Law Commons^™

Socio-Economic Rights And The South African Transition: The Role Of The Truth And Reconciliation Commission, Ronald Slye

Faculty Articles

This article examines a part of a foundational principle of the South African Bill of Rights that individuals are entitled to a range of rights that ensure individual security, freedom, and well-being, and that these rights are interdependent and the crucial role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the "TRC") in laying the groundwork for the fulfillment of those rights.

Acting Upon Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics By Lisa Lowe- A Review Colloquy, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

How might a literature professor converse with a law professor about law? Selecting what she thinks are some of the more extraordinary excerpts from Professor Lowe's seven densely and finely-crafted essays, Professor Margaret Chon meditates on each from the perspective of critical race theory and other legally grounded paradigms. Rather than narrate a linear critique of Professor Lowe's book, Professor Chon tries to construct a partial, if artificial, colloquy. By doing this, the reader can sample the richness of Lowe's text, while gauging Professor Chon’s reactions. With this form, Professor Chon hopes to emulate what Professor Lowe simultaneously analyzes and …

Direct Democracy And Distrust: The Relationship Between Language Law Rhetoric And The Language Vigilantism Experience, Steven W. Bender

Faculty Articles

Revitalized after the passage of California's Proposition 187, the English language movement continues its national campaign for restrictive language laws at the local, state, and federal levels of government. Thus far, the English language laws and initiatives adopted or urged have addressed government speech - the language of government employees and of government communications, records, and publications. English language laws adopted by the states have not yet extended to public speech (such as newspapers and other media) or to private speech (such as language in the home). Yet, individuals speaking a language other than English have increasingly come under attack …

Centering The Immigrant In The Inter/National Imagination, Robert S. Chang, Keith Aoki

Faculty Articles

In this Article, Professors Chang and Aoki examine the relationship between the immigrant and the nation in the complicated racial terrain known as the United States. Special attention is paid to the border which contains and configures the local, the national and the international. They criticize the contradictory impulse that has led to borders becoming increasingly porous to the flows of information, goods and capital while simultaneously constricting when it comes to the movement of certain persons, particularly those of Asian and Latinalo ancestry. The authors examine Monterey Park, California, as one site where there has been a large influx …

Single-Sex Education After United States V. Virginia, Catherine O’Neill

Faculty Articles

In United States v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that courts must invalidate sex-based classifications that "create or perpetuate the legal, social and economic inferiority of women." This contribution to equal protection jurisprudence, however, leaves unclear when single-sex higher education remains constitutional. This article argues that the Court has been preoccupied with legislative motive in this area. A capability approach, which assesses well-being and identifies individual advantage by reference to an account of what a person is able to do or be, might better help courts determine when there is an "exceedingly persuasive justification" for a sex-based classification.

Construction Sites, Building Types, And Bridging Gaps: A Cognitive Theory Of The Learning Progression Of Law Students, Paula Lustbader

Faculty Articles

This article uses cognitive and developmental theories of learning as a basis for a theoretical framework analogous to building structures for how students learn in law school. It identifies characteristics of the different stages of learning from novice to expert, explains why and where students get stuck, and offers suggestions on how to help students move to the next stage in their development. The article also includes an appendix with a sample exam and examples of how students would answer the exam at different stages. Students also find it very helpful to see these examples.

The Interaction Of The Division Order And The Lease Royalty Clause, Laura H. Burney

Faculty Articles

Because lease royalty clauses, which establish the obligation of the lessee to pay royalties to the lessor, generally fail to include the details necessary to calculate a lessor’s royalty, lessee or third party purchasers historically have implemented a division order. An additional document in the payment process, the division order protects against a lessee or third party purchaser’s liability for conversion or failure to account properly.

Recent court of appeals and Supreme Court of Texas opinions provide an analysis of the interaction of the lease royalty clause and the division order under Texas statutory and case law. The awkward wording …

Fostering Diversity In The Legal Profession: A Model For Preparing Minority And Other Non-Traditional Students For Law School, Lorraine K. Bannai, Marie Eaton

Faculty Articles

Undergraduate institutions, on their own and in partnership with law schools, can and should play a more significant role in expanding the pool of law school applicants from non-traditional backgrounds. The Law and Diversity Program at Western Washington University was conceived out of this desire to prepare non-traditional students for the study of law and thereby help bring more diversity to the legal profession. This article discusses the model used by the Law and Diversity Program to prepare non-traditional students for law school and the program's success in accomplishing its goals. It was the hope of the author to create …

Foreword: Toward A Radical And Plural Democracy, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

In this foreword, Professor Chang lays the foundation for a discussion on the systematic discrimination built in to the United States democracy. He points out how this foundation caters to the prototypical straight, white male. The foreword ends with how these issues are addressed specifically in the symposium.

Nothing And Everything: Race, Romer, And (Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual) Rights, Robert S. Chang, Jerome Culp

Faculty Articles

In this article, Professors Chang and Culp propose that the Supreme Court's decision in Romer v. Evans, viewed by some scholars as a progressive case about gay/lesbian/bisexual rights, has little to do with gay/lesbian/bisexual rights as such. They argue that whatever protection Romer provides to gays, lesbians, and bisexuals is provided not because of their sexuality but, rather, despite it. The authors demonstrate their thesis by examining the racial underpinnings of the Court's opinion, which begins with Justice Harlan's famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson and which relies on a specific vision of color-blindness. This submerged racial jurisprudence provides the …

The American Exclusionary Rule Experience, Gerald S. Reamey

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Migration, Identity & The Colonial Encounter, Tayyab Mahmud

Faculty Articles

The immigrant puts at issue assumptions of inviolability of borders, territoriality of sovereignty, and exclusivity of citizenship - fundamental characteristics of the modern state. The immigrant calls into question cultural homogeneity, linguistic commonality, shared history, and security of identity - the key ideologies of the nation. This article explores these issues by locating them in spatial and temporal sites removed from the common foci of current immigration debates. Using three stories of migration from colonial and postcolonial South Asia, the first part of the article demonstrates that within the general context of empire and imperialism, the determinants and processes of …

Racial Cross-Dressing, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

Professor Chang provided a shorter version of this article as a talk at the First Annual LatCrit Conference sponsored by California Western School of Law and held in La Jolla, California from May 2-5, 1996. In this article Professor Chang addresses the subject of gender-bending - and for that matter, race bending – and how they may indeed "do" important political work, we must approach such performances with caution. They may represent instances of appropriation – as in misappropriation - just as easily as they may represent claims to solidarity and thus a basis for collective political action. Stated differently, …

From Dreams To Reality: The Emerging Role Of Law School Academic Support, Paula Lustbader

Faculty Articles

This article reviews the history, rationale, development, and different program structures of Law School Academic Support Programs. It briefly summarizes learning theory and explains how ASP can implement those theories to teach academic skills. Lastly, it suggests that notwithstanding the significance of helping students develop solid academic skills, probably the most important work that ASP professionals do is to provide the non-academic support by making the human connection to students and believing in them.

Foreword: Citizenship And Its Discontents - Centering The Immigrant In The Inter/National Imagination (Part Ii), Robert S. Chang, Keith Aoki, Ibrahim Gassama

Faculty Articles

A couple of years ago, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) swept through several southern states to round up and deport undocumented workers. The sweep was called Operation SouthPAW, PAW standing for "Protecting America's Workers." The roundup occurred in two phases, which curiously took place mostly before and after the harvest. The operation was celebrated by the INS and mainstream media as hugely successful in protecting America's workers (and thus America) from encroachment by "unauthorized" workers. But who gains ideologically and materially from such policing actions? Who loses? These questions of material profit and ideological benefit lie at the heart …

Beating The Odds: Reading Strategies Of Law Students Admitted Through Alternative Admissions Programs, Laurel Oates

Faculty Articles

When they enter law school, the odds are against them. Almost always persons of color and often from disadvantaged backgrounds, their LSAT scores are substantially lower than those of their classmates. As a result, these students, law students admitted through alternative admissions programs, have a by far less chance of success than their regularly admitted classmates. Some of these students do, however, beat the odds. While most students who are admitted to law school under an alternative admissions program perform as their LSAT scores predict-in the bottom quartile of their class-a small number perform substantially better. Every year, some alternatively …

Education's Promise, Laurel Oates, Sam Wineberg

Faculty Articles

This is a story with at least two parts. In the first part, Sam Wineburg, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Washington, tells his story, the story of instruction in the United States, beginning with one revolution, the scientific revolution, and ending with another, the cognitive revolution. In the second part, Laurel Oates, the Director of Legal Writing at Seattle University School of Law, tells our story, the story of legal education and, in particular, legal writing, and how both have been affected by these revolutions.

The New Requirement Of Enforcement Reliance In Commercial Promissory Estoppel: Section 90 As Catch-22, Sidney Delong

Faculty Articles

Any comprehensive examination of recent appellate court decisions will disclose that the legal doctrine of promissory estoppel has not become a significant source of commercial contractual obligation. Although commercial promissory estoppel claims are often made, plaintiff victories are very rare. These results are difficult to reconcile with frequent scholarly contentions to the effect that contemporary courts have become more receptive to claims of promissory estoppel and have liberalized its doctrinal requirements. More important, the promisor behavior that is incidentally disclosed in reported opinions also undermines academic arguments that rules providing for promissory estoppel have commercial utility. The decisions suggest that …

Radical Plural Democracy And The Internet, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

By examining the consequences that particular social practices on the Internet have in physical space, this essay attempts to re-pivot the democratic discourse of the Internet so as to include Chantal Mouffe's vision of a radical and plural democracy: one that accounts for missing material markers, one that encourages the proliferation of different democratic struggles, one that acknowledges that "[a]ll inequities existing in our society are now at issue."

Being Between: A Review Of Chinese Women Traversing Diaspora: Memoirs, Essays, And Poetry, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

In this essay Professor Chon reviews Chinese Women Traversing Diaspora: Memoirs, Essays, and Poetry. Chinese Women Traversing Diaspora is the second volume of a series on the theme of "Gender, Culture, and Global Politics." Professor Sharon Hom, who edited this volume, deliberately contextualizes the "I" and "we" that supply the narrative voice and subject in each of these works as specific ethnic, gendered, and generational locations within Asian America. However, Professor Chon illustrates how this anthology is not so much about the "I" as it is about the "we." Professor Horn is engaged in a project of excavating individual histories …

Writing In The Margins: Brennan, Marshall, And The Inherent Weaknesses Of Liberal Judicial Decision-Making (Essay), Donna F. Coltharp

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Out Yet Unseen: A Racial Critique Of Gay And Lesbian Legal Theory And Political Discourse, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

The symbolic meaning of the phrase "tongues untied" has grown to identify a small, yet expanding, cultural, intellectual, and artistic "movement" aimed at revealing - or ending the silence around - the interactions of race, class, gender, and sexuality, what one participant in the movement described as "the transformation of silence into language and action." The work of this movement contrasts starkly with that of the "dominant" gay and lesbian culture and scholarship, where issues of racial and class subordination are neglected or rejected and where a universal gay and lesbian experience is assumed. The work of this movement highlights …

Law And Religion In Israel And Iran: How The Integration Of Secular And Spiritual Laws Affects Human Rights And The Potential For Violence, S. I. Strong

Faculty Articles

Because law and religion are by themselves complex cultural and historical issues, any study of the interaction between the two will be at least as complicated. If one is to understand both a State's current re­ligio-legal regime and what reform measures are most likely to succeed there, it is necessary to understand at least a little of the nation's history and majority religion. Therefore, Part I of this article provides a brief sketch of the principles of the two majority religions at issue in this dis­cussion and an overview of the history of both Israel and Iran. It explains why …

Critical Applications And Proposals For Improvement Of The Uniform Interstate Family Support Act And The Full Faith And Credit For Child Support Orders Act, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

The problems inherent in interstate child and spousal support enforcement have been lamented for at least a half century. The federal and state governments have taken numerous steps to enhance interstate establishment and collection of support. Two of the latest steps in this process were the 1992 promulgation of the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act ("UIFSA") and the 1994 adoption of the federal Full Faith and Credit For Child Support Orders Act ("FFCCSOA"). The 1996 federal "welfare reform" bill' affected both of these statutes by requiring the states to pass UIFSA by January 1, 1998 and by amending FFCCSOA …

The Removal Of Adam's Rib: The Creation And Polarization Of Male And Female Virtues, Ana M. Novoa

Faculty Articles

Soft virtues, normally associated with women, have been deemed to have no legal, market or public value, and this has caused problems within American society. The devaluation of cooperative and nurturing virtues, coupled with the dangerous myth of independence and self-reliance, and general acceptance of consumption as a positive attribute, have had a profound effect on American society as a whole and, in particular, on general views on the care of children and other dependent members of our society. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the composition and character of the family were very different because the family was not a …