Law Commons^™

Foreword: Pursuing Equal Justice In The West, Lynne Henderson

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Mississippi Of The West?, Michael S. Green

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Citizenship And Suffrage: The Native American Struggle For Civil Rights In The American West, 1830-1965, Willard Hughes Rollings

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Paradoxes Of Health And Equality: When A Boy Becomes A Girl, Noa Ben-Asher

ExpressO

This paper is about an unusual child custody dispute between the parents of a six-year-old child and the child welfare services of Franklin County, Ohio. The conflict emerged when the child’s parents complied with their male child’s professed desire to be treated as a girl by attempting to enroll the child in the first grade as a girl. The paper treats this case as an exemplary test-case of contemporary co-dependence between scientific-medical discourse and liberal-rights discourse. The paper analyzes the positions of the two sides of the custody dispute according to the classic modern distinction between mind and body. On …

Domestic Violence And The Jewish Community, Stacey A. Guthartz

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In Part I of this Article, Guthartz defines the problem of domestic violence as it relates to the Jewish community. Specifically, Jewish texts and history and community understanding and exposure, that contribute to Jewish domestic abuse are examined. In Part II, the author explores Jewish solutions to domestic violence by focusing on religious remedies, community pressure, and the use of civil law. In this Article, it is submitted that it is only through an understanding of the uniqueness of "Jewish" domestic violence by domestic violence and law enforcement organizations, coupled with an understanding about domestic violence within American society by …

Toward An Understanding Of Judicial Diversity In American Courts, Barbara L. Graham

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Part I of this Article explores the utility of descriptive representation as an important concept in understanding why judicial diversity matters from a political perspective. Part II begins an empirical examination of judicial diversity at the federal level while Part III presents an analysis of state court diversity. The data presented in Parts II and III indicate that judges of color are underrepresented at all levels of the federal and state court systems and that particular racial and ethnic groups are virtually excluded from federal and state benches. The conclusion argues that the data presented in this Article support a …

Celebrating Accomplishments In Equality, Sharon Breckenridge Thomas

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Foreword, Separate But Unequal: The Status Of America's Public Schools, James Foreman Jr.

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Symposium, convened by the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, was designed to address many of the issues raised by Donny Gonzalez, a student at a Washington, D.C. high school, on the subject of poverty and race and its effects on school-aged youth. Bringing together a diverse group of speakers and attracting a broad cross-section of the university and Ann Arbor communities, the Separate but Unequal Symposium addressed a range of issues, including: the ongoing relevance of integration, the role of charter schools and other alternative programs, and promising strategies for achieving greater educational equality. A theme linking …

"How To Think About Equality." Review Of Sovereign Virtue: The Theory And Practice Of Equality, By R. Dworkin, Don Herzog

Reviews

Ronald Dworkin's' latest might well seem sharply discontinuous with his other work. The formal theoretical apparatus that kicks off the book is a forbiddingly abstract - some will say arcane - hypothetical auction, coupled with a hypothetical insurance market. There is simply nothing like it in Taking Rights Seriously, or A Matter of Principle, or Law's Empire, or Life's Dominion, or Freedom's Law. Then again, Dworkin first published the key papers on the auction some twenty years. ago and has never flagged, as far as I know, in his commitment to the basic project.2 Theorists have been waiting for the …

"I'M Usually The Only Black In My Class": The Human And Social Costs Of Within-School Segregation, Carla O'Connor

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The work that has focused on within-school segregation has been most concerned with how this phenomenon limits the educational opportunities and might incur a psychological toll on the mass of Black students who find themselves relegated to lower-ability classrooms in integrated schools. This Article, however, allows us to begin to examine the other side of the coin. It reports on how within-school segregation practices create psychological, social, and educational pressures for those few Black students who have escaped enrollment in the least rigorous courses in their school. More precisely, the Article offers insight into how high achieving Black students in …

Conscious Use Of Race As A Voluntary Means To Educational Ends In Elementary And Secondary Education: A Legal Argument Derived From Recent Judicial Decisions, Julie F. Mead

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This paper provides an in-depth examination of the ten recent court decisions concerning race-based student selection processes. As these cases will illustrate, school districts face increasing demands to justify any race-conscious selection process. The significance of meeting the demands and the implications for what appears to be an evolving legal theory is national in scope and broad in application. Some have even argued that some of these cases mark a departure away from the Court's thinking in Brown v. the Board of Education. It should also be noted that each of the cases mentioned above occurred in the context …

What's Wrong With Our Talk About Race? On History, Particularity, And Affirmative Action, James Boyd White

Michigan Law Review

One of the striking and original achievements of the Michigan Law Review in its first century was the publication in 1989 of a Symposium entitled Legal Storytelling. Organized by the remarkable editor-in-chief, Kevin Kennedy - who tragically died not long after his graduation - the Symposium not only brought an important topic to the forefront of legal thinking, it did so in an extraordinarily interesting way. For this was not a mere collection of papers; the authors met in small editorial groups to discuss their work in detail, and as a result the whole project has a remarkable coherence and …

Poverty And Equality: A Distant Mirror, Gene R. Nichol

Michigan Law Review

In one sense, Joel Schwartz's new effort, Fighting Poverty with Virtue, is tremendously timely. Bill Clinton's Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was designed to "end welfare as we know it," turning greater attention to poor people's habits than to their pocketbooks. George Bush's compassionate conservatism is meant to pick up the pace, overtly seeking "to save and change lives." The White House's ominously entitled "Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives" is apparently set to unleash new waves of moral reformers. Schwartz's book seeks to provide moral, philosophical and historical sustenance for these initiatives. He focuses on …

Women At War: An Evolutionary Perspective, Kingsley R. Browne

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Shattered Mirror: Identity, Authority, And Law, Lawrence M. Friedman

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Saying No To Stakeholding, Jeffrey S. Lehman, Deborah C. Malamud

Michigan Law Review

What if America were to make good on its promise of equal opportunity by [XXX]? That's the bold proposal set forth by Yale law professors Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott.... The quotation above is from the Yale University Press announcement describing Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott's new book, with one change: we have substituted "[XXX]" for the authors' catchphrase summary of their proposal. What do you think the missing words might be? How would you enable America "to make good on its promise of equal opportunity"? As you ponder that question, you might consider the following feature of the Ackerman/ …

The Erotics Of Virtue, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

(Obituary Essay on Dominique Aury/Pauline Reage, Author of Story of O)This essay originally appeared in the LA Times book review as an obituary essay on Dominique Aury, author (under the name Pauline Reage) of the pornographic classic Story of O. The essay argues that Story of O is a fairy tale in which the heroine, O, seeks to escape from modernity's enforced virtues of equality, freedom, and choice into a world of the virtues of hierarchy - the eroticized analogues of religious submission. The novel is driven forward by a downward spiral in which O seeks to surrender herself to …

The Erotics Of Virtue (Obituary Essay On Dominique Aury/Pauline Reage, Author Of Story Of O), Kenneth Anderson

Kenneth Anderson

Bisexual Jurisprudence: A Tripolar Approach To Law And Society, Rachel Haynes

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Part I of this Review will briefly assess the principal arguments in Colker's book. In Part II, Colker's book will be situated within the larger currents of the discussion concerning bisexuality and the arguments for a bisexual jurisprudence. Part III critiques Colker's concept of a bisexual jurisprudence as applied to sexual hybrids from the standpoint of an identity, as well as a legal, skeptic. Part IV will sketch out some important implications for the advancement of a bisexual jurisprudence as well as question the need for a bisexual jurisprudence. This review concludes that the addition of a bisexual jurisprudence, like …

The Freedom To Marry For Same-Sex Couples: The Opening Appellate Brief Of Plaintiffs Stan Baker Et Al. In Baker Et Al. V. State Of Vermont, Mary Bonauto, Susan M. Murray, Beth Robinson

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

As the first state to prohibit slavery by constitution, and one of the few states which, from its inception, extended the vote to male citizens who did not own land, the State of Vermont has long been at the forefront of this nation's march toward full equality for all of its citizens. In July 1997, three same-sex couples challenged Vermont to act as a leader yet again, this time in affording full civil rights to the State's gay and lesbian citizens. Stan Baker and Peter Harrigan, Nina Beck and Stacy Jolles, and Holly Puterbaugh and Lois Farnham were denied marriage …

The Marriage Mirage: The Personal And Social Indentity Implications Of Same-Gendered Matrimony, Linda S. Eckols

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article will examine why so much is at stake in the political, social, and legal debate over same-gender marriage. It will not address the constitutional questions of whether there is a fundamental right to marry, although persuasive arguments have been advanced from both sides of the debate." This Article will focus on a more introspective view of the potential effects of legalizing same-gender marriage on the identities of gay men and lesbians in committed relationships and on the interaction between same-gender couples and society. Marriage would provide the integration sought by gay men and lesbians, but at the expense …

Doing Justice: A Challenge For Catholic Law Schools Essay., Grace M. Walle

St. Mary's Law Journal

The numerous allegations of misconduct against high-ranking United States political figures and the associated attorneys are disheartening, but even more disconcerting is the general public’s acquiescence to these ethical deviations. The common assumption that “all lawyers are crooks” fails to outrage anyone. The fact most, if not all, recent ethical violators attended law schools and began their political careers as lawyers prompts questions of the legal education process. Understanding what justice encompasses may begin in books and the classroom, but justice in legal practice requires far more. The aspiration of “doing justice” may stem from religious belief, but this goal …

The Anticaste Principle, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

In this essay, I seek to defend a particular understanding of equality, one that is an understanding of liberty as well. I call this conception "the anticaste principle." Put too briefly, the anticaste principle forbids social and legal practices from translating highly visible and morally irrelevant differences into systemic social disadvantage, unless there is a very good reason for society to do so. On this view, a special problem of inequality arises when members of a group suffer from a range of disadvantages because of a group-based characteristic that is both visible for all to see and irrelevant from a …

The Bar In America: The Role Of Elitism In A Liberal Democracy, Philip S. Stamatakos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Note argues that liberal democracy, the free market, and science have contributed to the increasing atomization of American society. When each person and her views are glorified, universal standards of good become undermined, values become relative, and a sense of community becomes evanescent. Part II argues that individualism is incapable of accounting for the commonweal and therefore is inherently amoral because morality is concerned largely with determining when an individual's will should be subservient to the will of others. Part III considers the nature of elitism and equality and attributes the demise of elitist institutions in …

The Substance Of Equality, Jeremy Waldron

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Speaking of Equality: An Analysis of the Rhetorical Force of "Equality" in Moral and Legal Discourse by Peter Westen

Shattered Mirrors: Our Search For Identity And Community In The Aids Era, William J. Aseltyne

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Shattered Mirrors: Our Search for Identity and Community in the AIDS Era by Monroe E. Price

The Obliging Shell: An Informal Essay On Formal Equal Opportunity, Patricia Williams

Michigan Law Review

I am struck by the Court's use of the word "equality" in the last line of its holding. It seems an extraordinarily narrow use of "equality," when it excludes from consideration so much clear inequality. It, again, resembles the process by which the Parol Evidence Rule limits the meaning of documents or words by placing beyond the bounds of reference anything that is inconsistent, or, depending on the circumstances, even that which is supplementary. It is this lawyerly language game of exclusion and omission that is the subject of the rest of this essay.

The Elwood Case: Vindicating The Educational Rights Of The Disabled, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The guarantees of the Charter of Rights affect the definition of education for the disabled. The case of Elwood v. Halifax County - Bedford District School Board, a landmark case in educational rights of disabled children in Canada, has major implications for educational practice.

One of the earliest and most controversial Charter of Rights challenges to the existing educational structure has come from parents of disabled children. Disabled children and their parents are blazing a trail to define educational rights in Canada, and the process is giving some shape to the the elusive concept of equality enshrined in the …

In Defense Of Equality: A Reply To Professor Westen, Erwin Chemerinsky

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this essay analyzes Professor Westen's arguments that the concept of equality is unnecessary. My contention is that Professor Westen never demonstrates that equality is meaningless; his arguments only prove the obvious, that equality by itself is insufficient. Part II argues that equality is a necessary principle: It is the only concept that tells us that different treatment of people does matter. Part III addresses Professor Westen's suggestion that equality is misleading and points out that none of his criticisms of the idea of equality are in any way inherent to that concept. Finally, Part IV demonstrates that …

Is Equality A Totally Empty Idea?, Anthony D'Amato

Michigan Law Review

Professor Peter Westen's essay asserting that the concept of equality has no substantive content whatsoever usefully brushes aside much of the equal-protection rhetoric that, as Westen carefully explains, appropriately belongs to substantive due process. However, his absolutist position is open to challenge. I would like to posit one hypothetical case that I used in my classes when I taught Constitutional Law that I think contradicts Professor Westen's thesis. If it does, then there will be other cases as well, and his position cannot stand as the logically tight construct that he repeatedly asserts that it is.