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Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
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Articles 1 - 30 of 35
Full-Text Articles in Civil Rights and Discrimination
Editor's Note
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
A Miscarriage Of Justice: How Femtech Apps And Fog Data Evade Fourth Amendment Privacy Protections, Rachel Silver
A Miscarriage Of Justice: How Femtech Apps And Fog Data Evade Fourth Amendment Privacy Protections, Rachel Silver
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
After the fall of Roe v. Wade, states across the country have enacted extreme abortion bans. Anti-abortion states, emboldened by their new, unrestricted power to regulate women’s bodies, are only broadening the scope of abortion prosecutions. And modern technology provides law enforcement with unprecedented access to women’s most intimate information, including, for example, their menstrual cycle, weight, body temperature, sexual activity, mood, medications, and pregnancy details. Fourth Amendment law fails to protect this sensitive information stored on femtech apps from government searches. In a largely unregulated private market, femtech apps sell health and location data to third parties like Fog …
Takings In Disguise: The Inequity Of Public Nuisance Receiverships In America’S Rust Belt, Anna Kennedy
Takings In Disguise: The Inequity Of Public Nuisance Receiverships In America’S Rust Belt, Anna Kennedy
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
Since they were created in the 1980s in Cleveland, Ohio, public nuisance receiverships have spread across the American Rust Belt. This Note critically analyzes the legal implications of public nuisance receiverships, which involve the intrusion onto private property for public purposes. Despite claims that these actions align with exceptions to due process or public nuisance principles, a deeper examination reveals their fundamental nature as government takings of private property. This Note dissects the legal framework within the context of the Fifth Amendment, debunking the applicability of the public nuisance exception, establishing that receiverships constitute takings, and highlighting conflicts with Anti-Kelo …
How To Punish Your Least Favorite Online Influencer: Wellness Checks As Swatting And Their Disproportionate Impact On Marginalized Creators, Tara Blackwell
How To Punish Your Least Favorite Online Influencer: Wellness Checks As Swatting And Their Disproportionate Impact On Marginalized Creators, Tara Blackwell
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
Marginalized online creators are vulnerable to attacks using digital means of harassment including traditional swatting as well as the abuse of wellness checks that can act as swatting. Enabled by permissive Supreme Court 4th Amendment jurisprudence, malignant online actors have taken advantage of the ramshackle system of wellness checks that sends armed police officers with little training and even less compassion to the doors of individuals with reported mental health crises. This Note focuses on two polarizing influencers who have been subject to wellness check swatting after being very open about their mental health statuses online. This Note argues that …
The Low-Hanging Fruit: Health, Rights, And The Commission, Bright Nkrumah
The Low-Hanging Fruit: Health, Rights, And The Commission, Bright Nkrumah
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
The year 2022 marked the 35th anniversary of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. As it is a custom in many communities, when one reaches this milestone, it is an opportune time to introspect and reflect on the successes and challenges encountered in one’s journey. It is this template that the paper adopts to measure the prospects and setbacks of the African Commission in the advancement of the right to health. The Article argues that while the body remains the poster child of the continent’s human rights architecture, its inability to clearly articulate how states ought to advance …
Masthead
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
Table Of Contents
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
Exploring The African Regional Human Rights Standards As The Basis For An Enabling Environment For Self-Managed Abortion, Lucia Berro Pizzarossa, Michelle Maziwisa, Ebenezer Durojaye
Exploring The African Regional Human Rights Standards As The Basis For An Enabling Environment For Self-Managed Abortion, Lucia Berro Pizzarossa, Michelle Maziwisa, Ebenezer Durojaye
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
Self-managed abortion holds great promise to save lives and promote reproductive autonomy, particularly in Africa. Indeed, the African region records very high numbers of unsafe abortions, and the burden of abortion-related mortality is the highest globally. Abortion remains generally criminalized in violation of numerous internationally and regionally recognized human rights standards. The advent of abortion medicines and the increased grassroots energy geared towards curbing the harms of unsafe abortion evince medical abortion holds great promise for revolutionizing people’s access to high-quality reproductive care. This study discusses regional human rights frameworks, policy, case law, and a few representative domestic legislative frameworks …
The Right To Hope: A New Perspective Of The Right To Have Expectations, Opportunities And Plans, Juan Carlos Riofrio
The Right To Hope: A New Perspective Of The Right To Have Expectations, Opportunities And Plans, Juan Carlos Riofrio
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
Hope has been considered to be an important and constitutive aspect of the human person, not only by philosophers of all backgrounds, but also by international and national courts of several countries especially in the last decade. As an existential aspect of each person, hope has multiple manifestations in private and public life. Up until now, authors and some cases have been discussing particular manifestations of the right to hope. While in the past these courts were more aware of the hopes raised in judicial litigation and ordinary life, now the inmates’ hope of being released is the major point …
Show Me The Money: How Bankruptcy Courts Could Become The Most Equitable Mass Tort Forum, Olivia Maier
Show Me The Money: How Bankruptcy Courts Could Become The Most Equitable Mass Tort Forum, Olivia Maier
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
The Texas Two-Step has emerged as a dangerous bankruptcy maneuver for companies to defend against mass tort liability. The process allows a company to allocate all of its tort liability to a newly created company which then files for bankruptcy. The Bankruptcy Code provides instantaneous benefits for that new company, which tort victims are left unable to proceed with their claims. This has resulted in an inequitable process, and outcomes, for those victims as seen by the recent Johnson & Johnson Texas Two-Step. While this process is unjust, it has raised an interesting question: could a bankruptcy court become the …
Editor's Note, Peyton Holahan
Editor's Note, Peyton Holahan
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
To commemorate the accomplishment of abolition and to look back at Virginia’s long and complicated history with the death penalty, the Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice’s 2021–2022 Symposium titled Revoking Irrevocable Punishment centered around Virginia’s long, complex, and sorrowful path toward abolition. From February 10 to February 11 of 2021, the Journal organized and moderated seven panels that addressed various components of the death penalty discourse in Virginia, past and present.
Table Of Contents
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
The Gross Injustices Of Capital Punishment: A Torturous Practice And Justice Thurgood Marshall’S Astute Appraisal Of The Death Penalty’S Cruelty, Discriminatory Use, And Unconstitutionality, John D. Bessler
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
Through the centuries, capital punishment and torture have been used by monarchs, authoritarian regimes, and judicial systems around the world. Although torture is now expressly outlawed by international law, capital punishment—questioned by Quakers in the seventeenth century and by the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria and many others in the following century—has been authorized over time by various legislative bodies, including in the United States. It was Beccaria’s book, Dei delitti e delle pene (1764), translated into French and then into English as An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1767), that fueled the still-ongoing international movement to outlaw the death penalty. …
Masthead
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
Religious Ministers And The Scope Of Their Rights To Non-Discrimination In Employment, R. George Wright
Religious Ministers And The Scope Of Their Rights To Non-Discrimination In Employment, R. George Wright
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
The First Amendment is currently thought to bar ministerial employees from any recourse against their religious employer under a wide variety of non-discrimination statutes and other forms of legal protection. The typical critique of this state of affairs seeks to narrow the class of persons who count as ministerial employees. This paper focuses instead on an important, and peculiar, aspect of the ministerial exception doctrine. At present, the law generally prohibits any recovery by ministerial employees for employment discrimination by their religious employer even where the employer’s reasons for the discrimination have nothing to do with any religious doctrine, belief, …
Transforming The Future Of Work By Embracing Corporate Social Justice, Andrea Giampetro-Meyer
Transforming The Future Of Work By Embracing Corporate Social Justice, Andrea Giampetro-Meyer
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
Professionals from Generations Y (millennials) and Z (Gen Z or zoomers) expect their employers to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). They want to work for companies that support individuals of various races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders, and sexual orientations. Professionals from these generations are seeking employers that have created a diverse workforce, clear promotion track, and a commitment to dismantling systemic racism. Companies that want to attract top talent are making DEI a priority. They are also implementing action plans to demonstrate their serious commitment to DEI because millennials and zoomers are quick to recognize and criticize performative approaches. …
Bailing On Cash Bail: A Proposal To Restore Indigent Defendants’ Right To Due Process And Innocence Until Proven Guilty, Cydney Clark
Bailing On Cash Bail: A Proposal To Restore Indigent Defendants’ Right To Due Process And Innocence Until Proven Guilty, Cydney Clark
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
The practice of cash bail in the United States is changing. For the past few decades, the cash bail system is abandoning pretrial release and shifting the burden to the defendant thereby abandoning innocence until proven guilty. Bail hearings are increasingly less individualized and discriminatory because of risk assessment tools and judicial discretion without requiring justification, leading to indigent defendants facing unprecedented detainment solely for not being able to afford bail, and thus, violating due process of law. This Note focuses on two 2021 decisions: the California Supreme Court’s decision in In re Humphrey, ruling to partially maintain cash bail, …
Do Not Touch My Data: Exploring A Disclosure-Based Framework To Address Data Access, Francis Morency
Do Not Touch My Data: Exploring A Disclosure-Based Framework To Address Data Access, Francis Morency
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
Companies have too much control over people’s information. In the data marketplace, companies package and sell individuals’ data, and these individuals have little to no bargaining power over the process. Companies may freely buy and sell people’s data in the private sector for targeted marketing and behavior manipulation. In the justice system, an unchecked data marketplace leaves black and brown communities vulnerable to serious data access issues caused by predictive sentencing, for example. Risk assessment algorithms in predictive sentencing rely on data on individuals and run all relevant data points to provide the likelihood that a defendant will recidivate low …
Changing The Game: The Emergence Of Nil Contracts In Collegiate Athletics And The Continued Efficacy Of Title Ix, Leeden Rukstalis
Changing The Game: The Emergence Of Nil Contracts In Collegiate Athletics And The Continued Efficacy Of Title Ix, Leeden Rukstalis
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
On June 30, 2021, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) suspended a 115-year prohibition on college athletes’ ability to profit from the use of their names, images, and likenesses (“NIL”). Historically, NCAA eligibility was determined by an athlete’s amateur status. Student athletes forewent compensation to preserve a line between professional and college sports. Today, the NCAA’s novel NIL policy recognizes an athlete’s right to publicity and allows them to share in the billions of dollars it generates every year. According to estimates, college athletes earned $917 million in the first year of NIL activity. By 2023, the NIL market is …
The Court And Capital Punishment On Different Paths: Abolition In Waiting, Carol S. Steiker, Jordan M. Steiker
The Court And Capital Punishment On Different Paths: Abolition In Waiting, Carol S. Steiker, Jordan M. Steiker
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
The American death penalty finds itself in an unusual position. On the ground, the practice is weaker than at any other time in our history. Eleven jurisdictions have abandoned the death penalty over the past fifteen years, almost doubling the number of states without the punishment (twenty-three). Executions have declined substantially, totaling twenty-five or fewer a year nationwide for the past six years, compared to an average of seventy-seven a year during the six-year span around the millennium (1997-2002). Most tellingly, death sentences have fallen off a cliff, with fewer the fifty death sentences a year nationwide over the past …
Table Of Contents
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
Being In The Room Where It Happens: Celebrating Virginia’S First Female Law Clerks, Anne Rodgers, Todd C. Peppers
Being In The Room Where It Happens: Celebrating Virginia’S First Female Law Clerks, Anne Rodgers, Todd C. Peppers
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
The first female law clerk was hired in 1944. However, the entry of women into the law clerk profession was met with sexism. The accomplishments of the first few female law clerks also received little attention. This article seeks to rectify this historical injustice by highlighting the accomplishments of Virginia’s first female law clerks: Doris Bray, Jane Caster Sweeney, and Penelope Dalton Coffman. Doris Bray clerked for Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Spencer Bell in 1967. Jane Caster Sweeney clerked for Federal District Court Judge Oren Lewis from 1960 to 1962. Penelope Dalton Coffman clerked for Virginia Supreme …
Severe Mental Illness And The Death Penalty: A Menu Of Legislative Options, Richard J. Bonnie
Severe Mental Illness And The Death Penalty: A Menu Of Legislative Options, Richard J. Bonnie
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
In 2003, the American Bar Association established a Task Force on Mental Disability and the Death Penalty to further specify and implement the Supreme Court’s ruling banning execution of persons with intellectual disability and to consider an analogous ban against imposing the death penalty on defendants with severe mental disorders. The Task Force established formal links with the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the final report was approved by the ABA and the participating organizations in 2005 and 2006. This brief article focuses primarily on diminished responsibility at the time …
Does The Death Penalty Still Matter: Reflections Of A Death Row Lawyer, David I. Bruck
Does The Death Penalty Still Matter: Reflections Of A Death Row Lawyer, David I. Bruck
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
This talk was given by Professor David Bruck for the Frances Lewis Law Center at Washington and Lee University School of Law, April, 2002. It is a follow-up to “Does the Death Penalty Matter?,” given by Professor Bruck as the 1990 Ralph E. Shikes Lecture at Harvard Law School.
The Counterintuitive Court: How The Supreme Court’S Punitive Damages Jurisprudence Endangers Marginalized Communities, Anne Rodgers
The Counterintuitive Court: How The Supreme Court’S Punitive Damages Jurisprudence Endangers Marginalized Communities, Anne Rodgers
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
Punitive damages are awarded in civil suits to deter intentionally reckless and grossly negligent behavior. The goal of punitive damages is to punish the tortfeasor and protect the public from future misconduct. However, the Supreme Court’s recent jurisprudence on punitive damages reflects a shift towards protecting businesses from what the Court perceives as an arbitrary taking under the Due Process Clause. This Note argues that these decisions are dangerous, especially for marginalized communities. This Note begins by defining punitive damages and common criticisms of punitive damages awards. This Note then discusses the role of the Supreme Court in reviewing punitive …
Removing White Hoods From The Blue Line: A Legislative Solution To White Supremacy In Law Enforcement, Hope Elizabeth Barnes
Removing White Hoods From The Blue Line: A Legislative Solution To White Supremacy In Law Enforcement, Hope Elizabeth Barnes
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd took his final breaths. His death at the hands of multiple Minneapolis police officers was recorded by witnesses and viewed by millions. The public response to Floyd’s death was immediate and powerful. Americans were demanding change on a greater scale than ever before. The problem with policing is not Derek Chauvin, or the Minneapolis Police Department, but rather with the very institution. White supremacy is alive and well in American policing. This Note begins by examining the historic connection between white supremacist groups and law enforcement agencies. This Note then evaluates existing standards of …
Is A Duty To Pay Tax Inherent In Affirmations Of Human Rights?, Jonathan M. Barrett
Is A Duty To Pay Tax Inherent In Affirmations Of Human Rights?, Jonathan M. Barrett
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (the Universal Declaration), as the preeminent statement of human rights, informs numerous cognate covenants and declarations of rights, and charters of rights included in national constitutions. Unlike the rights declarations of the Enlightenment, the Universal Declaration affirms broad welfare rights, in addition to civil and political rights. No right or set of rights is superior to another; they are indivisible, interdependent and interrelated.
Declarations of rights may also include duties. The Organization of American States’ American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man 1948 (“the American Declaration”), for example, includes …
Policing The College Campus: History, Race, And Law, Vanessa Miller, Katheryn Russell-Brown
Policing The College Campus: History, Race, And Law, Vanessa Miller, Katheryn Russell-Brown
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
The structure, impact, and historical roots of campus policing on the American college campus receives little academic attention. In fact, campus policing is often overlooked in legal analyses and research studies, including its relationship to race. Campus policing and race deserves a critical assessment from legal scholars because race is fixed to the ways the criminal-legal system presents itself on campus. The racialized implications of policing on campus are rooted in historical social and legal contexts that still exist today. However, the lack of research on campus policing is not surprising. American colleges and universities have successfully marketed themselves as …
Table Of Contents
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
Pandemic Silver Lining: Discovering The Reasonableness Of Remote Learning As An Accommodation Under The Ada, Kaitlyn Barciszewski
Pandemic Silver Lining: Discovering The Reasonableness Of Remote Learning As An Accommodation Under The Ada, Kaitlyn Barciszewski
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
As society returned to “normal” following the worldwide pandemic caused by the outbreak of COVID-19, higher education students around the world could be heard celebrating and warmly welcoming their return to in-person classes. With this return came the face-to-face social interactions most longed for through the worldwide lockdown with friends, classmates, and professors. Some may even feel that in-person learning is more effective than what had become the norm––Zoom university. At this moment, however, these institutions can and should evaluate the potential benefits and continued utility of this alternate way of doing higher education that was forced upon them for …