Law Commons^™

Contribution Between Parties To A Discriminatory Collective Bargaining Agreement, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines rules of title VII back pay liability and apportionment. Part I argues that all signatories to a discriminatory collective bargaining agreement should be jointly and severally liable to injured persons for back pay. Although a union or employer may object to joint and several liability if its opponent in collective bargaining proposed and bargained for the discriminatory term, the purposes of title VII require that the parties become jointly and severally liable upon signing the agreement. Since joint and several liability fully serves the compensatory purpose of the statute, Part II of the Note looks to deterrence …

Wage Discrimination And Job Segregation: The Survival Of A Theory, Ruth G. Blumrosen

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

My earlier article in this journal, Wage Discrimination, Job Segregation, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, advanced the theory that the same discriminatory factors which lead to job segregation are also likely to be responsible for wage differentials between segregated jobs. The discriminatorily depressed wage rate of the segregated job is therefore one of the "adverse effects" under Griggs v. Duke Power Co. of job segregation. In order to establish a prima facie case of wage discrimination in a Title VII action, plaintiffs must show the fact of job segregation - that the jobs were …

Local Taxes, Federal Courts, And School Desegregation In The Proposition 13 Era, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines a federal court's dilemma when the remedy of school desegregation collides with the trend of tax limitation - when a school desegregation order requires funds that the local school authorities do not have and cannot raise. Can the district court order a local tax levy to fund school desegregation when the school authorities have already reached their maximum taxing limit? Is there a better alternative remedy?

To tackle those questions, this Note first elucidates three equitable principles to guide courts in fashioning desegregation decrees. It then explores the history of judicial power to order state and local …

Title Vi, Title Ix, And The Private University: Defining "Recipient" And "Program Or Part Thereof", Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note explores the meaning of "recipient" and "program or part thereof' in title VI and title IX. Section I studies federal court definitions of "recipient" and the legislative history of title VI; it concludes that only organizations that exercise discretion in disbursing federal funds to students are "recipients." Section II explores the "program or part thereof' language as applied to the university by examining legislative history and recent discrimination cases. It argues that, since Congress sought to protect beneficiaries both from discrimination and from overbroad cutoffs, courts and agencies should draw the perimeters of a funds cutoff by balancing …

The Use Of Collateral Estoppel By A Private Party In Suits Against Public Agency Defendants, John Kelly, David Rothenberg

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Collateral estoppel has been defined as "the facet of the doctrine of judicial finality that deals with a judgment's conclusive effect in a suit on another cause of action." It precludes relitigation of a previously decided issue when that same issue arises in the context of a subsequent suit based on a different claim.

Traditionally, a party seeking to assert collateral estoppel must establish three elements: (1) identity with an issue actually and necessarily litigated in the prior case, (2) mutuality of parties, that is, the same parties or their privies in the second case as in the first, and …

Wage Discrimination And The "Comparable Worth" Theory In Perspective, Bruce A. Nelson, Edward M. Opton Jr., Thomas E. Wilson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Our article focuses primarily on one legal question: Does the wage discrimination theory, as sketched by Professor Blumrosen, fall within the remedial ambit of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act? Wage Discrimination's factual contentions as to the existence and universality of wage discrimination deserve equally detailed analysis, but we leave that task to scholars of the pertinent disciplines, sociology and economics. We will deal with the factual contentions of Wage Discrimination only so far as necessary to challenge its central factual conclusion: that a demonstration of job separation should lead to a judicial inference of wage discrimination. This …

Minority Preferences In Law School Admissions, Terrance Sandalow

Book Chapters

In addressing the subject of "reverse discrimination," I want to caution at the outset against permitting the use of the word "discrimination" to prejudice consideration of the subject. "Discrimination" has, in recent years, become a bad word. It tends to be used as a shorthand for "unjustifiably unequal treatment." In its original and still proper meaning, however, the word is quite neutral. Discrimination merely means differentiation. It comes from a Latin word that means "to distinguish." Accordingly, when we discriminate-i.e., when we differentiate or distinguish-among people, the propriety of our action depends upon the reasons that we have acted as …

Federalism And Social Change, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

A familiar passage in Professors Hart and Wechsler's casebook likens the relationship between federal and state law to that which exists between statutes and the common law. The underlying idea is that federal law rests upon a substructure of state law. "It builds upon legal relationships established by the states, altering or supplanting them only so far as necessary for [its] special purpose."' A similar relationship exists between state and federal judicial systems. State courts are courts of general jurisdiction, assumed to have authority to adjudicate controversies unless Congress has displaced them by conferring exclusive jurisdiction on federal courts. Federal …