Law Commons^™

Cracks In The Shield: The Necessity Of The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, James N. Bolotin

James N Bolotin

This paper argues that legislation protecting homosexuals from employment discrimination is necessary, despite hopeful arguments that the text of Title VII should or can already protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation. The paper discusses how the precedent of the federal courts has gone too far in the wrong direction to believe that they will fix this interpretation problem on their own. Furthermore, it posits that the passage of ENDA or similar legislation will successfully lessen the prevalence of this type of discrimination.

Part I considers the history of Title VII’s “because of sex” protection. This includes a short discussion …

When Art Becomes Free: On Artistic In-Expression & Personal Convictions, Amir H. Khoury

Amir Khoury

In this paper I argue that just as there are moral rights in copyright law, which secure attribution and integrity, so too, there should be 'inverse' moral rights that can protect artists from being impelled or compelled to create in the first place. This research comes against the backdrop of one of the most contentious issues in the Western world today, that pertaining to same-sex marriage. But the discussion applies to all other fields where creativity finds itself in a battle over personal convictions. In my view, the inverse moral rights construct is the true reflection of the extent of …

Marriage Equailty: Why Laws Restricting Same-Sex Couples' Rights Should Be Subject To Heightened Scrutiny Under Equal Protection Challenges., Cory A. Delellis

Cory A DeLellis

This thesis discusses why laws that restrict marital rights and recognition, on the basis of the couple’s sexual orientation, should be subject to a heightened or intermediate level of judicial scrutiny under Equal Protection challenges. This thesis addresses, analyzes, and suggests why sexual orientation – within the context of same-sex couples – should be considered a quasi-suspect class, rather than a non-suspect class, so that laws negatively impacting couples based on their sexual orientation are subjected to a fairer and more reasonable level of judicial scrutiny.

The Three Waves Of Married Women’S Property Acts In The Nineteenth Century With A Focus On Mississippi, New York And Oregon, Joe Custer

Joe Custer

Paper starts with a brief section on early America and social reform that provides a background on why married women's property acts (MWPA's) passed when they did in nineteenth century America. After laying the foundation, the paper delves into the three waves in which the MWPA's were passed in the nineteenth century focusing for the first time in the literature on one specific state for each wave. The three states; Mississippi, New York and Oregon, are examined leading up to passage. Next, the paper will look into the judicial reaction of each State’s highest court. Were the courts supportive of …

Cumulative Jurisprudence And Hate Speech: Sexual Orientation And Analogies To Disability, Age And Obesity, Eric Heinze

Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London

Non-discrimination norms in human rights instruments generally enumerate specified categories for protection, such as race, ethnicity, sex or religion, etc. They often omit express reference to sexual minorities.

Through open-ended interpretation, however, sexual minorities subsequently become incorporated. That ‘cumulative jurisprudence’ yields protections for sexual minorities through norms governing privacy, employment, age of consent, or freedoms of speech and association.

Hate speech bans, too, are often formulated with reference to traditionally recognised categories, particularly race and religion. It might be expected that the same cumulative jurisprudence should therefore be applied to include sexual minorities. In this article, that approach is challenged. …

Traditional Values Or New Tradition Of Prejudice? The Boy Scouts Of America Vs. The Unitarian Universalist Association Of Congregations, Eric Alan Isaacson

Eric Alan Isaacson

President William Howard Taft, a Unitarian leader whose liberal faith had been viciously attacked by religious conservatives in the 1908 presidential campaign, used the White House as a platform in 1911 to launch a new nonsectarian organization for youth: The Boy Scouts of America (“BSA”). Lately, however, the BSA itself has come under the control of religious conservatives – who in 1992 banned Taft’s denomination from the BSA’s Religious Relationships Committee, and in 1998 threw Taft’s denomination out of its Religious Emblems Program. The denomination’s offense: A tradition of teaching its children that institutionalized discrimination is wrong. Unitarian Universalist religious …

Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem In Feminist Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

The thesis of The Heuristics Problem is that the societal problems about which identity theorists are most concerned often spring from and are reinforced by thinking riddled with heuristic errors. This article first investigates the ways heuristic errors influence popular perceptions of feminist issues. Feminists and critical race theorists have explored the cognitive bias of stereotyping, but have not examined the ways probabilistic errors can have gendered consequences. Second, The Heuristics Problem traces some of the ways cognitive errors have influenced the development of laws relating to gender issues. It explores instances in judicial decisions in which courts commit heuristic …

Lifting The Pall Of Orthodoxy: The Need For Hearing A Multitude Of Tongues In And Beyond The Sexual Education Curricula At Public High Schools, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

When public high schools promote heterosexuality at the cost of denying sexual minority youth the opportunity to learn about minority sexualities, these schools contribute to the disastrous situation in which many sexual minority high school students find themselves. This approach, which many public high schools take, is unnecessarily destructive and warrants prompt change. Instead of helping to perpetuate many of the challenges that sexual minority students face in high school, public high schools can and need to help address these challenges.

To establish the case for such a position, this article begins by presenting the plight of many sexual minority …

A New Image In The Looking Glass: Faculty Mentoring, Invitational Rhetoric, And The Second-Class Status Of Women In U.S. Academia, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

This article maintains that because Title VII alone does not have the ability to further the progress women have made in academic hiring, retention, and promotion, looking to remedies in addition to Title VII will be advantageous in helping to improve the status of women in U.S. academia. The article suggests as an additional remedy the implementation of faculty mentoring opportunities for junior female faculty members. A key way of initiating and furthering such mentoring opportunities is a type of discourse called invitational rhetoric, which is “an invitation to understanding as a means to create...relationship[s] rooted in equality, immanent value, …