Law Commons^™

Cognitive Dissonance In A Recession: Minnesota Gop Attacks Marriage Equality In Land Of "Gayest City In America", Aaron J. Shuler

Aaron J Shuler

Despite a tradition of progressive thinking on civil rights and recent specific gains for gays in Minnesota, the State's Republican party is trying to place an anti-marriage equality amendment on the 2012 ballot.

Beyond Common Sense: A Social Psychological Study Of Iqbal's Effect On Claims Of Race Discrimination, Victor D. Quintanilla

Victor D. Quintanilla

This article examines the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009) from a social psychological perspective, and empirically studies Iqbal’s effect on claims of race discrimination.

In Twombly and then Iqbal, the Court recast Rule 8 from a notice-based rule into a plausibility standard. Under Iqbal, federal judges must evaluate whether each complaint contains sufficient factual matter “to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” When doing so, Iqbal requires judges to draw on their “judicial experience and common sense.” Courts apply Iqbal at the pleading stage, before evidence has been …

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …

Innovations In Governance: A Functional Typology Of Private Governance Institutions, Tracey M. Roberts

Tracey M Roberts

Communities are increasingly looking to private governance institutions, rather than formal government, to set public policy and to manage the environmental and social impacts of globalization. Private governance institutions, sets of rules and structures for governing without government, remain undertheorized despite an expanding literature. Questions remain about why they have arisen, what functions they serve, and whether they are effective. This article advances that literature in several ways. First, the article outlines the inherent limitations of the conventional taxonomy, which groups these institutions based on the identity of their constituent organizations (business interests, civil society, and government entities and their …

Redefining Human Rights Lawyering Through The Lens Of Critical Theory: Lessons For Pedagogy And Practice, Deborah M. Weissman, Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, Davida Finger, Meetali Jain

Deborah M. Weissman

In recent years, human rights clinics have mushroomed across United States law schools, specializing in work ranging from direct representation of asylum seekers in U.S. courts, to international litigation, to project-based advocacy that includes fact-finding visits and production of reports documenting human rights violations throughout the world. Increasingly, those human rights clinics have begun to address human rights within the United States, and not just in places beyond our borders. At the same time, domestic poverty law clinics are increasingly looking to human rights norms in framing some of their advocacy, which often takes the forms of direct legal services, …

Education As A Counterterrorism Tool And The Curious Case Of The Texas School Book Resolution, Diane Webber

Diane Webber

As a case study, this paper reviews a resolution passed by the Texas State Board of Education on September 24, 2010. The resolution rejects certain Social Studies texts that contain what the Board determined were pro-Islamic/anti-Christian distortions…The resolution is itself doing what it complains about – it is showing “chronic partiality to one of the world’s great religions and animus against another.”…At a time when “reciprocal negative perceptions between the Western and Muslim worlds continue to escalate”, it is essential to acknowledge the important role of education to promote tolerance… The knowledge gained from religious tolerance education can then be …

Legal Pluralism In Post-Colonial Africa: Linking Statutory And Customary Adjudication In Mozambique, David Pimentel

David Pimentel

Legal pluralism is a contemporary reality and a challenge in most post-colonial African states, as they grapple with how to preserve the cultural heritage reflected in their customary law and institutions, while attempting to function as modern constitutional regimes. Few of them have found structural solutions for linkages between and mutual co-existence of multiple legal regimes within the same state. The policy that will drive the establishment of proper linkages must be approached with an eye to what the purpose of preserving a legally pluralistic regime, distinguishing the motivations of many—colonists in the past, and political opportunists today—who have exploited …

Disruption And Impossibility: The Unfortunate Resolution Of The Iroquois Land Claims In Federal Courts, Kathryn Fort

Kathryn Fort

In less than five years, the federal appellate courts changed the law so drastically to all but end more than thirty years of modern litigation, reversing years of relative fairness at the district court level. These actions required a fundamental shift in the law of equity: the creation of a new equitable defense for governments against Indian land claims. The first part of this article will give a brief history of the New York land claims, focusing on the Oneida Indian Nation and the Cayuga Indian Nation of New York. While the tribes have been fighting the status of this …