Law Commons^™

Inclusiveness: Advancing Environmental Justice In A Diverse Democracy, Irma S. Russell, Alexandra D. Dunn

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Today, environmental justice (EJ) is more than a significant and meaningful social movement. EJ has now emerged—after at least five decades—as a major initiative for the federal government and for many state governments. Since the beginnings of the EJ movement, its proponents have sought redress for the disproportionate and negative impacts of generations of environmental policy and siting decisions that resulted in adverse effects on the health, environment, economics, and climate of disadvantaged communities. Scientific research and “big data” programs now provide evidence supporting community EJ claims, and laws such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction …

Introduction: The Arc Of Race In Professional And Collegiate Sports Symposium, Kenneth D. Ferguson

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This introduction will highlight the five articles featured in the symposium issue of the UMKC Law Review and will also situate those articles in the Sports Law Symposium titled, The Arc of Race in Professional and Collegiate Sports. The goal of the two-day virtual symposium was to bring together leading legal, social science, and medical science scholars to engage in discourse concerning how race and gender have affected and continue to influence decision making in professional and collegiate sports. The symposium exposed how race, culture, ethnicity, and gender affect a wide range of phenomena in scientific fields such as neuropsychological …

Ella P. Stewart And The Benefits Of Owning A Neighborhood Pharmacy, Randall K. Johnson

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This Essay is the first to explain how and why Ella P. Stewart, who was among the first Black women to earn a doctoral degree in Pharmacy, used her status as a small business owner to protect the limited set of legal rights that were available to African-Americans in the twentieth century. It also describes how Stewart’s early personal and professional experiences informed her subsequent public service career. Additionally, this Essay highlights the various ways that Stewart expanded the real freedoms that Black Americans enjoyed by guaranteeing they received a fair share of public goods or services. It concludes by …

Introduction: Access To Healthcare Symposium, Yvonne F. Lindgren

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The four Articles in this Access to Healthcare symposium edition address the different ways that the U.S. healthcare delivery system is failing marginalized communities, including individuals who are disabled, who are birthing, who are women of color or represent another marginalized group, or who live in poverty. The result is a rich conversation that uncovers the complex systems that contribute to unequal access to health care and unjust disparities in health outcomes in the United States.

Strategies For Equitable Access: Identifying Benefits And Strategies For Creating Integrated Public Schools, Annotated Examples Of Current School District Enrollment Practices, And Resources For Further Exploration, Lisa A. Gooden

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Prepared for the Equity Oriented Strategic Planning Committee for Kansas City Public Schools. Includes a summary of the benefits of integrated schools, strategies for creating equitable schools, annotated examples of current practices employed by public school districts in the United States to foster equitable access to education, and list of links to additional resources for further reading.

Community Economic Development Is Access To Justice, Anthony J. Luppino, Scott L. Cummings, Edward W. De Barbieri, Christyne Vachon, Steven Henry Hobbs, Brian Kingsley Krumm, Anika Singh Lemar, Brandon M. Weiss, Robert J. Miller, K. Sabeel Rahman, Alexandra Sickler, Paul R. Tremblay

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What gaps exist in the justice system that result in a need for services provided by community economic development attorneys? What is the evidence that those gaps actually exist? How do we know that community economic development practitioners fill those gaps, and in what way? These are merely a few of the questions addressed in this collection. At the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) annual meeting in San Diego in January 2018, legal scholars gathered to discuss this evolution as part of the discussion group, “Community Economic Development Is Access to Justice.” The goal of the discussion group was …

Attorney As Accompagnateur: Resilient Lawyering When Victory Is Uncertain Or Nearly Impossible, Margaret Reuter

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Social justice lawyers come to the profession intending to make a difference through the instruments of law. And gloriously, they often make a difference in people’s lives for the better. They make our world a more just, compassionate, and tolerant place. But there is no denying that, in poverty law practice, legal success can be elusive, ephemeral, or perhaps a mirage. How does that lawyer feel when the legal remedies at her disposal, even if “successful,” fail to mitigate the injustices suffered by her clients? Are there definitions of professional satisfaction and success that are enduring, even if legal success …

Discrimination By Design?, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, Nancy Levit

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Platform world is speeding the redesign of employment. Bricks-and-mortar firms once hired through narrow portals and then invested in the workers they hired, providing job security and predictable career ladders. Platform world flings the doors wide open to income-generating efforts, providing new opportunities but also offering security and predictable advancement to almost no one.

Other legal scholars have mined these same data for gender disparities; they have found disparities in the platform economy arising from customer biases and individual preferences, and manifested in men’s and women’s different experiences in everything from pricing plumbing services to fraud prevention. Neutral-appearing algorithms may …

The Brandeis Thought Experiment: Reflection On The Elimination Of Racial Bias In The Legal System, Patrick C. Brayer

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This essay prompts the reader to engage in a thought experiment and consider their own limits in advancing the cause of; a legal system free from racism and bias, and lawyers are encouraged to use the experience of a young Louis Brandeis as a guide in this self-reflection. Specifically, this essay calls attention to the fact that Louis Brandeis started his legal career, at the same time when, and in the same place where thousands of African Americans were escaping persecution and traveling in search of economic and political freedom, yet he was publicly absent on issues of race. As …

Gender Nonconforming Expression And Binary Thinking: Understanding How Implicit Bias Becomes Explicit In The Legal System, Considering The Shooting Death Of Philando Castile, Patrick C. Brayer

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Theorists, poets, and artists are taking the lead in advancing the conversation about gender fluidity and the plight of people with non-binary gender identities. This essay is about what practitioners who combat implicit bias in the legal profession can learn from artists and thinkers on the cutting edge of gender non-conforming expression. Understanding how individuals stigmatize, and at times discriminate against, gender fluid people by limited and binary thinking is an important progression in comprehending how implicit bias (specifically against people of color) becomes explicit and influences legal actors including law enforcement and jurors. The tragic shooting of Philando Castile …

Bias On Trial: Toward An Open Discussion Of Racial Stereotypes In The Courtroom, Mikah K. Thompson

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In the 2017 case Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the U.S. Supreme Court discussed several safeguards that are in place to assist the trial court in identifying racial bias among jurors. These safeguards include voir dire examination regarding racial bias, observation of juror demeanor and conduct that might demonstrate racial bias, reports of racially biased comments or actions by jurors during trial, and non-juror evidence of racial bias after trial. The Court acknowledged that these safeguards may be insufficient at times and therefore added a fifth one, holding that trial courts may review evidence suggesting that racial bias was a motivating factor …

A Culture Of Silence: Exploring The Impact Of The Historically Contentious Relationship Between African-Americans And The Police, Mikah K. Thompson

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The relationship between African-Americans and the police has traditionally been focused on authority, control, and the enforcement of laws we now acknowledge were racially discriminatory. This historical relationship, when combined with a modern-day narrative that the police disproportionately stop, arrest, and utilize deadly force against African-Americans, has resulted in pervasive, inter-generational fear and distrust of the police. Most African-Americans view police officers not as the heroic protectors they can call upon when in need of help or the hard-hitting investigators they would trust to look into a family member’s murder. Instead, many African-Americans believe police officers have bought into the …

Achieving Gender Equity Under Title Ix For Girls From Minority, Urban, Rural, And Economically Disadvantaged Communities, Kenneth D. Ferguson

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Unless middle school and high school girls in urban, rural, and minority communities are given the opportunities to participate in the emerging women’s sports, gender equity is being only facially achieved because Title IX requirements are implemented without specific regard to detrimental impacts on the aforementioned subgroups. This Article will consider the intersection of race, gender, economic status, and community characteristics with sports participation for girls in grades K-12 and will argue that there are two categories of intentional discrimination that are both actionable under Title IX. The first is direct discrimination by a perpetrator of the discrimination — the …

Still Unconstitutional: Our Nation's Experiment With State-Sponsored Sex Segregation In Education, David S. Cohen, Nancy Levit

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Since federal regulations authorized single-sex education in 2006, there has been an explosion of single-sex schools and classes. Although the Supreme Court has not ruled, three federal court decisions have addressed the constitutionality of single-sex classes, and the issue will percolate toward Supreme Court review soon. The arguments are that parents should have choices and “diversity” of educational options, that “brain research” shows that boys and girls are so biologically different to need sex-specific educational environments, that educational outcomes are better, and single-sex learning environments allows boys and girls to break through gender stereotypes. This article dissects these arguments within …

Asking The First Question: Reframing Bivens After Minneci, Alexander A. Reinert, Lumen N. Mulligan

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In Minneci v. Pollard, decided in January 2012, the Supreme Court refused to recognize a Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents suit against employees of a privately run federal prison because state tort law provided an alternative remedy, thereby adding a federalism twist to what had been strictly a separation-of-powers debate. In this Article, we show why this new state-law focus is misguided. We first trace the Court’s prior alternative-remedies-to-Bivens holdings, illustrating that this history is one narrowly focused on separation of powers at the federal level. Minneci’s break with this tradition raises several concerns. On a doctrinal level, …

Affirmative Action, Justice Kennedy, And The Virtues Of The Middle Ground, Allen K. Rostron

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When the Supreme Court hears arguments this fall about the constitutionality of affirmative action policies at the University of Texas, attention will be focused once again on Justice Anthony Kennedy. With the rest of the Court split between a bloc of four reliably liberal jurists and an equally solid cadre of four conservatives, the spotlight regularly falls on Kennedy, the swing voter that each side in every closely divided and ideologically charged case desperately hopes to attract. Critics condemn Kennedy for having an unprincipled, capricious, and self-aggrandizing style of decision-making. Though he is often decisive in the sense of casting …

Deconstructing Antisocial Personality Disorder And Psychopathy: Guidelines-Based Approach To Prejudicial Psychiatric Labels, Kathleen Wayland, Sean O'Brien

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Prejudicial psychiatric labels such as antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy have an inherently prejudicial effect on courts and juries, particularly in cases involving the death penalty. This article explains how and why these labels are inherently aggravating, and also discusses the mental health literature indicating that they are subjective, unreliable and non-scientific. The authors conclude that no competent defense lawyer would pursue a mitigation case based on such a damaging and scientifically questionable psychiatric label. Further, a proper life history investigation conducted in accordance with the ABA Guidelines on the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases …

Changing Workforce Demographics And The Future Of The Protected Class Approach, Nancy Levit

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The composition and identity characteristics of the American workforce are changing. The population in this country is rising, aging, and becoming much more racially and ethnically diverse. Appearance norms are shifting too. These changes have enormous implications for constitutional and employment discrimination law. In both equal protection and employment discrimination cases, recovery usually depends on membership in a constitutionally or statutorily protected category. Yet the statutory approach to anti-discrimination law has stagnated. Part of the difficulty of the protected class approach is that it is based on something of a paradox — the paradox of exceptionalism. Class-based protection requires individuals …

The Nutty Putty Cave, The Zen Runner And Other Allegories About Life, Death, Value And Law, John W. Ragsdale Jr

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No abstract provided.

Lawyers Suing Law Firms: The Limits On Attorney Employment Discrimination Claims And The Prospects For Creating Happy Lawyers, Nancy Levit

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It is more than a mild irony that anti-discrimination law fails lawyers in particular. This article addresses doctrinal and pragmatic limits on employment discrimination lawsuits by lawyers against their law firms. It considers the failures of the Title VII template to remedy the sorts of discrimination and dissatisfactions lawyers face in the practice of law, and concludes that many of the things that make lawyers unhappy are simply not reachable through employment discrimination lawsuits. The latter portion of the article turns to the recently emerging science of happiness literature. It suggests that the interests of lawyers and their firms may …

Introduction: Umkc Sports Law Symposium: Emerging Legal Issues Affection Amateur & Professional Sports, Kenneth D. Ferguson

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Introduction to the 2007 University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School’s inaugural Sports Law Symposium. The symposium created a forum that contributed to developing intellectual synergies among national sports law scholars, practicing sports law attorneys, athletic directors, coaches, sports industry professionals, and, importantly, student-athletes. The engagements created revolved around the theme of emerging legal issues affecting amateur and professional sports. The symposium featured scholarly presentations in the amateur and professional sports areas. Scholarly inquiry focused on a range of topics, from the economic and legal issues affecting the coaching profession to balancing gender and minority gender equity under Title IX. The …

The Logic Of Legal Remedies And The Relative Weight Of Norms: Assessing The Public Interest In The Tort Reform Debate, Irma S. Russell

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This article explores the background principles of consistency and proportionality in legal rules and remedies. It identifies the relative strength of the interests of individuals and the public as the key to justifying the remedies available in different areas of law. Understanding the normative guidance of particular legal rules reveals the strength of society's judgment of the interests at stake in different remedies. For example, the principle of consistency generally means that a legal doctrine applying an objective measure of one's interest must apply a like-kind measure to all interests considered, absent some explicit and justifiable basis for different formulations. …

The Trial Of Susan B. Anthony For Illegal Voting, Douglas O. Linder

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More than any other woman of her generation, Susan B. Anthony saw that all of the legal disabilities faced by American women owed their existence to the simple fact that women lacked the vote. When Anthony, at age 32, attended her first woman's rights convention in Syracuse in 1852, she declared that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all the others, was the right of suffrage. Anthony spent the next fifty-plus years of her life fighting for the right to vote. She would work tirelessly: giving speeches, petitioning Congress and …

The Sweet Trials: An Account, Douglas O. Linder

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The automobile and manufacturing boom that began in Detroit about 1915 made the city a magnet for blacks fleeing the economic stagnation of the South. In the decade from 1915 to 1925, Detroit's black population grew more than tenfold, from 7,000 to 82,000. A severe housing shortage developed, as the city's compact black district could not accommodate all the new arrivals. Blacks brave enough to purchase or rent homes in previously all-white neighborhoods faced intimidation and violence. The spring and summer of 1925 saw several ugly housing-related incidents. It was in this violent summer of 1925 that a black doctor …

Embracing Segregation: The Jurisprudence Of Choice And Diversity In Race And Sex Separatism In Schools, Nancy Levit

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Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, segregation based on race and sex is sweeping the nation's educational systems. Courts are rapidly dismantling desegregation orders, and when those desegregation orders end, school districts racially resegregate. At precisely the same time this end to racial desegregation is occurring, the government is beginning to sponsor sex segregation in schools as well. The No Child Left Behind Act provides over $400 million in federal funds for experiments in education, such as single-sex schools and classes. Embracing Segregation draws connections between the end of racial desegregation and the beginning of government-sponsored sex segregation …

Introduction: Theorizing The Connections Among Systems Of Subordination, Nancy Levit

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Theorizing the Connections Among Systems of Subordination introduces a symposium that addresses issues on the leading edge of identity theory, race theory, and critical social theory. It explains the concepts of anti-essentialism, intersectionality, multiple consciousness, multi-dimensionality, and post-intersectionality. It investigates the ways specific types of oppression - such as racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia - support and feed off of one another. It explores the dynamics of subordination that make different forms of subordination connected to each other - the mechanisms by which subordinating systems buttress each other. Where one sees sexism, one frequently can find racism; where classism exists, …

Keeping Feminism In Its Place: Sex Segregation And The Domestication Of Female Academics, Nancy Levit

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The thesis of Keeping Feminism in Its Place is that women are being "domesticated" in the legal academy. This occurs in two ways, one theoretical and one very practical: denigration of feminism on the theoretical level and sex segregation of men and women on the experiential level intertwine to disadvantage women in academia in complex and subtle ways.

The article examines occupational sex segregation and role differentiation between male and female law professors, demonstrating statistically that in legal academia, women are congregated in lower-ranking, lower-paying, lower-prestige positions. It also traces how segregation by sex persists in substantive course teaching assignments. …

A Different Kind Of Sameness: Beyond Formal Equality And Antisubordination Strategies In Gay Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

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Gay legal theory is at a crossroads reminiscent of the sameness/difference debate in feminist circles and the integrationist debate in critical race theory. Formal equality theorists take the heterosexual model as the norm and then seek to show that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals - except for their choice of partners - are just like heterosexuals. Antisubordination theorists attack the heterosexual model itself and seek to show that a society that insists on such a model is unjust. Neither of these strategies is wholly satisfactory. The formal equality model will fail to bring about fundamental reforms as long as sexual …

Without Fear Or Favor: Judge James Edwin Horton And The Trial Of The Scottsboro Boys, Douglas O. Linder

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No abstract provided.

Racism In White Decision, Sean O'Brien

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No abstract provided.