Law Commons^™

Ensuring Enforceability & Fairness In The Arbitration Of Employment Disputes, Stacy A. Hickox

Stacy A. Hickox

Private arbitration of employment law claims has become common in recent years. The Supreme Court has shown a strong preference for requiring that an employee pursue an employment claim through an arbitration program rather than seeking to enforce his or her rights in court. At the same time, legislation has been introduced to try to protect the rights of employees who, without an arbitration program in place, would have the opportunity to assert their statutory rights in court. This article explores what safeguards should be in place to assure that employers can rely on the enforceability of an arbitration program …

Restricting Access To Infertility Services: What Is A Justified Limitation On Reproductive Freedom, Crystal K. Liu

Crystal K Liu

The realm of reproductive freedoms has been one that has been heavily restricted in the history of our country. For purposes of this particular article, reproductive freedom refers not only to the ability to procreate but to the ability to be a parent as well. Throughout the history of the United States, these limitations have been epitomized in a variety of forms. These include state sponsored sterilization during the eugenics movement, child protection laws, as well as adoption laws. By exploring limitations that have been enacted, some of which have been repealed and others that continue to be in place, …

Ruling Out The Rule Of Law, Kim Forde-Mazrui

Kim Forde-Mazrui

Although criminal justice scholars continue to debate the overall value of the void-for-vagueness doctrine, broad consensus prevails that requiring crimes to be defined in specific terms reduces law enforcement discretion. A few scholars have questioned this assumption, but the conventional view remains dominant. This Article intends to resolve the question whether the void-for-vagueness doctrine really reduces police discretion. It focuses on traffic enforcement, a context in which laws are both specific and subject to discretionary enforcement. The Article concludes that specific rules do not constrain discretion unless judicial limits are placed either on the scope of activities that may be …

The Risky Business Of Lifestyle Genetic Testing: Protecting Against Harmful Disclosure Of Genetic Information, Gabrielle Z. Kohlmeier

Gabrielle Z Kohlmeier

The technological and scientific advances of nutrigenetic testing imply that the future is here, but unfortunately the legal protections are not. Nutrigenetics—the newly developing science correlating diet and genotypes—promises an easier way to escape the consequences of unhealthy lifestyles. And a large contingent of Americans, including cost-conscious employers and health insurers, are seeking such high-tech solutions. Web-based nutrigenetic testing, purportedly offering custom-tailored plans without a trip to the doctor’s office, thus captures a wide audience. The enthusiasm for nutrigenetics may obfuscate the unusual problems surrounding protection of genetic information, particularly in a market context. Upon providing genetic material, an individual …

When Obscenity Discriminates, Elizabeth M. Glazer

Elizabeth M Glazer

When public indecency statutes outlaw gender nonconformity, obscenity discriminates; when movie ratings censor representations of sexual minorities, obscenity discriminates, and discriminates on the basis of their status as sexual minorities. This Article addresses obscenity doctrine’s infliction of first generation, or status discrimination against sexual minorities by conflating “sex” – and the prurient representation of sex that constitutes obscenity – and “sexual orientation.” Civil rights lawyers and scholars have turned their attentions away from “first generation” discrimination,” where groups experience discrimination on the basis of their status, and toward “second generation” discrimination, where groups experience discrimination for failing to downplay or …

When Obscenity Discriminates, Elizabeth M. Glazer

Elizabeth M Glazer

When public indecency statutes outlaw gender nonconformity, obscenity discriminates; when movie ratings censor representations of sexual minorities, obscenity discriminates, and discriminates on the basis of their status as sexual minorities. This Article addresses obscenity doctrine’s infliction of first generation, or status discrimination against sexual minorities by conflating “sex” – and the prurient representation of sex that constitutes obscenity – and “sexual orientation.” Civil rights lawyers and scholars have turned their attentions away from “first generation” discrimination,” where groups experience discrimination on the basis of their status, and toward “second generation” discrimination, where groups experience discrimination for failing to downplay or …

Employers On The Fence: A Guide To The Immigratory Workplace, Natalie Prescott

Natalie Prescott

The Article discusses potential problems employers across the nation face when hiring, promoting, or employing foreign workers. It gives practical advice to employers on how to prevent discriminatory practices and avoid discrimination lawsuits and penalties and serves as an abbreviated employer's manual to immigration law.

English Only At Work, Por Favor, Natalie Prescott

Natalie Prescott

Whether or not employees can be required to speak only English at work is a very delicate question. This issue has caused considerable disagreement among courts and legal scholars and gained greater prominence in 2006, when the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals created a circuit split by allowing for the possibility that an English-only rule may violate Title VII. Some scholars have attempted to address the legality of an English-only rule, mostly arguing that the rule violates Title VII. This Article, however, explains why Title VII does not apply to an English-only rule. The Article addresses a wide range of …

Private Employer Dress Codes And Laws Against Sexual Orientation And Gender Expression Discrimination: The Normative Stereotype Exception Should Not Survive, Ben Kleinman

Ben Kleinman-Green

In this paper I attempted to do two things. First, to remind readers that current exceptions to anti-discrimination law as applied to dress codes exist because courts find sexual orientation and gender to be outside the scope of Title VII and because courts have ruled that many dress codes that distinguish between men and women do not do so in an objectively harmful way. Second, to show that laws specifically prohibiting sexual orientation and gender discrimination effectively vitiate the ability of the courts to apply normative stereotype exceptions.

Toward A Feminist Theory Of The Rural, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Feminists have often criticized law’s ignorance of women’s practical, lived experiences, even as they have also sought to reveal the variety among those experiences. This article builds on both critiques to argue for greater attentiveness to a neglected aspect of women’s situation: place. Specifically, Professor Pruitt asserts that the hardships and vulnerability that mark the lives of rural women and constrain their moral agency are overlooked or discounted by a contemporary cultural presumption of urbanism.

Professor Pruitt considers judicial responses to the realities of rural women’s lives in relation to three different legal issues: domestic violence, termination of parental rights, …

The Uk Disability Discrimination Act 2005 , Aparna Meduri

Aparna Meduri

No abstract provided.

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 …

Disentangling Disparate Impact And Disparate Treatment: Adapting The Canadian Approach, Joseph A. Seiner

Joseph A. Seiner

The legal framework for alleging disparate impact and disparate treatment claims in cases involving discriminatory employment standards has long been confused. The uncertainty of how to proceed in these cases has created analytical problems for both the federal courts and the litigants. There is a fine line between intentional and unintentional discrimination claims when it comes to employment standards, and that line is often blurred. A uniform approach for analyzing these cases is therefore needed. This article looks to the Canadian approach of analyzing discrimination claims in the employment standards context, and, borrowing from that model, proposes a three-part analytical …

Some Dumb Girl Syndrome: Challenging And Subverting Destructive Stereotypes Of Female Attorneys, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

This Essay considers ways in which female attorneys confront sexism and stereotyping in the legal profession and in life, and strongly endorses embracing feminism, and wearing comfortable shoes.

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, …

Preventing And Responding To Workplace Sexual Harassment, Chris Mcneil

Christopher B. McNeil, J.D., Ph.D.

A review of Title VII and state-based claims alleging workplace sexual harassment circa 1996-99.