Law Commons^™

Amicus Curiae Brief Of Now Legal Defense And Education Fund And Equal Rights Advocates In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant And In Support Of Reversal, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund ("NOW LDEF") is a leading national non-profit civil rights organization that performs abroad range of legal and educational services in support of efforts to eliminate sex-based discrimination" and secure equal rights. NOW LDEF was founded in 1970 by leaders of the National Organization for Women as a separate organization. NOW LDEF has appeared as amicus in numerous cases involving sex stereotyping as a form of sex discrimination, including Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, and Fisher v. Vassar College.

Equal Rights Advocates ("ERA") is one of the oldest public interest law firms specializing in …

Reflections On Environmental Justice, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental justice is a very hot topic. Yesterday's New York Times on the front page of the Metropolitan section had a story stating: Mid-Sized Plants Headed to Poor Areas. The story stated, "The Pataki administration acknowledges in its own study that the electric generators that it wants to install around New York City would go into poor heavily minority communities, a finding that supports some of the arguments of the project's opponents. This is quoting an unreleased environmental justice analysis that may or may not be valid, but it certainly shows how hot a topic it is. This morning …

Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

In July of 1998 something rather mundane happened: Lucas Rosa walked into Park West Bank in Holyoke, Massachusetts and asked for a loan application. Since it was a warm summer day, and because she wanted to look credit-worthy, Rosa wore a blousey top over stockings. Suddenly, the mundane transformed into the exceptional: When asked for some identification, Rosa was told that no application would be forthcoming until and unless she went home, changed her clothes and returned attired in more traditionally masculine/male clothing. Rosa, a biological male who identifies herself as female was, it seems, denied a loan application on …

Title Vii And Religious Liberty, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids religious discrimination in employment, raises in microcosm some extremely thorny questions about religious liberty; questions more familiar to most of us in constitutional settings. In focusing on these questions in their Title VII context, I am more interested in fundamental conceptual issues than in the precise details of what that law should be taken to provide.

Among the questions are: What is discrimination because of religion? How should religion be "defined"? How far should employers accommodate the religious exercise of workers? Under the First Amendment, how much accommodation can the …

Feminism At The Millennium, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Sexism of all kinds – subtle and blatant, criminal and legal, commercial and private – is the topic of the three books under review. The books initially sort themselves out by discipline: Everyday Sexism and Subtle Sexism are anthologies whose editors and contributors are primarily sociologists; Speaking of Sex is written by a law professor and offers a more focused argument about the persistence of gender inequalities. Distinctions in authorship aside, the three books pose a pair of similar and painfully familiar questions: Why is so much still organized to the disadvantage of women, and what can (feminist) academics contribute …

Second Generation Employment Discrimination: A Structural Approach, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

The judiciary's traditional rule-based approach has been successful in reducing overt discrimination against women and people of color. It has been less effective in addressing more subtle and complex forms of workplace inequity. These second generation forms of bias result from patterns of interaction, informal norms, networking, mentoring, and evaluation. Drawing on the potential of recent Supreme Court decisions, Professor Sturm proposes a structural regulatory solution to this problem of second generation employment discrimination. Her approach links the efforts of courts, workplaces, employees, lawyers, and mediating organizations to construct a regime that encourages employers to engage in effective problem solving. …