Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Law
Age, Time, And Discrimination (Forthcoming), Alexander Boni-Saenz
Age, Time, And Discrimination (Forthcoming), Alexander Boni-Saenz
All Faculty Scholarship
Discrimination scholars have traditionally justified antidiscrimination laws by appealing to the value of equality. Egalitarian theories locate the moral wrong of discrimination in the unfavorable treatment one individual receives as compared to another. However, discrimination theory has neglected to engage seriously with the socio-legal category of age, which poses a challenge to this egalitarian consensus due to its unique temporal character. Unlike other identity categories, an individual’s age inevitably changes over time. Consequently, any age-based legal rule or private discrimination will ultimately yield equal treatment over the lifecourse. This explains the weak constitutional protection for age and the fact that …
Distributive Justice And Donative Intent, Alexander Boni-Saenz
Distributive Justice And Donative Intent, Alexander Boni-Saenz
All Faculty Scholarship
The inheritance system is beset by formalism. Probate courts reject wills on technicalities and refuse to correct obvious drafting mistakes by testators. These doctrines lead to donative errors, or outcomes that are not in line with the decedent’s donative intent. While scholars and reformers have critiqued the intent-defeating effects of formalism in the past, none have examined the resulting distribution of donative errors and connected it to broader social and economic inequalities. Drawing on egalitarian theories of distributive justice, this Article develops a novel critique of formalism in the inheritance law context. The central normative claim is that formalistic wills …
Original Intent And The Fourteenth Amendment: Into The Black Hole Of Constitutional Law, Paul Finkelman
Original Intent And The Fourteenth Amendment: Into The Black Hole Of Constitutional Law, Paul Finkelman
Chicago-Kent Law Review
This article explores and examines William E. Nelson’s masterful study of the origins and adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principal to Judicial Doctrine (1988). The article explains that a quarter of a century after he wrote this book, Nelson’s study of the origins and adoption of the Amendment remains the best exploration of these issues. His book illustrates the difficulties of determining the “original intent” of the framers of this complicated and complex Amendment. At the same time, however, Nelson demonstrates that for many issues we can come to a strong understanding of the goals …
Women Lawyers And Women's Legal Equality: Reflections On Women Lawyers At The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition In Chicago, Mary Jane Mossman
Women Lawyers And Women's Legal Equality: Reflections On Women Lawyers At The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition In Chicago, Mary Jane Mossman
Chicago-Kent Law Review
In Chicago in 1893, for the first time in history, women lawyers were invited to participate with male lawyers and judges at the Congress on Jurisprudence and Law Reform, one of a number of Congresses organized in conjunction with the World's Columbian Exposition. By the 1890s, women lawyers had achieved considerable success for at least two decades in gaining admission to state bars in the United States, and their success provided important precedents for women who wished to become lawyers in other parts of the world. Yet, as Nancy Cott explained, although women's admission to the professions had been seen …
Emergence Of Equality As A Constitutional Value: The First Century, William M. Wiecek
Emergence Of Equality As A Constitutional Value: The First Century, William M. Wiecek
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Equality as a constitutional value was unprecedented when it made its appearance in 1868 in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reflected antebellum abolitionist ideals adopted hesitantly by Northern Republicans during Reconstruction, but these were incompatible with the expectations of most white Americans of the era, as well as with all previous American experiences. In this sense, equality was a revolutionary constitutional value. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended the Equal Protection Clause and its embedded ideal of interracial equality to reverse the racist dicta of the Dred Scott opinion, to validate the Civil Rights Act …