katharine Silbaugh

Maine Law Review

The conference topic is feminism in the twenty-first century, a dialogue between academics and practicing attorneys. The first order of business will be to resist the millennium invitation to come up with evermore novel, overarching formulations of the mission and means of feminism. At the end of the twentieth century we know quite a bit about the problems presented by feminists and the problems within feminism. We have had a long history of insightful intellectual discourse on questions of equality and on the meaning of gender. We also know that it takes time to absorb and apply broad insights in …


Standing Under State Search And Seizure Provision: Why The Minnesota Supreme Court Should Have Rejected The Federal Standards And Instead Invoked Greater Protection Under Its Own Constitution In State V. Carter, Rebecca C. Garrett Feb 2018

Standing Under State Search And Seizure Provision: Why The Minnesota Supreme Court Should Have Rejected The Federal Standards And Instead Invoked Greater Protection Under Its Own Constitution In State V. Carter, Rebecca C. Garrett

Maine Law Review

In State v. Carter, the Minnesota Supreme Court considered whether a criminal defendant had “standing” to challenge an alleged search under the Fourth Amendment and Article 1, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution. The defendant moved to suppress evidence obtained by a police officer who had peered in the window of an apartment where the defendant was participating in a drug-packaging operation with the apartment's leaseholder. A divided court held that the defendant had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the apartment. Therefore, the defendant had standing to challenge the legality of the police officer's observations pursuant to the Fourth …


Competing Liabilities: Responding To Evidence Of Child Abuse That Surface During The Attorney-Client Relationship, Alison Beyea Feb 2018

Competing Liabilities: Responding To Evidence Of Child Abuse That Surface During The Attorney-Client Relationship, Alison Beyea

Maine Law Review

Kevin Adams, a practicing attorney in Maine, represents John Brown in a dispute with Brown's landlord. Brown is facing eviction as a result of his inability to pay the rent. Over the course of the representation, Adams has come to believe that Brown is abusing his son. Brown--who is working two jobs but still cannot pay his rent--has told Adams of the incredible pressure he is facing. Brown has admitted that the pressure is getting to him and that he feels bad that he has been “taking it out on the kid.” Brown also told Adams that he had been …


Towering Figures, Enigmas, And Responsive Communities In American Legal Ethics, Thomas L. Shaffer Feb 2018

Towering Figures, Enigmas, And Responsive Communities In American Legal Ethics, Thomas L. Shaffer

Maine Law Review

The Annual Edward S. Godfrey Lecture at the University of Maine School of Law was held on November 12, 1998. Professor Thomas L. Shaffer, Edward S. Godfry Professor of Law, presented “Towering Figures, Enigmas, and Responsive Communities in American Legal Ethics.”


When You Should Have Known: Rethinking Constructive Knowledge In Tort Liability For Sexual Transmission Of Hiv, John A. Turcotte Feb 2018

When You Should Have Known: Rethinking Constructive Knowledge In Tort Liability For Sexual Transmission Of Hiv, John A. Turcotte

Maine Law Review

AIDS is a modern epidemic that has grabbed the forefront of this nation's attention like no other disease in the twentieth century. Despite vigorous medical research and experimentation, the disease remains incurable and ultimately fatal. Protecting the health of the citizens has always been a strong policy of the law. Tort liability for the spread of contagious diseases dates back to the early nineteenth century. Tort liability for sexual transmission of AIDS began to appear in the late 1980s, not long after the appearance of the disease. Based as it was on the tort actions arising from other transmittable diseases, …


Maine's Sex Offender Registration And Notification Act: Wise Or Wicked?, James A. Billings, Crystal L. Bulges University Of Maine School Of Law Feb 2018

Maine's Sex Offender Registration And Notification Act: Wise Or Wicked?, James A. Billings, Crystal L. Bulges University Of Maine School Of Law

Maine Law Review

The purpose of this Comment is to discuss both the constitutionality and advisability of such sex offender notification statutes with specific reference to Maine's Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (the SORNA). This Comment will discuss, independent of their constitutionality, the advisability of such statutes on a policy level. It is the Authors' thesis that the SORNA will survive constitutional challenges, but as a means of alleviating the problem of sex offender recidivism in this country, the SORNA and similar statutes fail both in theory and in practice. Alternative approaches based on interdisciplinary study will be suggested.


In Pursuit Of The Public Good: Lawyers Who Care, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Feb 2018

In Pursuit Of The Public Good: Lawyers Who Care, Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Maine Law Review

The Eighth Annual Frank M. Coffin Lecture on Law and Public Service was held on November 22, 1999. The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, delivered the lecture. Established in 1992, the lecture honors Judge Frank M. Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and long-time friend of the University of Maine School of Law.


The Maine Civil Rights Act: History, Enforcement, Application, And Analysis, J. Christopher Parr Feb 2018

The Maine Civil Rights Act: History, Enforcement, Application, And Analysis, J. Christopher Parr

Maine Law Review

Since the passage of the “Maine Civil Rights Act” (MCRA, Act) in 1989, the Maine Department of the Attorney General has made enforcement of that civil “hate crime” law one of its highest priorities. According to one statistic, “more than 125 people have been prosecuted in Maine's civil courts on hate crime charges since 1994,” and only two of those actions have been lost by the State. The Attorney General at the time of this writing, Andrew Ketterer, has stated that he takes the perpetration of hate crimes seriously, and that it has been important to him “that the message …


Sovereign Immunity And The Crisis Of Constitutional Absolutism: Interpreting The Eleventh Amendment After Alden V. Maine, Matthew Mustokoff Feb 2018

Sovereign Immunity And The Crisis Of Constitutional Absolutism: Interpreting The Eleventh Amendment After Alden V. Maine, Matthew Mustokoff

Maine Law Review

Toward the end of her article, The History of Mainstream Legal Thought, Elizabeth Mensch identifies federalism as a dominant theme in recent Supreme Court decisions. The Court's focus on questions of federalism, however, cannot be directly attributed to the emergence of any specific social or political issues dividing champions of strong central government from defenders of state sovereignty. Instead, the Court's scrutiny seems to have arisen from a perplexing, frustrating, and self-contradictory body of Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence and the perpetual call for judicial clarification it has produced. While the text of the Eleventh Amendment is unambiguous—its language specifically bestows immunity …


Where The Right Went Wrong In Southworth: Underestimating The Power Of The Marketplace, Clay Calvery Feb 2018

Where The Right Went Wrong In Southworth: Underestimating The Power Of The Marketplace, Clay Calvery

Maine Law Review

When the United States Supreme Court unanimously declared in March 2000 that mandatory student activity fees at public universities do not offend the First Amendment if distributed in viewpoint-neutral fashion, the decision dealt a severe blow to the conservative movement that had both supported the challenge to fee assessments and long railed against a perceived leftist/liberal bias in higher education. The New York Times, acknowledging the political implications of the case, hailed the Court's decision in Board of Regents v. Southworth as “a surprisingly broad and decisive victory for universities on an ideologically charged issue that has roiled higher education.” …


Life In No Trump: Property And Speech Under The Constitution, Richard A. Esptein Feb 2018

Life In No Trump: Property And Speech Under The Constitution, Richard A. Esptein

Maine Law Review

The editors of the Maine Law Review have been kind enough to offer me the opportunity to respond to Laura Underkuffler's criticism of my work in her recent Godfrey Lecture, “When Should Rights ‘Trump’? An Examination of Speech and Property,” which appears in the preceding issue. In my earlier writings on constitutional law, more specifically, in my paper, Property, Speech and the Politics of Distrust, I took the position that modern Supreme Court jurisprudence had taken a turn for the worse insofar as it used different standards of review in passing on the constitutionality of legislation. The current position, roughly …


Surrogate Mothers, Gestational Carriers, And A Pragmatic Adaptation Of The Uniform Parentage Act Of 2000, John C. Sheldon Feb 2018

Surrogate Mothers, Gestational Carriers, And A Pragmatic Adaptation Of The Uniform Parentage Act Of 2000, John C. Sheldon

Maine Law Review

Recent medical advances that permit human conception without intercourse, in combination with sociological changes in our country, dramatically enlarge the population of adults who can produce or raise children. The legal price for this broadening of opportunity, however, is a diminishment of certainty: We are no longer sure whom we should identify as a child's parents. These are important questions, of course, because ready answers will quickly dampen disputes about custody and will immediately establish support obligations and the children's eligibility for health insurance, for inheritance, for Workers' Compensation benefits, and for Social Security survivor benefits. But as important as …


Overawed And Overwhelmed: Juvenile Miranda Incomprehension, Sara P. Cressey Feb 2018

Overawed And Overwhelmed: Juvenile Miranda Incomprehension, Sara P. Cressey

Maine Law Review

Each year approximately one million juveniles in the United States are arrested and read the Miranda warnings. Though studies have shown that the majority of those children do not understand the warnings, most of them must decide alone whether to waive their constitutional rights— and nearly all ultimately make that choice without the help of an attorney. The Supreme Court has recognized that children differ from adults in critical ways, and those differences have important implications for juveniles’ ability to meaningfully waive their Miranda rights. To ensure that juveniles’ constitutional rights are protected, the Supreme Court should take up the …


Rectifying The Tilt: Equality Lessons From Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation, And Transgender, Chai R. Feldblum Dec 2017

Rectifying The Tilt: Equality Lessons From Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation, And Transgender, Chai R. Feldblum

Maine Law Review

The joy and the challenge of being located in an academic setting is that I am also able to engage in forays (albeit intermittent forays) into scholarly analysis. Delivering this lecture, and publishing this piece, provides an excellent opportunity for me to engage in such a foray. This piece, then, is a scholarly reflection on my advocacy experiences. My goal is to use my experiences in advocacy as fertile soil from which to create, I hope, a lovely flower of theory and conceptual thought. Before setting out on this endeavor, however, I would like to offer two postulates. There are …


Caring For Workers, Martha T. Mccluskey Dec 2017

Caring For Workers, Martha T. Mccluskey

Maine Law Review

This essay examines the question of conflict between market work and family care from the angle of family caretaking labor for workers rather than for dependents. Feminist legal scholars and activists have been concerned for generations about the effect of women's unpaid caretaking work on women's participation and success in the wage labor market. Better public support for this gendered family care work is crucial to many leading visions of feminist legal and economic change. Recent welfare reforms, however, have increased the extent to which public policy treats caretaking instead as a personal responsibility (or a sign of personal irresponsibility) …


Caretaking And The Contradictions Of Contemporary Policy, Michael Selmi, Naomi Cahn Dec 2017

Caretaking And The Contradictions Of Contemporary Policy, Michael Selmi, Naomi Cahn

Maine Law Review

Contemporary social policy relating to women's employment remains strikingly ambivalent. Those in favor of traditional family structures, a position that is generally associated with conservative political agendas, have often expressed a preference for a family model that emphasizes the woman's role as a homemaker, or to use the more recent term, a caretaker. At the same time, as the 1996 Welfare Reform Act demonstrates, if the choice is between providing financial support that would enable lower-income women to stay in the home and forcing those women into the labor market, the conservative agenda will opt for the latter. More recently, …


Telecommuting: The Escher Stairway Of Work/Family Conflict, Michelle A. Travis Dec 2017

Telecommuting: The Escher Stairway Of Work/Family Conflict, Michelle A. Travis

Maine Law Review

According to Working Mother magazine, telecommuting is a “wonderful arrangement for working moms.” Advertisements for telecommuting jobs and related technologies show us pictures of these happy telecommuting moms, who are conducting important business on the telephone or typing busily at their computers, as their smiling toddlers play quietly by their sides or sit contentedly in their laps. Some employers have offered this wonderful experience in direct response to concerns raised by “women's issues” committees. That was probably just what Jack Nilles had in mind when he first coined the term “telecommuting” in the 1970s and described it as a way …


Job Segregation, Gender Blindness, And Employee Agency, Tracy E. Higgins Dec 2017

Job Segregation, Gender Blindness, And Employee Agency, Tracy E. Higgins

Maine Law Review

Almost forty years after the enactment of Title VII, women's struggle for equality in the workplace continues. Although Title VII was intended to “break[] down old patterns of segregation and hierarchy,” the American workplace remains largely gender-segregated. Indeed, more than one-third of all women workers are employed in occupations in which the percentage of women exceeds 80%. Even in disciplines in which women have made gains, top status (and top paying) jobs remain male-dominated while the lower status jobs are filled by women. This pattern of gender segregation, in turn, accounts for a substantial part of the persistent wage gap …


An Essay On The Production Of Youth Prostitution, Libby Alder Dec 2017

An Essay On The Production Of Youth Prostitution, Libby Alder

Maine Law Review

Youth prostitution is more multidimensional than I think most of us are prone to admit. This essay is designed to raise the profile of some of its less prominent aspects—aspects which are not unknown exactly, but which are underrecognized and generally ignored in the context of legal analysis. The phenomenon of youth prostitution involves some thorny, sometimes confusing, issues, but those issues are eclipsed by an ideology that fails to grapple with the complexity of youth agency and the consequent position of youth in law. The result is that some kids are left inadequately served and others are utterly unknowable. …


Lessons From The Fields: Female Farmworkers And The Law, Maria L. Ontiveros Dec 2017

Lessons From The Fields: Female Farmworkers And The Law, Maria L. Ontiveros

Maine Law Review

In both the fields of labor law and gender studies, we learn the most from experience. The experience of workers coming together to demand equality and respect and the experience of women coming together to share their experiences has led to most of what we study in these fields. Unfortunately, too many times traditional legal doctrine does not fit these experiences. In those cases, we must struggle to change the law to be responsive to the lived experiences of women and workers. This Article explores the lived experiences of one particular group of workers—immigrant farmworking women in California. From their …


Gender Typing In Stereo: The Transgender Dilemma In Employment Discrimination, Richard F. Storrow Dec 2017

Gender Typing In Stereo: The Transgender Dilemma In Employment Discrimination, Richard F. Storrow

Maine Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits discrimination against men because they are men and against women because they are women. This familiar characterization of the Act has been quoted in dozens of sex discrimination cases to support a narrow view of who is protected against sex discrimination in this country. When transsexuals file suit, “[e]mployment discrimination jurisprudence at both the federal and state levels ... captures transsexuals in a discourse of exclusion from social participation. This wide net, using a remarkably refined system of semantic manipulations, snags all claims launched by transsexuals and reveals …


Sex, Allies And Bfoqs: The Case For Not Allowing Foreign Corporations To Violate Title Vii In The United States, Keith Sealing Dec 2017

Sex, Allies And Bfoqs: The Case For Not Allowing Foreign Corporations To Violate Title Vii In The United States, Keith Sealing

Maine Law Review

The extent to which foreign corporations as well as their domestic subsidiaries can discriminate against American employees on the basis of sex, age, religion, and national origin in a manner that would be acceptable under their own laws and customs but inimical to American law is currently determined by a muddled jumble of circuit court opinions interpreting a “[w]e express no view” Supreme Court footnote. As a result, American victims of sexual discrimination have much less protection under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when the discriminating actor is a foreign corporation or its domestic subsidiary than …


Congressional Power To Regulate Sex Discrimination: The Effect Of The Supreme Court's "New Federalism", Calvin Massey Dec 2017

Congressional Power To Regulate Sex Discrimination: The Effect Of The Supreme Court's "New Federalism", Calvin Massey

Maine Law Review

Congressional power to prevent and remedy sex discrimination in employment has been founded almost entirely upon the commerce power and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gives Congress power “to enforce, by appropriate legislation” the equal protection guarantee. The commerce power has enabled Congress to prohibit private sex discrimination in employment, and the combination of the commerce and enforcement powers has enabled Congress to prohibit such sex discrimination by public employers. From the late 1930s until the early 1990s the doctrinal architecture of these powers was relatively stable, even if statutory action to realize the promise of a nondiscriminatory …


The Unenforced Promise Of Equal Pay Acts: A National Problem And Possible Solution From Maine, Elizabeth J. Wyman Esq. Dec 2017

The Unenforced Promise Of Equal Pay Acts: A National Problem And Possible Solution From Maine, Elizabeth J. Wyman Esq.

Maine Law Review

Equal pay for women is a concept that has been around for a long time. It was during World War I that women were first guaranteed pay equity in the form of regulations enforced by the War Labor Board of 1918. The Board's equal pay policy required manufacturers, who put women on the payroll while male employees were serving in the military, to pay those women the same wages that were paid to the men. The National War Labor Board continued that trend through World War II. Shortly after the war, states began enacting statutes that required employers to pay …


Foreword: Law, Labor And Gender, Jennifer B. Wriggins Dec 2017

Foreword: Law, Labor And Gender, Jennifer B. Wriggins

Maine Law Review

The theme of the conference, Law, Labor, & Gender, came out of a working group comprised of law students, lawyers, a judge, and myself. We thought that a number of issues deserved attention, ranging from current jurisprudence on employment discrimination to more theoretical issues having to do with work/family dilemmas. Professor Deborah Rhode kindly accepted our invitation to be the keynote speaker, and various other academic speakers also agreed to present papers. The working group, and the editors of the Maine Law Review, drafted and sent out a call for papers to approximately 1600 law professors and others. The Law …


Ethics, Law Firms, And Legal Education, Milton C. Regan Jr. Dec 2017

Ethics, Law Firms, And Legal Education, Milton C. Regan Jr.

Maine Law Review

A rash of recent corporate scandals has once again put professional ethics in the spotlight. It's hard to pick up the Wall Street Journal each day and not read that authorities have launched a new investigation or that additional indictments are imminent. Stories of financial fraud and outright looting have galvanized the public and shaken the economy. What ethical lessons can we draw from these events? Two explanations seem especially prominent. The first is a story of individuals without an adequate moral compass. Some people's greed and ambition were unchecked by any internal ethical constraints. For such deviants, no amount …


The Lawyer As A Public Citizen, Cruz Reynoso Dec 2017

The Lawyer As A Public Citizen, Cruz Reynoso

Maine Law Review

The Eleventh Annual Frank M. Coffin Lecture on Law and Public Service was held on October 17, 2002. Cruz Reynoso, Boochever and Bird Professor of Law at the University of California at Davis, School of Law and retired Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, delivered the lecture. Established in 1992, the lecture honors Judge Frank M. Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, an inspiration, mentor, and friend to the University of Maine School of Law. The Board and Staff of Volume 55 are honored to continue the tradition of publishing …


Who's Afraid Of Judicial Activism? Reconceptualizing A Traditional Paradigm In The Context Of Specialized Domestic Violence Court Programs, Jennifer L. Thompson Nov 2017

Who's Afraid Of Judicial Activism? Reconceptualizing A Traditional Paradigm In The Context Of Specialized Domestic Violence Court Programs, Jennifer L. Thompson

Maine Law Review

The Specialized Domestic Violence Pilot Project (Pilot Project), implemented in York and Portland in July and August 2002, is the result of the collaborative efforts of the District Court system, law enforcement, prosecutors, members of the defense bar, and various community agencies offering services to victims and perpetrators. District court judges are largely responsible for overseeing the changes in court procedures and implementing the new protocols in domestic violence cases. The Pilot Project, and the changes it is making to the role that courts play in domestic violence cases, represents a significant departure from the procedures followed by traditional court …