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Full-Text Articles in Law
Is Integration A Discriminatory Purpose?, Michelle Adams
Is Integration A Discriminatory Purpose?, Michelle Adams
Articles
Is integration a form of discrimination? Remarkably, recent Supreme Court doctrine suggests that the answer to this question may well be yes. In Ricci v. DeStefano, the Court characterizes - for the very first time - government action taken to avoid disparate-impact liability and to integrate the workplace as "race-based," and then invalidates that action under a heightened level of judicial review. Consequently, Ricci suggests that the Court is open to the "equivalence doctrine," which posits that laws intended to racially integrate are morally and constitutionally equivalent to laws intended to racially separate. Under the equivalence doctrine, integration is simply …
Introducing Lawrence V. Texas: Some Background And A Glimpse Of The Future, Edward Stein
Introducing Lawrence V. Texas: Some Background And A Glimpse Of The Future, Edward Stein
Articles
The Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas broke new ground for the legal position of lesbians, gay men and other sexual minorities in the United States. This article reviews the legal background against which Lawrence was decided (focusing on privacy and equal protection arguments). The article then explores the likely implications of this decision, specifically for the recognition of same-sex marriage and the constitutionality of laws that make other sex acts criminal. The article suggests that the most interesting questions after Lawrence concern whether the logic of Justice O'Connor's concurrence (that focused on the equal protection argument) will be …
Grutter V. Bollinger: This Generation's Brown V. Board Of Education, Michelle Adams
Grutter V. Bollinger: This Generation's Brown V. Board Of Education, Michelle Adams
Articles
At first blush, Grutter appears to be a deviation from the body of the Court's recent affirmative action jurisprudence: it says "yes" where the other cases said "no." But it is not so clear that Grutter is a deviation from current law. Instead, it might be seen as consistent with it, in that the justification for the racial preference recognized in Grutter transcended the justifications offered in the previous cases, and the method used to achieve that end, "race as a factor," diffused rather than highlighted race. From this perspective, Grutter addressed several concerns that had troubled the Court for …
Enforcing Family Promises: Reliance, Reciprocity, And Relational Contract, Melanie B. Leslie
Enforcing Family Promises: Reliance, Reciprocity, And Relational Contract, Melanie B. Leslie
Articles
Courts are willing, in commercial contexts, to enforce promises even without consideration when enforcement supports a norm of reciprocity-a norm which recognizes that promises are seldom totally gratuitous, but are often made in furtherance of reciprocal, long-term, trust-based relationships. In this article, Professor Leslie argues that relational contract principles are firmly embedded in wills law. Courts enforce the reciprocity norm in the family context just as they do in commercial contexts; this enforcement is seen, however, not in breach of promise suits, which occur rarely between family members, but rather in will contests. Despite the prevalent ideology of wills law, …