Law Commons^™

An Unfulfilled Promise: Section 1557'S Failure To Effectively Confront Discrimination In Healthcare, Majesta-Doré Legnini

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed, it offered a broad promise to provide access to quality care on a nondiscriminatory basis. To achieve nondiscrimination, Congress included Section 1557, which integrated the nondiscrimination protections granted under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments, Section 504, and the Age Discrimination Act. The language of the statute has proved that the section cannot achieve its broad promise. Covering only intentional discrimination and usually interpreted to divide the standard so that intersectional discrimination cannot be redressed, Section 1557 fails to address discrimination in …

The President And Individual Rights, Mark Tushnet

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Executive Unilateralism And Individual Rights In A Federalist System, Meredith Mclain, Sharece Thrower

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Presidents have a wide array of tools at their disposal to unilaterally influence public policy, without the direct approval of Congress or the courts. These unilateral actions have the potential to affect a variety of individual rights, either profitably or adversely. Governors too can employ unilateral directives for similar purposes, often impacting an even wider range of rights. In this Article, we collect all executive orders and memoranda related to individual rights issued between 1981 and 2018 at the federal level, and across the U.S. states, to analyze their use over time. We find that chief executives of all kinds …

A Scapegoat Theory Of Bivens, Katherine Mims Crocker

Faculty Publications

Some scapegoats are innocent. Some warrant blame, but not the amount they are made to bear. Either way, scapegoating can allow in-groups to sidestep social problems by casting blame onto out-groups instead of confronting such problems--and the in-groups' complicity in perpetuating them--directly.

This Essay suggests that it may be productive to view the Bivens regime's rise as countering various exercises in scapegoating and its retrenchment as constituting an exercise in scapegoating. The earlier cases can be seen as responding to social structures that have scapegoated racial, economic, and other groups through overaggressive policing, mass incarceration, and inequitable government conduct more …

Reconsidering Section 1983'S Nonabrogation Of Sovereign Immunity, Katherine Mims Crocker

Faculty Publications

Motivated by civil unrest and the police conduct that prompted it, Americans have embarked on a major reexamination of how constitutional enforcement works. One important component is 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which allows civil suits against any "person" who violates federal rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that "person" excludes states because Section 1983 flunks a condition of crystal clarity.

This Article reconsiders that conclusion--in legalese, Section 1983's nonabrogation of sovereign immunity--along multiple dimensions. Beginning with a negative critique, this Article argues that because the Court invented the crystal-clarity standard so long after Section 1983's enactment, the caselaw …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Katherine Mims Crocker And Brandon Hasbrouck In Support Of Neither Party With Respect To Defendant's Motion To Dismiss, Katherine Mims Crocker, Brandon Hasbrouk

Briefs

No abstract provided.

Framing The Second Amendment: Gun Rights, Civil Rights And Civil Liberties, Timothy Zick

Faculty Publications

Gun rights proponents and gun control advocates have devoted significant energy to framing the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. In constitutional discourse, advocates and commentators have referred to the Second Amendment as a "collective, ""civic republican," "individual," and 'fundamental" right. Gun rights advocates have defended the right to keep and bear arms on "law and order" grounds, while gun control proponents have urged regulation based on "public health, " "human rights, " and other concerns. These frames and concepts have significantly influenced how the right to keep and bear arms has been debated, interpreted, and enforced. This Article …

Revisiting Individual Rights And Personal Responsibilities Amid Covid-19, Christie Warren

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Section 1983 & Qualified Immunity: Qualifying The Death Of Due Process And America's Most Vulnerable Classes Since 1871. Can It Be Fixed?, Gabrielle Pelura

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The First Amendment And The Roots Of Lgbt Rights Law: Censorship In The Early Homophile Era, 1958-1962, Jason M. Shepard

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Long before substantive due process and equal protection extended constitutional rights to homosexuals under the Fourteenth Amendment, in three landmark decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States, First Amendment law was both a weapon and shield in the expansion of LGBT rights. This Article examines constitutional law and “gaylaw” from the perspective of its beginning, through case studies of One, Inc. v. Olesen (1958), Sunshine Book Co. v. Summerfield (1958), and Manual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day (1962). In protecting free press rights of sexual minorities to use the U.S. mail for mass communications, the Warren Court’s liberalization of …

The Epistemic Function Of Fusing Equal Protection And Due Process, Deborah Hellman

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The fusion of equal protection and due process has attracted significant attention with scholars offering varied accounts of its purpose and function. Some see the combination as productive, creating a constitutional violation that neither clause would generate alone. Others see the combination as merely strategic, offered to make a claim acceptable at a particular historical moment but not genuinely necessary. This Article offers a third alternative. Judges have and should bring both equal protection and due process together to learn what each clause independently requires. On this Epistemic vision of constitutional fusion, a focus on equality helps judges learn what …

Four Responses To Constitutional Overlap, Michael Coenen

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Sometimes government action implicates more than one constitutional right. For example, a prohibition on religious expression might be said to violate both the Free Speech Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, a rule regarding same-sex marriage might be said to violate both equal protection and substantive due process, an exercise of the eminent domain power might be said to violate both procedural due process and the Takings Clause, a disproportionate criminal sentence based on judge-found facts might be said to violate both the defendant’s right to trial by jury and that defendant’s right against cruel and unusual punishment, and so …

State Constitutionalism In The Age Of Party Polarization, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act At Age 10: Gina’S Controversial Assertion That Data Transparency Protects Privacy And Civil Rights, Barbara J. Evans

William & Mary Law Review

The genomic testing industry is an edifice built on data transparency: transparent and often unconsented sharing of our genetic information with researchers to fuel scientific discovery, transparent sharing of our test results to help regulators infer whether the tests are safe and effective, and transparent sharing of our health information to help treat other patients on the premise that we gain reciprocity of advantage when each person’s health care is informed by the best available data about all of us. Transparency undeniably confers many social benefits but creates risks to the civil rights of the people whose genetic information is …

The Father Of Modern Constitutional Liberalism, John Lawrence Hill

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The New Jim Crow’S Equal Protection Potential, Katherine Macfarlane

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

In 1954, the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education opinion relied on social science research to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson’s separate but equal doctrine. Since Brown, social science research has been considered by the Court in cases involving equal protection challenges to grand jury selection, death penalty sentences, and affirmative action. In 2016, Justice Sotomayor cited an influential piece of social science research, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, in her powerful Utah v. Strieff dissent. Sotomayor contended that the Court’s holding overlooked the unequal racial impact of suspicionless …

Section 7: Civil Rights, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Doux Commerce, Religion, And The Limits Of Antidiscrimination Law, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

Recent cases involving religious businesses owners who object to providing services for same-sex weddings and resulting lawsuits have generated a vigorous academic and popular debate. That debate centers in part on the proper role of religion in the market. This article develops three theories of the proper relationship between commerce and religion and applies them to these conflicts. The first approach would apply the norms of liberal democratic governments to market actors. The second approach posits that any market outcome is legitimate so long as it results from voluntary contracts. These approaches yield contradictory and indeterminate advice on the conflicts …

Section 5: Civil Rights And Liberties, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Married On Sunday, Fired On Monday: Approaches To Federal Lgbt Civil Rights Protections, Lisa Bornstein, Megan Bench

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Allyship To The Intersex Community On Cosmetic, Non-Consensual Genital "Normalizing" Surgery, Robert Hupf

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Good Faith Discrimination, Girardeau A. Spann

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The Supreme Court’s current doctrinal rules governing racial discrimination and affirmative action are unsatisfying. They often seem artificial, internally inconsistent, and even conceptually incoherent. Despite a long and continuing history of racial discrimination in the United States, many of the problems with the Supreme Court’s racial jurisprudence stem from the Court’s willingness to view the current distribution of societal resources as establishing a colorblind, race-neutral baseline that can be used to make equality determinations. As a result, the current rules are as likely to facilitate racial discrimination as to prevent it, or to remedy the lingering effects of past discrimination. …

The Derivative Nature Of Corporate Constitutional Rights, Margaret M. Blair, Elizabeth Pollman

William & Mary Law Review

This Article engages the two-hundred-year history of corporate constitutional rights jurisprudence to show that the Supreme Court has long accorded rights to corporations based on the rationale that corporations represent associations of people from whom such rights are derived. The Article draws on the history of business corporations in America to argue that the Court’s characterization of corporations as associations made sense throughout most of the nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, however, when the Court was deciding several key cases involving corporate rights, this associational view was already becoming a poor fit for some corporations. The Court’s failure …

Unhappy Meals: Sex Discrimination In Toy Choice At Mcdonald’S, Ian Ayres, Antonia Rose Ayres-Brown

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Essay reports on a commonplace form of sex discrimination that we unsuccessfully challenged in a lawsuit before the Connecticut Human Rights Commission. In a small-scale pilot study that we conducted 5 years ago (which was the basis of our initial complaint) and in a follow-up study conducted in 2013, we found that McDonald’s franchises, instead of asking drive-through customers ordering a Happy Meal about their toy preference, asked the customer for the sex of the customer’s child (“Is it for a boy or a girl?”) and then gave different types of toys for each sex. Moreover, our 2013 visits …

Rights Speech, Timothy Zick

Faculty Publications

Freedom of expression has a complex and dynamic relationship with a number of other constitutional rights, including abortion, the right to bear arms, equal protection, the franchise, and religious liberty. This Article discusses one aspect of that relationship. It critically analyzes the regulation of "rights speech" - communications about or concerning the recognition, scope, or exercise of constitutional rights. As illustrative examples, the Article focuses on regulation of speech about abortion and the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Governments frequently manage, structure, and limit how individuals discuss constitutional rights. For example, laws and regulations compel physicians to convey information …

The Quiet Army: Felon Firearm Rights Restoration In The Fourth Circuit, Robert Luther Iii

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Most states afford felons the opportunity to have their political disabilities removed or “rights restored” after they are released from incarceration. In every state within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, save Virginia, a felon’s rights are partially restored automatically upon the completion of his sentence, parole, and probation. Absent a pardon, Virginia requires the felon to petition the Governor in writing through the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth in order to obtain a partial restoration of rights. One such right that may or may not be restored upon a state-convicted felon’s …

Section 7: Same-Sex Marriage, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Is Guilt Dispositive? Federal Habeas After Martinez, Justin F. Marceau

William & Mary Law Review

Federal habeas review of criminal convictions is not supposed to be a second opportunity to adjudge guilt. Oliver Wendell Holmes, among others, has said that the sole question on federal habeas is whether the prisoner’s constitutional rights were violated. By the early 1970s, however, scholars criticized this rights-based view of habeas and sounded the alarm that postconviction review had become too far removed from questions of innocence. Most famously, in 1970 Judge Friendly criticized the breadth of habeas corpus by posing a single question: Is innocence irrelevant? In his view habeas review that focused exclusively on questions of rights in …

Windsor Beyond Marriage: Due Process, Equality & Undocumented Immigration, Anthony O'Rourke

William & Mary Law Review

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Windsor, invalidating part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, presents a significant interpretive challenge. Early commentators have criticized the majority opinion’s lack of analytical rigor, and expressed doubt that Windsor can serve as a meaningful precedent with respect to constitutional questions outside the area of same-sex marriage. This Article offers a more rehabilitative reading of Windsor and shows how the decision can be used to analyze a significant constitutional question concerning the use of state criminal procedure to regulate immigration.

From Windsor’s holding, the Article distills two concrete doctrinal propositions …

Presidential Constitutionalism And Civil Rights, Joseph Landau

William & Mary Law Review

As the judicial and legislative branches have taken a more passive approach to civil rights enforcement, the President’s exercise of independent, extrajudicial constitutional judgment has become increasingly important. Modern U.S. presidents have advanced constitutional interpretations on matters of race, gender, HIV-status, self-incrimination, reproductive liberty, and gun rights, and President Obama has been especially active in promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons—most famously by refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Commentators have criticized the President’s refusal to defend DOMA from numerous perspectives but have not considered how the President’s DOMA policy fits within …