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Full-Text Articles in Civil Rights and Discrimination

No Prisoner Left Behind? Enhancing Public Transparency Of Penal Institutions, Andrea Armstrong Sep 2013

No Prisoner Left Behind? Enhancing Public Transparency Of Penal Institutions, Andrea Armstrong

Andrea Armstrong

Prisoners suffer life-long debilitating effects of their incarceration, making them a subordinated class of people for life. This article examines how prison conditions facilitate subordination and concludes that enhancing transparency is the first step towards equality. Anti-subordination efforts led to enhanced transparency in schools, a similar but not identical institution. This article argues that federal school transparency measures provide a rudimentary and balanced framework for enhancing prison transparency.


Overcoming Obstacles To Religious Exercise In K-12 Education, Lewis M. Wasserman Sep 2013

Overcoming Obstacles To Religious Exercise In K-12 Education, Lewis M. Wasserman

Lewis M. Wasserman

Overcoming Obstacles to Religious Exercise in K-12 Education LEWIS M. WASSERMAN Abstract Judicial decisions rendered during the last half-century have overwhelmingly favored educational agencies over claims by parents for religious accommodations to public education requirements, no matter what constitutional or statutory rights were pressed at the tribunal, or when the conflict arose. These claim failures are especially striking in the wake of the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (“RFRAs”) passed by Congress in 1993 and, to date, by eighteen state legislatures thereafter, since the RFRAs were intended to (1) insulate religious adherents from injuries inflicted by the United States Supreme Court’s …


An Anachronism Too Discordant To Be Suffered: A Comparative Study Of Parliamentary And Presidential Approaches To Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Derek R. Verhagen Aug 2013

An Anachronism Too Discordant To Be Suffered: A Comparative Study Of Parliamentary And Presidential Approaches To Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Derek R. Verhagen

Derek R VerHagen

It is well-documented that the United States remains the only western democracy to retain the death penalty and finds itself ranked among the world's leading human rights violators in executions per year. However, prior to the Gregg v. Georgia decision in 1976, ending America's first and only moratorium on capital punishment, the U.S. was well in line with the rest of the civilized world in its approach to the death penalty. This Note argues that America's return to the death penalty is based primarily on the differences between classic parliamentary approaches to regulation and that of the American presidential system. …


How Quickly We Forget: The Short And Undistinguished Career Of Affirmative Action, Robert Parrish May 2013

How Quickly We Forget: The Short And Undistinguished Career Of Affirmative Action, Robert Parrish

Robert Parrish

Diversity initiatives in higher education, also known as affirmative action are nearing their nadir. For those who have been watching the jurisprudence and the progression of events closely this should come as little surprise. These initiatives have been under attack since their very inception and now sit teetering on the brink of being declared unconstitutional as the United States Supreme Court considers Fisher v. Texas. Beginning with Regents of California v. Bakke in 1978, the Supreme Court has gradually and consistently whittled away these higher education diversity programs, leaving them currently in a vulnerable and legally precarious position. The Court’s …


The Shield Of Rights, The Sword Of Disorder: Robert H. Jackson And Civil Liberties, George B. Crawford Apr 2013

The Shield Of Rights, The Sword Of Disorder: Robert H. Jackson And Civil Liberties, George B. Crawford

George B. Crawford

No abstract provided.


Reimagining Merit As Achievement, Aaron N. Taylor Feb 2013

Reimagining Merit As Achievement, Aaron N. Taylor

AARON N TAYLOR

Higher education plays a central role in the apportionment of opportunities within the American meritocracy. Unfortunately, narrow conceptions of merit limit the extent to which higher education broadens racial and socioeconomic opportunity. This article proposes an admissions framework that transcends these limited notions of merit. This “Achievement Framework” would reward applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds who have achieved beyond what could have reasonably been expected. Neither race nor ethnicity is considered as part of the framework; however, its nuanced and contextual structure would ensure that racial and ethnic diversity is encouraged in ways that traditional class-conscious preferences do not. The overarching …


Suspect Classification And Its Discontents, Susannah W. Pollvogt Jan 2013

Suspect Classification And Its Discontents, Susannah W. Pollvogt

Susannah W Pollvogt

Suspect classification analysis and the associated tiers of scrutiny framework are the primary doctrinal features of contemporary equal protection jurisprudence. How plaintiffs fare under these twin doctrines determines the ultimate fate of their equal protection claims. But neither doctrine finds firm footing in precedent or theory. Rather, a close examination of the United States Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence reveals these doctrines as historically contingent and lacking in any principled justification. But rather than disregard the contributions of these cases altogether, this Article mines that same body of law not for the discrete doctrinal mechanisms developed in each case, but …