Law Commons^™

Gender Nonconforming Expression And Binary Thinking: Understanding How Implicit Bias Becomes Explicit In The Legal System, Considering The Shooting Death Of Philando Castile, Patrick C. Brayer

Faculty Works

Theorists, poets, and artists are taking the lead in advancing the conversation about gender fluidity and the plight of people with non-binary gender identities. This essay is about what practitioners who combat implicit bias in the legal profession can learn from artists and thinkers on the cutting edge of gender non-conforming expression. Understanding how individuals stigmatize, and at times discriminate against, gender fluid people by limited and binary thinking is an important progression in comprehending how implicit bias (specifically against people of color) becomes explicit and influences legal actors including law enforcement and jurors. The tragic shooting of Philando Castile …

Ethics And Matrimonial Representation Annotated Bibliography, Barbara Glesner Fines, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Reshaping The Narrative Debate, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

In Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter, Joan Williams sets out to alter the terms of the public discussion about working, caregiving, and work-family conflicts. In doing so, Williams also reframes part of the conversation about the use of narratives in legal analysis and policy-making.

This essay describes the debate about narrative or storytelling in the legal academy. Two decades ago, a pitched jurisprudential battle surfaced in the pages of law reviews about the value of storytelling as legal scholarship. Since that time, narrative has sifted into academic texts: people are telling stories all over the place. …

Theorizing And Litigating The Rights Of Sexual Minorities, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

One of the best measures of a society is how it treats its vulnerable groups. A central idea in Professor Martha Nussbaum's writings is that all humans "are of equal dignity and worth, no matter where they are situated in society." The strategic challenge in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) rights litigation is how to get courts to see sexual minorities as people worthy of equal dignity and respect. This article focuses on the roles of a positive emotion - love - and a procedural method of proof - science - in the shaping of laws defining the rights …

An Introduction To The Symposium, William G. Eckhardt

Faculty Works

Professor William Eckhardt introduces the ideas which initiated planning for and later emanated from UMKC School of Law Symposium “Don't Ask, Don't Tell-Implementation and Litigation.” As the title suggests, the Symposium examined the complex and important issues surrounding the policy of the United States toward gays and lesbians in the Armed Forces. This community­wide event was centered in the UMKC Law School Courtroom on the evening of April 11, 1995.

The idea for this Symposium was conceived by Professor Samuel A. Marcosson, a senior attorney in the Office of General Counsel of the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It was …