Law Commons^™

“Statistical Dueling” With Unconventional Weapons: What Courts Should Know About Experts In Employment Discrimination Class Actions, William T. Bielby, Pamela Coukos

ExpressO

When statistical evidence is offered in a litigation context, the result can be bad law and bad statistics. In recent high profile, high-stakes employment discrimination class actions against large multinationals like UPS, Wal-Mart, and Marriott, plaintiffs have claimed that decentralized and highly discretionary management practices result in systematic gender or racial disparities in pay and promotion. At class certification, plaintiffs have relied in part on statistical analyses of the company’s workforce showing companywide inequality. Defendants have responded with statistical presentations of their own, which frequently demonstrate widely varying outcomes for members of protected groups in different geographic areas of the …

Federal Employment Law: Current Problems And A Call For Reform, Joseph Prud'homme

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Paid Family Leave In American Law Schools: Findings And Open Questions, Laura T. Kessler

ExpressO

There exists a substantial literature on the status of women in the legal profession, including studies on women students’ experiences in law schools, gender bias on law school faculties, and family leave policies and practices among legal employers. However, no recent study examines the family leave policies and practices in American law schools. This study seeks to fill that gap. Its findings are threefold. First, almost three quarters of law schools provide wage replacement during a family leave that is more generous than required by federal law. Second, there is a positive relationship between teaching at top-tier and private law …

Overruling The Jury: Duncan V. Gmc And Appellate Treatment Of Hostile Work Environment Judgments, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

In 2002, the Eighth Circuit reversed a one million dollar jury award to the plaintiff in a sexual harassment suit against General Motors Corporation. This reversal demonstrates the danger of appellate review of such verdicts, limiting sexual harassment verdicts to the lowest common denominator in that circuit.

A Revised Tangible Employment Action Analysis: Just What Is An Undesirable Reassignment?, Christine Bradshaw

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Freeing Racial Harassment From The Sexual Harassment Model, Pat K. Chew

Articles

Judges, academics, and lawyers alike base their legal analyses of workplace racial harassment on the sexual harassment model. Legal principles derived from sexual harassment jurisprudence are presumed to be equally appropriate for racial harassment cases. The implicit assumption is that the social harms and public policy goals of racial harassment and sexual harassment are sufficiently similar to justify analogous scrutiny and remedies. Parties to racial harassment cases cite the reasoning and elements of sexual harassment cases without hesitation, as if racial harassment and sexual harassment are behaviorally and legally indistinguishable.

This Article, however, questions the assumption that there should be …

No Longer Just Company Men: The Flexible Workforce And Employment Discrimination, Review Essay On 'From Widgets To Digits Employment Regulation For The Changing Workplace', By Katherine V.W. Stone (2004), Miriam A. Cherry

All Faculty Scholarship

In her new book, From Widgets to Digits, Professor Katherine V.W. Stone reviews and analyzes the dramatic changes, both technological and demographic, that have transformed work in America during the last thirty years. The book broadly documents the shift from an economy that primarily relies on the production and consumption of goods to one in which learning and the transmittal of knowledge is central to the creation of wealth. Professor Stone describes how in the past, workers may have expected job security and long-term employment, but that recent economic, social, and technological change have led to a more temporary and …

Unwrapping Racial Harassment Law, Pat K. Chew

Articles

This article is based on a pioneering empirical study of racial harassment in the workplace in which we statistically analyze federal court opinions from 1976 to 2002. Part I offers an overview of racial harassment law and research, noting its common origin with and its close dependence upon sexual harassment legal jurisprudence. In order to put the study's analysis in context, Part I describes the dispute resolution process from which racial harassment cases arise.

Parts II and III present a clear picture of how racial harassment law has played out in the courts - who are the plaintiffs and defendants, …

That Pernicious Pop-Up, The Prima Facie Case, Michael Hayes

All Faculty Scholarship

This article first explains the role the prima facie case has played in discrimination cases, from its creation in McDonnell Douglas through the Supreme Court's decisions in Aikens and Reeves, up to the application of Reeves by lower courts in the past several years. Next, this article focuses on Reeve's identification of "strength of the prima facie case" as a factor to be considered on summary judgment, and discusses why it would be unwise and unworkable to interpret the words "prima facie case" in that factor as having the same meaning as the "prima facie case" proved in the first …