Law Commons^™

For What It's Worth: The Role Of Race- And Gender-Based Data In Civil Damages Awards, Loren D. Goodman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Following months of behavioral problems, hyperactivity, and intermittent complaints of headache and nausea, five-year-old Kelsey Craig's mother finally takes her to the pediatrician to determine the root of the problem. After multiple consultations, a blood test shows a surprising culprit: there is a dangerously high amount of lead present in Kelsey's blood, suggesting prolonged exposure to the irreversibly toxic substance. Upon returning to their older, prewar apartment building, Kelsey's mother passes a neighboring family in the hallway and woefully relays the tale of her diagnosis. The neighbors' eyes grow wide as they realize their own five-year-old son has been experiencing …

Thinking About The Supreme Court's Successes And Failures, Erwin Chemerinsky

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Supreme Court often has failed at its most important tasks and at the most important times. I set out this thesis at the beginning the book:

To be clear, I am not saying that the Supreme Court has failed at these crucial tasks every time. Making a case against the Supreme Court does not require taking such an extreme position. I also will talk about areas where the Court has succeeded in protecting minorities and in enforcing the limits of the Constitution. My claim is that the Court has often failed where and when it has been most needed. …

The Admission Of Legacy Blacks, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Vanderbilt Law Review

Three years ago, the New York Times reported the results of a study that revealed that two-thirds of the black population at Harvard College consisted of first-generation black immigrant students in the United States, second-generation black American students, and mixed-race students with one black parent. Additional studies have confirmed that the same phenomenon exists at other elite institutions, which include schools such as Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, Northwestern, Oberlin, the University of California- Berkeley, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the University of Pennsylvania, Smith, Stanford, and Yale.

For many of those interested in how affirmative action …

"Accommodations" For The Learning Disabled: A Level Playing Field Or Affirmative Action For Elites?, Craig S. Lerner

Vanderbilt Law Review

A growing number of students in American higher education are being diagnosed as "learning disabled" and then using that diagnosis to secure beneficial "accommodations," such as extra time on exams. These accommodations are often said to be mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This Article challenges the premise that the ADA necessarily requires educational institutions to provide learning disabled students with any accommodations. The ADA defines "disability" as an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. Whether one is substantially limited is determined with reference not to one's innate abilities, but to the skills of the average …

Neutral Principles: A Retrospective, Barry Friedman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Once upon a time, Enlightenment ideals prevailed across the land. Neutrality, objectivity, and reason were accepted as the firmaments of Supreme Court decisionmaking. "Americans tend[ed] to believe that 'playing fair' [meant] making everyone play by the same rules, and any deviation from this definition [was] immediately suspect."' But "then, some scholars.., abandoned the fundamental aspiration toward. . . neutrality in government." "Neutrality" came to be "considered a chimera, an illusion used by those in power to justify and perpetuate existing hierarchies." The nation was threatened with a return to pre-Enlightenment days, a "return to a world in which it matters …

Innocence And Affirmative Action, Thomas Ross

Vanderbilt Law Review

When we create arguments, when we act as rhetoricians, we reveal ourselves by the words and ideas we choose to employ. Verbal structures that are used widely and persistently are especially worth examination. Arguments made with repeated, almost formulaic, sets of words suggest a second argument flowing beneath the apparent argument. Beneath the apparently abstract language and the syllogistic form of these arguments, we may discover the deeper currents that explain, at least in part, why we seem so attached to these verbal structures.

Argument about affirmative action in the context of racial discrimination is particularly wrenching and divisive, especially …

The Fair Housing Amendments Act Of 1988: The Second Generation Of Fair Housing, James A. Kushner

Vanderbilt Law Review

A generation has passed since the legislative victories of the 1960s extending civil rights protection: twenty-five years since the passage of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964,1 twenty-four years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and twenty-one years since the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As we enter the second generation of civil rights enforcement under new Presidential leadership it is important to assess the state of civil rights, to examine the experience of first generation enforcement and the promises of the second generation.

The state of civil rights in the area of housing …

The Reagan Administration's Civil Rights Policy: The Challenge For The Future, William B. Reynolds

Vanderbilt Law Review

The almost twenty years that followed Brown showed real progress toward a color-blind society. That progress, however, lost momentum in the 1970s as many civil rights leaders advanced well-intended, but poorly conceived, policies with the all-too-familiar consequence of dividing people along color lines. In that decade, the bright future of race relations began to dim as discriminatory techniques--mislabelled as"benign" or "affirmative"-reemerged to work their destruction on the hopes of a public anxious to find harmonious, goodwilled solutions to the problems of the past.Today, the struggle continues for a national heritage blind to skin color or ethnic background. The challenge for …

Doing Good The Wrong Way: The Case For Delimiting Presidential Power Under Executive Order No. 11,246, Andrie K. Blumstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Note has demonstrated that the concept of affirmative action as embodied in the Executive Order Program induces race-conscious employment programs by federal contractors in contrast to the norm of race-neutral decision making imposed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Note has also argued that a nexus analysis must define the parameters of executive authority to promulgate the Executive Order Program. In other words, there must be a close relationship between the alleged source of executive authority and the President's actual exercise of that authority...

This Note attempts to refine the Presidential power analysis of Youngstown Steel and …

The Use Of Racial Preferences In Employment: The Affirmative Action/Reverse Discrimination Dilemma, Judith M. Janssen

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note examines the constitutional and statutory background of the affirmative action/reverse discrimination issue and analyzes judicial decisions confronting the dilemma." The Note then explores grounds on which the Supreme Court might permit voluntary affirmative action using quotas. Existing EEOC guidelines and Executive' Order 11,246 offer both an objective basis on which to develop a voluntary program and a safeguard against misuse of affirmative action." When the program is established in a collective bargaining agreement, moreover, the national policy of allowing free play for the bargaining process to establish terms and conditions of employment gives an additional reason for allowing …

Current Civil Rights Problems In The Collective Bargaining Process: The Bethlehem & At&T Experiences, William J. Kilberg

Vanderbilt Law Review

This article explores the development, theory, and design of the government's Contract Compliance Program and the other statutory means of pursuing equal employment opportunity. Part I is a brief explanation of the Contract Compliance Program under Executive Order 11,246. Part II presents a discussion of the legal underpinnings of the affirmative action concept. Part III deals with the decision In the Matter of Bethlehem Steel Corporation, a landmark administrative hearing under procedures established by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, and the American Telephone & Telegraph Company Memorandum of Agreement and Consent Decree,' which has been described as "the largest …

Bills And Notes -- 1957 Tennessee Survey, Paul J. Hartman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since usury constitutes a defect in title under section 59 of the Negotiable Instruments Law, which defect apparently will be purged under the Tennessee law if the note gets into the hands of a holder in due course, there arises some questions as to the burden of proof in connection with establishing whether the holder is a holder in due course--Braswell v. Tindall is somewhat unusual in that the maker of the note is seeking by his affirmative action, as plaintiff, to dislodge the defendant-holder from his position as a holder in due course so that the defect in title …