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Articles 1 - 30 of 63
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Appearance Of Professionalism, Elizabeth B. Cooper
The Appearance Of Professionalism, Elizabeth B. Cooper
Faculty Scholarship
The dominant image of a lawyer persists: a neatly dressed man wearing a conservative dark suit, white shirt, and muted accessories. Many attorneys can conform to this expectation, but there are a growing number of “outsider” lawyers for whom compliance with appearance norms can challenge their fundamental identities. People of color, women, LGBTQ individuals, religiously observant persons, and those who inhabit intersectional identities are among those who disproportionately remain excluded from the dominant culture and centers of power in the legal profession. Expectations of appearance conformity create profound concerns that go well beyond style preferences, raising questions of autonomy and …
The Concept Of The Speech Platform: Walker V. Texas Division, Abner S. Greene
The Concept Of The Speech Platform: Walker V. Texas Division, Abner S. Greene
Faculty Scholarship
In Walker, the Court deemed Texas’ specialty license plate program government speech, and thus applied no First Amendment review to the state’s refusal to allow a Confederate battle flag specialty plate, even though the reason for the refusal was that the plate was offensive. The dissent considered this unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in a limited public forum. This article argues that the Walker result was correct, but for the wrong reason. Government should have the power to forbid hateful or vulgar speech from limited public forums such as specialty or vanity license plates, transit ads, and after-school extracurricular activities, even though …
Test Unrest: New York City's Examination High Schools, Aaron J. Saiger
Test Unrest: New York City's Examination High Schools, Aaron J. Saiger
Faculty Scholarship
New York City bases admissions to its eight “specialized” high schools entirely upon scores on a single standardized test. This policy, hotly contested when it was codified by state law in 1971, faces renewed political and legal attacks today. Single-test admissions consistently result in alarmingly low levels of African-American and Hispanic enrollment at the most sought-after specialized schools. This brief essay compares today’s debate to that of 1971. It notes two major developments since then. The City now has eight test-only high schools, not three. Moreover, the eight schools now function in the larger context of New York’s system of …
Marriage As Black Citizenship?, Robin A. Lenhardt
Marriage As Black Citizenship?, Robin A. Lenhardt
Faculty Scholarship
The narrative of black marriage as citizenship enhancing has been pervasive in American history. As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Moynihan Report and prepare to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Thirteenth Amendment, this Article argues that this narrative is one that we should resist. The complete story of marriage is one that involves racial subordination and caste. Even as the Supreme Court stands to extend marriage rights to LGBT couples, the Article maintains that we should embrace nonmarriage as a legitimate frame for black loving relationships — gay or straight. Nonmarriage might do just as much, if not …
Legal Discourse And Racial Justice: The Urge To Cry ‘Bias!, Bruce A. Green
Legal Discourse And Racial Justice: The Urge To Cry ‘Bias!, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
One who is convinced that a judge wrongly decided a case may sometimes be tempted to accuse the judge of bias, referring to unconscious social-group stereotypes and/or cognitive biases that fall under the rubric of “implicit biases.” The rhetoric is problematic, however, for various reasons. One is that the term “bias” in this context may be misunderstood to mean something different and unintended – either a disqualifying bias under judicial conduct rules or a conscious prejudice. Another is that, even if the intended meaning is clear, a judge’s implicit biases cannot fairly be inferred from a single wrong decision. To …
Religious Freedom And (Other) Civil Liberties: Is There A Middle Ground?, Abner S. Greene
Religious Freedom And (Other) Civil Liberties: Is There A Middle Ground?, Abner S. Greene
Faculty Scholarship
There appears to be an intractable debate between those who favor religious accommodations and those who favor civil liberties such as abortion rights and equality rights for same-sex couples. Many take firm positions of truth about one matter or the other. Here, I sketch a middle ground, continuing my endorsement of a robust normative or value pluralism. I canvass some arguments for this position, while also describing and critiquing some works of intellectual history that seem too wedded to one teleological posture or another. Despite my support for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, I critique the Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling, …
Government Endorsement: A Reply To Nelson Tebbe's Government Nonendorsement, Abner S. Greene
Government Endorsement: A Reply To Nelson Tebbe's Government Nonendorsement, Abner S. Greene
Faculty Scholarship
In this response to Nelson Tebbe’s Government Nonendorsement, Abner Greene continues to develop his “thick perfectionist” view of government speech, arguing that the state may use its speech powers to advance various views of the good, from left, center,
The Legal Challenges Of Diversity (Review Essay), Tanya K. Hernandez
The Legal Challenges Of Diversity (Review Essay), Tanya K. Hernandez
Faculty Scholarship
Within the last year two excellent books, Mariana Valverde’s Everyday Law on the Street: City Governance In an Age of Diversity and Victoria Saker Woeste’s Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech, address how social anxieties about “diversity” surface in the development and enforcement of the law. While the two books focus on different eras and countries, they similarly illustrate the tensions in legal contexts that can result from the growth in diversity
Sotomayer's Supreme Court Race Jurisprudebce: 'Fidelity To The Law', Tanya K. Hernandez
Sotomayer's Supreme Court Race Jurisprudebce: 'Fidelity To The Law', Tanya K. Hernandez
Faculty Scholarship
During the Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concerns were persistently raised about her ability to be impartial. Conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh and many others railed against her nomination, proclaiming on talk radio broadcasts from coast-to-coast that she is a reverse-racist and nothing less than anti-white. A review of the Supreme Court record of race-related cases demonstrates Justice Sotomayor’s continued commitment to her stated judicial philosophy of fidelity to the law, inasmuch as she has not sought the unilateral imposition of her own personal racial policy preferences but has instead worked as a team player to scrupulously apply legal …
Presidential Constitutionalism And Civil Rights, Joseph Landau
Presidential Constitutionalism And Civil Rights, Joseph Landau
Faculty Scholarship
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 …
What We Disagree About When We Disagree About School Choice, Aaron J. Saiger
What We Disagree About When We Disagree About School Choice, Aaron J. Saiger
Faculty Scholarship
The debate over school vouchers, charter schools, and other varieties of school choice has become a bit stale. It would improve were advocates on all sides to acknowledge several crucial realities that they too often obfuscate. First, the debate is fundamentally normative, not empirical. The desirability of choice depends primarily upon how we weigh competing claims of equality and liberty in education. Second, all participants in the debate should acknowledge both that constrained choice is still genuine choice, and that how and to what extent parental decisions are constrained are fundamental issues in choice policy. Finally, with respect to the …
One Path For ‘Post-Racial’ Employment Discrimination Cases—The Implicit Association Test Research As Social Framework Evidence, Tanya K. Hernandez
One Path For ‘Post-Racial’ Employment Discrimination Cases—The Implicit Association Test Research As Social Framework Evidence, Tanya K. Hernandez
Faculty Scholarship
Today’s legal civil rights struggle is in large measure the effort to retain the foundational premise that racial discrimination is still a pervasive and problematic dynamic that law should be engaged in addressing. Within the employment discrimination context the attempt to salvage anti-discrimination law doctrine has been lodged on several fronts. Of particular note has been the effort to incorporate “social framework” evidence. Yet, given the powerful societal conviction in a “post-racial” American narrative of discrimination as an exceptionally rare event caused by aberrant malicious individuals, general social framework evidence alone will be unlikely to assist most plaintiffs present a …
Revealing The Race-Based Realities Of Workforce Exclusion, Tanya K. Hernandez
Revealing The Race-Based Realities Of Workforce Exclusion, Tanya K. Hernandez
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
State Speech And Political Liberalism, Abner S. Greene
State Speech And Political Liberalism, Abner S. Greene
Faculty Scholarship
Jim Fleming and Linda McClain have written an impressive book on the responsible exercise of rights, which flows from prior writing by each.Their title, "Ordered Liberty," is a bit of a misnomer, however. When one thinks of that phrase, one thinks of the ways in which we balance liberty against order, i.e., against security, police power, controlling the excesses of liberty. Responsibility in the exercise of rights is an aspect of how rights are orderly, but the major hard cases involving rights are hard because significant claims of harm are in play. Think of much of constitutional criminal procedure, free …
According To Our Hearts And Location: Toward A Structuralist Approach To The Study Of Interracial Families, Robin A. Lenhardt
According To Our Hearts And Location: Toward A Structuralist Approach To The Study Of Interracial Families, Robin A. Lenhardt
Faculty Scholarship
This Article offers a review of Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s wonderful book, According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family. Race scholars have begun to productively deploy structuralism to discuss cumulative racial disadvantage and the ongoing, racially segregative effects of government systems and policies. of such systems on intimate choice and family formation. Likewise, some scholars have employed structuralism to explore how law shapes our intimate preferences and opportunities for intimate engagements. Still, scholars of this very exciting work have not yet engaged as fully as they might regarding questions of race. This Article contends that …
Firearms Policy And The Black Community: An Assessment Of The Modern Orthodoxy, Nicholas J. Johnson
Firearms Policy And The Black Community: An Assessment Of The Modern Orthodoxy, Nicholas J. Johnson
Faculty Scholarship
The heroes of the modern civil rights movement were more than just stoic victims of racist violence. Their history was one of defiance and fighting long before news cameras showed them attacked by dogs and fire hoses. When Fannie Lou Hamer revealed she kept a shotgun in every corner of her bedroom, she was channeling a century old practice. And when delta share cropper Hartman Turnbow, after a shootout with the Klan, said “I don’t figure I was being non-nonviolent, (yes non-nonviolent) I was just protecting my family”, he was invoking an evolved tradition that embraced self-defense and disdained political …
Notes Toward A Critical Contemplation Of Law, Sonia K. Katyal
Notes Toward A Critical Contemplation Of Law, Sonia K. Katyal
Faculty Scholarship
In this tribute to Professor Derrick Bell’s legacy, Professor Katyal reflects on one of Bell’s greatest gifts: the necessary, and perhaps unfinished gift of critical contemplation of law, along with its possibilities and its concomitant limitations. In her paper, Katyal reflects on two seemingly disparate areas of civil rights that might benefit from Bell’s critical vision: the area of LGBT rights and equality, and federal Indian law. Relying on some of Bell’s most valuable insights, Katyal calls for the creation of a “critical sexuality studies” and a “critical indigenous studies” that employs some of Bell’s groundbreaking lessons in reimagining broader …
Witchcraft Accusations And Human Rights: Case Studies From Malawi, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Katherine Glenn
Witchcraft Accusations And Human Rights: Case Studies From Malawi, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Katherine Glenn
Faculty Scholarship
This Article explores potential community-based interventions to assist victims of witchcraft accusations, based on forty-five case studies from an experimental mobile legal-aid clinic in Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa where witchcraft accusations are widespread and often irreparably harm those accused. In Malawi, the accused are mainly older women who are often blamed for bewitching young children.
Revolution And Intervention In The Middle East, Catherine Powell
Revolution And Intervention In The Middle East, Catherine Powell
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Localities As Equality Innovators, Robin A. Lenhardt
Localities As Equality Innovators, Robin A. Lenhardt
Faculty Scholarship
This Article thus argues that instead of regarding cities and localities that, like Seattle and Louisville, try to develop serious solutions to existing racial disparities as "bad cities" no different from those whose notorious policies spurred the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, we should be regarding them as potential "equality innovators.” Their on-the-ground experience with the realities of race and its operation in the twenty-first century arguably places them in a better position than courts to develop innovative approaches to the structural racial inequities with which so many municipalities must grapple. Existing doctrine limits dramatically the ability …
Hate Speech And The Language Of Racism In Latin America: A Lens For Reconsidering Global Hate Speech Restrictions And Legislation Models, Tanya K. Hernandez
Hate Speech And The Language Of Racism In Latin America: A Lens For Reconsidering Global Hate Speech Restrictions And Legislation Models, Tanya K. Hernandez
Faculty Scholarship
In Latin America, like many countries in Europe, hate speech is prohibited. Yet Latin America is rarely included in the transnational discussion regarding the regulation of hate speech. Instead, the discourse focuses on a comparison of the advisability of Europe's hate speech regulations and free speech acceptance of hate speech in the United States. As a result, the ability to fundamentally examine the connections between hate speech and inequality, in addition to the most effective legal mechanisms for addressing it, is undermined. It is especially critical to broaden the hate speech debate now that we are seeing an apparent rise …
Employment Discrimination In The Ethnically Diverse Workplace, Tanya K. Hernandez
Employment Discrimination In The Ethnically Diverse Workplace, Tanya K. Hernandez
Faculty Scholarship
Racial integration has long been the touchstone of racial progress in the workplace. But integration is only the beginning of the struggle to end racial discrimination. As workplaces become more diverse, they do not necessarily become less racially discriminatory. Diverse workplaces may be characterized by antagonism between people of different races. Interethnic discrimination may exist alongside the discrimination that has traditionally occurred between blacks and whites, i.e., non-white racial and ethnic groups may engage in disparate-treatment employment discrimination actionable under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Examples of interethnic discrimination occur among members of different ethnic subgroups, as …
Forced Eviction And Resettlement In Cambodia: Case Studies From Phnom Penh, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Rijie Ernie Gao, Elizabeth Joynes, Anna Cave, Jessica Mikhailevich
Forced Eviction And Resettlement In Cambodia: Case Studies From Phnom Penh, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Rijie Ernie Gao, Elizabeth Joynes, Anna Cave, Jessica Mikhailevich
Faculty Scholarship
This Article culminates a project undertaken by the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic (“Leitner Clinic”) at Fordham Law School to examine the effects of land resettlement on communities that were forcibly evicted or are at risk of forced eviction from their homes, and, in particular, the effects of forced evictions on the Boeung Kak Lake community in central Phnom Penh and on people living with HIV/AIDS (“PLWHA”). This Article is based on field research the Leitner Clinic conducted in Cambodia in the fall of 2008. While in Cambodia, the Leitner Clinic interviewed families from four different communities: resettlement camps …
Race Audits, Robin A. Lenhardt
Race Audits, Robin A. Lenhardt
Faculty Scholarship
The U.S. Supreme Court’s race jurisprudence suffers from a stunning lack of imagination where possibilities for meaningful local government involvement in combating structural racial inequality are concerned. Cases such as Parents. and Ricci limit dramatically the freedom that localities have to address racial inequity within their borders. Instead of constraints on local efforts in the race context, Professor Lenhardt argues that what we need, if persistent racial inequalities are ever to be eliminated, is greater innovation and experimentation. In this article, Professor Lenhardt thus introduces an extra-judicial tool called the race audit, which would permit individual cities or a regional …
Dissident Citizen, The Symposium: Sexuality & Gender Law: Assessing The Field, Envisioning The Future, Sonia K. Katyal
Dissident Citizen, The Symposium: Sexuality & Gender Law: Assessing The Field, Envisioning The Future, Sonia K. Katyal
Faculty Scholarship
We have arrived at a crossroads in terms of the intersection between law, sexuality, and globalization. Historically, and even today, the majority of accounts of GLBT migration tend to remain focused on “a narrative of movement from repression to freedom, or a heroic journey undertaken in search of liberation.” Within this narrative, the United States is usually cast as a land of opportunity and liberation, a place that represents freedom from discrimination and economic opportunity. But this narrative also elides the complexity that erupts from grappling with the reality that many other jurisdictions outside of the United States can be …
Beyond Analogy: Perez V. Sharp, Antimiscegenation Law, And The Fight For Same-Sex Marriage, Robin A. Lenhardt
Beyond Analogy: Perez V. Sharp, Antimiscegenation Law, And The Fight For Same-Sex Marriage, Robin A. Lenhardt
Faculty Scholarship
Conversations about the constitutionality of prohibitions on marriage for same-sex couples invariably reduce to the question of whether a meaningful analogy can be drawn between restrictions on same-sex marriage and antimiscegenation laws. In an effort to refocus this debate, this article considers the California Supreme Court's 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp and its use by advocates in recent litigation to secure marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. Opponents of marriage rights for members of the LGBT *840 community frequently assert that dispatching Perez in these cases distorts the meaning of that decision and other similar precedents by drawing …
Latino Inter-Ethnic Employment Discrimination And The Diversity Defense, Tanya K. Hernandez
Latino Inter-Ethnic Employment Discrimination And The Diversity Defense, Tanya K. Hernandez
Faculty Scholarship
With the growing racial and ethnic diversity of the U.S. population and workforce, scholars have begun to address the ways in which coalition building across groups not only will continue to be necessary but also will become even more complex. Recent scholarship has focused on analyzing how best to promote effective coalition building. Thus far, scholars have not examined what that growing racial and ethnic diversity will mean in the context of individual racial and ethnic discrimination claims. What will antidiscrimination litigation look like when all the parties involved are non-White but nonetheless plaintiffs allege that a racial hierarchy exists …
Rights As A Functional Guide For Service Provision In Homeless Advocacy Creating Healthy Communities: Ending Homelessness, Nestor M. Davidson
Rights As A Functional Guide For Service Provision In Homeless Advocacy Creating Healthy Communities: Ending Homelessness, Nestor M. Davidson
Faculty Scholarship
Rights-based approaches to advocacy on behalf of homeless persons have long sought to vindicate important dignitary, liberty, and equality interests, as well as establish to entitlements to housing, mental health, substance abuse, and other services. This advocacy has had some success in shaping the systems that define the interaction between homeless persons and the state. Rights paradigms, however, can be undermined by the day-to-day reality of the lives of homeless individuals and families that are often shaped by profound need less for protection from the state than for meaningful support, and entitlement advocacy remains circumscribed by the reality of severely …
Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …
Sexuality And Sovereignty: The Global Limits And Possibilities Of Lawrence Symposium: Legal Rights In Historical Perspective: From The Margins To The Mainstream, Sonia K. Katyal
Faculty Scholarship
In the summer of 2003, the Supreme Court handed gay and lesbian activists a stunning victory in the decision of Lawrence v. Texas, which summarily overruled Bowers v. Hardwick. At issue was whether Texas' prohibition of same-sex sexual conduct violated the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution. In a powerful, poetic, and strident opinion, Justice Kennedy, writing for a six-member majority, reversed Bowers, observing that individual decisions regarding physical intimacy between consenting adults, either of the same or opposite sex, are constitutionally protected, and thus fall outside of the reach of state intervention. Volumes can be written about the …