Law Commons^™

The Unnecessary And Unfortunate Focus On “Animus,” “Bare Desire To Harm,” And “Bigotry” In Analyzing Opposition To Gay And Lesbian Rights, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I am delighted to participate in this symposium on Professor Linda C. McClain’s wonderful new book, Who’s the Bigot? Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law. All of the other papers in this symposium focus on Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (and thus connect with Chapter Eight of her book, on claims of religious exemptions from protections of gay and lesbian rights), while my piece will join issue with the related Chapter Seven, on bigotry, motives, and morality in the Supreme Court’s gay and lesbian rights cases. In this brief Essay, I cannot do justice …

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Bridget J. Crawford, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

Firearms Law Workshop Mini-Symposium, Part Iii: Framing The Second Amendment: Gun Rights, Civil Rights, And Civil Liberties, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Social Activism Through Shareholder Activism, Lisa Fairfax

All Faculty Scholarship

In 1952, the SEC altered the shareholder proposal rule to exclude proposals made “primarily for the purpose of promoting general economic, political, racial, religious, social or similar causes.” The SEC did not reference civil rights activist James Peck or otherwise acknowledge that its actions were prompted by Peck’s 1951 shareholder proposal to Greyhound for desegregating seating. Instead, the SEC indicated that its change simply reflected a codification of a position the SEC staff had taken in 1945.

Today, the shareholder proposal rule has evolved, giving way to several amendments that now enable shareholders to submit proposals on the proxy statement …

Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mason

AI-DR Collection

Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.

This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …

Equality Opportunity And The Schoolhouse Gate, Derek Black, Michelle Adams

Faculty Publications

Public schools have generated some of the most far-reaching cases to come before the Supreme Court. They have involved nearly every major civil right and liberty found in the Bill of Rights. The cases are often reflections of larger societal ills and anxieties, from segregation and immigration to religion and civil discourse over war. In that respect, they go to the core of the nation’s values. Yet constitutional law scholars have largely ignored education law as a distinct area of study and importance.

Justin Driver’s book cures that shortcoming, offering a three-dimensional view of how the Court’s education law jurisprudence …

Conditionality And Constitutional Change, Felix B. Chang

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The burgeoning field of Critical Romani Studies explores the persistent subjugation of Europe’s largest minority, the Roma. Within this field, it has become fashionable to draw parallels to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Yet the comparisons are often one-sided; lessons tend to flow from Civil Rights to Roma Rights more than the other way around. It is an all-too-common hagiography of Civil Rights, where our history becomes a blueprint for other movements for racial equality.

To correct this trend, this Essay reveals what American scholars can learn from Roma Rights. Specifically, this Essay argues that the European Union’s Roma integration …

States As Civil Rights Actors, Jennifer Safstrom

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A British politician, David Miliband, once said, "My advice is very simple: if you can win a small battle, it gives you confidence in the political process to take on bigger battles, and so it is very much a bottom-up grass-roots way of doing politics." While his perspective--of starting small and building up--is an often-used strategy used by advocates of all stripes, his quote does not give sufficient credence to the intrinsic value of these small battles. These efforts are an end unto themselves, as the smaller battles within each state are not just training to take on larger federal …

Reconceptualizing The Harms Of Discrimination: How Brown V. Board Of Education Helped To Further White Supremacy, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, literature has played a vital role in revealing weaknesses in law. The classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is no different. The long-revered work of fiction contains several key scenes that illuminate significant gaps in the analysis of one of our most celebrated decisions: Brown v. Board of Education, the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that state-mandated racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. In particular, the novel opens a pathway that enables its readers to visualize the full harms of white supremacy, which include …

Advancing Racial Justice And Human Rights: Rights-Based Strategies For The Current Era, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

On June 1, 2018, the Human Rights Institute convened its 15th annual CLE Symposium on Human Rights in the United States, a signature event of the Human Rights Institute’s Bringing Human Rights Lawyers’ Network. The day-long event brought together more than 150 leading U.S. lawyers, activists, and academics, along with federal and local government representatives to share strategies to advance racial justice within a domestic and global context increasingly hostile to human rights.

This report highlights key takeaways and themes from the Symposium, drawing from speakers’ remarks and their advocacy. It also serves as a basic human rights primer, describing …

The School Civil Rights Vacuum, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

Recent cases of pervasive sex abuse at universities, including those committed by Larry Nassar at Michigan State University and by Jerry Sandusky at Pennsylvania State University, demonstrate the limitations of Title IX as a tool for protecting college students. What has gone far less recognized is that in the K–12 public school context, Title IX and other civil rights laws, including the Fourteenth Amendment, are at least as ineffective at protecting students from sexual, physical, and verbal abuse and harassment. Public school students rarely succeed on Fourteenth Amendment or Title IX claims, even in some of the most egregious cases. …

Interrogating Police Officers, Stephen Rushin, Atticus Deprospo

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article empirically evaluates the procedural protections given to police officers facing disciplinary interrogations about alleged misconduct. It demonstrates that state laws and collective bargaining agreements have insulated many police officers from the most successful interrogation techniques.

The first part of this Article builds on previous studies by analyzing a dataset of police union contracts and state laws that govern the working conditions in a substantial cross section of large and midsized American police departments. Many of these police departments provide officers with hours or even days of advanced notice before a disciplinary interrogation. An even larger percentage of these …

Immigration Unilateralism And American Ethnonationalism, Robert Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This paper arose from an invited symposium on "Democracy in America: The Promise and the Perils," held at Loyola University Chicago School of Law in Spring 2019. The essay places the Trump administration’s immigration and refugee policy in the context of a resurgent ethnonationalist movement in America as well as the constitutional politics of the past. In particular, it argues that Trumpism’s suspicion of foreigners who are Hispanic or Muslim, its move toward indefinite detention and separation of families, and its disdain for so-called “chain migration” are best understood as part of an assault on the political settlement of the …

New Year, New Name: The Public Rights/Private Conscience Project Is Now The Law, Rights, And Religion Project, Law, Rights, And Religion Project

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

After nearly five years of fighting for religious equality and civil rights, the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project (PRPCP) is proud to announce our new name.

Republicans And The Voting Rights Act, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Religious Courts In Secular Jurisdictions: How Jewish And Islamic Courts Adapt To Societal And Legal Norms, Rabea Benhalim

Publications

At first glance, religious courts, especially Sharia courts, seem incompatible with secular, democratic societies. Nevertheless, Jewish and Islamic courts operate in countries like the United States, England, and Israel. Scholarship on these religious courts has primarily focused on whether such religious legal pluralism promotes the value of religious freedom, and if so, whether these secular legal systems should accommodate the continued existence of these courts. This article shifts the inquiry to determine whether religious courts in these environments accommodate litigants’ popular opinions and the secular, procedural, and substantive justice norms of the country in which they are located. This article …

A Guide To Knowing Your Rights With The Police And Getting Out Of Jail: Booklet 1, Thomas Harvey, Michael-John Voss, John Mcannar

All Faculty Scholarship

ArchCity Defenders created a self-advocating guide for people to use if they have an encounter with the police, jail or the courts.

Response: Rights As Trumps Of What?, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Doctrinal Dynamism, Borrowing, And The Relationship Between Rules And Rights, Joseph Blocher, Luke Morgan

Faculty Scholarship

The study of "Rights Dynamism," exemplified in Timothy Zick' s new book on the First Amendment's relationship with the rest of the Bill of Rights, can enrich our understanding of constitutional rights. It also opens a door to another potentially fruitful arena: what we call "Doctrinal Dynamism." Constitutional rights often interact and generate new meanings and applications by way of importing and exporting one another's doctrinal rules, even when the rights themselves do not intersect directly in the context of a single case. Focusing on these doctrinal exchanges can illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of various rules, the specific interests …

Constitutional Conflict And Sensitive Places, Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Slouching Toward Universality: A Brief History Of Race, Voting, And Political Participation, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Immigration Unilateralism And American Ethnonationalism, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This paper arose from an invited symposium on "Democracy in America: The Promise and the Perils," held at Loyola University Chicago School of Law in Spring 2019. The essay places the Trump administration’s immigration and refugee policy in the context of a resurgent ethnonationalist movement in America as well as the constitutional politics of the past. In particular, it argues that Trumpism’s suspicion of foreigners who are Hispanic or Muslim, its move toward indefinite detention and separation of families, and its disdain for so-called “chain migration” are best understood as part of an assault on the political settlement of the …

Quieting The Court: Lessons From The Muslim-Ban Case, Avidan Cover

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s Muslim-ban decision in Trump v. Hawaii and the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court call into question the civil rights litigation enterprise insofar as it challenges U.S. government’s national security and immigration policies. Litigants and advocacy organizations should employ an array of strategies and tactics to avoid the Court’s rulings that almost uniformly defer to, and thus validate, the government’s national security and immigration practices.

This article maintains that The Muslim-Ban Case was a predictable outgrowth of the Supreme Court’s national security-immigration jurisprudence that champions executive power at the expense of marginalized groups, in particular …

A Guide To Knowing Your Rights With The Police And Getting Out Of Jail: Booklet 2, Thomas Harvey, Michael-John Voss, John Mcannar

All Faculty Scholarship

ArchCity Defenders created a self-advocating guide for people to use if they have an encounter with the police, jail or the courts.

Bias In, Bias Out, Sandra G. Mayson

Scholarly Works

Police, prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice actors increasingly use algorithmic risk assessment to estimate the likelihood that a person will commit future crime. As many scholars have noted, these algorithms tend to have disparate racial impact. In response, critics advocate three strategies of resistance: (1) the exclusion of input factors that correlate closely with race, (2) adjustments to algorithmic design to equalize predictions across racial lines, and (3) rejection of algorithmic methods altogether.

This Article’s central claim is that these strategies are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive, because the source of racial inequality in risk assessment lies …

Bans, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

In the universe of legal restrictions subject to judicial review, those characterized as fully denying some aspect of a constitutional right—bans—are often subject to per se rules of invalidity. Whether the subject of the restriction is a medium of expression, the valuable use of property, or a class of weapons, courts in such cases will often short-circuit the standard doctrinal machinery and strike down the law, even if it might have survived heightened scrutiny. Identifying laws as bans can thus provide an end run around the tiers of scrutiny and other familiar forms of means-ends analysis.

And yet it is …

Antidiscriminatory Algorithms, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Can algorithms be used to advance equality goals in the workplace? A handful of legal scholars have raised concerns that the use of big data at work may lead to protected class discrimination that could fall outside the reach of current antidiscrimination law. Existing scholarship suggests that, because algorithms are “facially neutral,” they pose no problem of unequal treatment. As a result, algorithmic discrimination cannot be challenged using a disparate treatment theory of liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). Instead, it presents a problem of unequal outcomes, subject to challenge using Title VII’s …

The Upside Of Deep Fakes, Jessica Silbey, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

It’s bad. We know. The dawn of “deep fakes” — convincing videos and images of people doing things they never did or said — puts us all in jeopardy in several different ways. Professors Bobby Chesney and Danielle Citron have noted that now “false claims — even preposterous ones — can be peddled with unprecedented success today thanks to a combination of social media ubiquity and virality, cognitive biases, filter bubbles, and group polarization.” The scholars identify a host of harms from deep fakes, ranging from people being exploited, extorted, and sabotaged, to societal harms like the erosion of democratic …

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Bridget J. Crawford, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Publications

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

A Wall Of Hate: Eminent Domain And Interest-Convergence, Philip Lee

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Donald Trump is no stranger to eminent domain. In the 1990s, Trump wanted land around Trump Plaza to build a limousine parking lot. Many of the private owners agreed to sell, but one elderly widow and two brothers who owned a small business refused. Trump then got a government agency—the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA)—to take the properties through eminent domain, offering them a quarter of what they had previously paid or been offered for their land.

The property owners fought back and finally won. Although the CRDA named several justifications, from economic development to traffic alleviation and additional …