Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

"Prescriptive Equality": Two Steps Forward, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In this Response to Professor Peters, Professor Greenawalt argues that prescriptive equality does have meaningful normative force. Prescriptive equality plays a reinforcing role when it agrees with nonegalitarian justice and is not incoherent when it pulls against nonegalitarian justice. Specifically, when one individual has been treated better than is required by nonegalitarian justice, a similarly situated and significantly related individual who is aware of that treatment may merit equivalent treatment because of widespread and deep-seated feelings about equality.

From Black And White To High Definition Equal Protection, Seth F. Kreimer

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Immigration Policy, Liberal Principles, And The Republican Tradition, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Principled Silence, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reflections On From Slaves To Citizens Bondage, Freedom And The Constitution: The New Slavery Scholarship And Its Impact On Law And Legal Historiography, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of Professor Donald Nieman's paper, "From Slaves to Citizens: African-Americans, Rights Consciousness, and Reconstruction," is that the nation experienced a revolution in the United States Constitution and in the consciousness of African Americans. According to Professor Nieman, the Reconstruction Amendments represented "a dramatic departure from antebellum constitutional principles,"' because the Thirteenth Amendment reversed the pre-Civil War constitutional guarantee of slavery and "abolish[ed] slavery by federal authority." The Fourteenth Amendment rejected the Supreme Court's "racially-based definition of citizenship [in Dred Scott v. Sandford4], clearly establishing a color-blind citizenship” and the Fifteenth Amendment "wrote the principle of equality into the …

The Proposed Equal Protection Fix For Abortion Law: Reflections On Citizenship, Gender, And The Constitution, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fundamental Rights In The "Gray" Area: The Right Of Privacy Under The Minnesota Constitution, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the constitutional aspects of Minnesota privacy law. Part II briefly explains federal privacy law to provide a baseline for consideration of privacy law in Minnesota. Part III examines the right of privacy as it has evolved in the Minnesota common law. Part IV evaluates the Minnesota Supreme Court's application of federal privacy standards and then examines the court's decisions that outline the right of privacy under the Minnesota Constitution. Part V concludes by raising questions concerning the potential application of the court's concept of privacy under the Minnesota Constitution as applied to two areas: same-sex marriages and …

"A Nation Of Thieves": Securing Black People's Right To Shop And To Sell In White America, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"An Honest Living": Street Vendors, Municipal Regulation, And The Black Public Sphere, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hate Crimes: Crimes Of Motive, Character, Or Group Terror?, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

hate crimes, criminal liability

The Law Of Choice And Choice Of Law: Abortion, The Right To Travel, And Extraterritorial Regulation In American Federalism, Seth F. Kreimer

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing Liberty, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is commonly and rightly understood in this country that our constitutional system ensures, or seeks to ensure, that individuals are accorded the greatest degree of personal, political, social, and economic liberty possible, consistent with a like amount of liberty given to others, the duty and right of the community to establish the conditions for a moral and secure collective life, and the responsibility of the state to provide for the common defense of the community against outside aggression. Our distinctive cultural and constitutional commitment to individual liberty places very real restraints on what our elected representatives can do, even …

The Ideal Of Liberty: A Comment On Michael H. V. Gerald D., Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What is the meaning and content of the "liberty" protected by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment? In Michael H. v. Gerald D. Justices Brennan and Scalia spelled out what at first blush appear to be sharply contrasting understandings of the meaning of liberty and of the substantive limits liberty imposes on state action. Justice Scalia argued that the "liberty" protected by a substantive interpretation of due process is only the liberty to engage in activities historically protected against state intervention by firmly entrenched societal traditions. I will sometimes call this the "traditionalist" interpretation of liberty. Justice Brennan, …

Authoritarianism And The Rule Of Law, Lynne Henderson

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Toward An Abolitionist Interpretation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is by now an open secret that current interpretations of the meaning of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and of its relevance and mandate for contemporary problems of racial, gender, and economic justice, are deeply and, in a sense, hopelessly conflicted. The conflict, simply stated, is this: to the current Supreme Court, and to a sizeable and influential number of constitutional theorists, the "equal protection of the laws" guaranteed by the Constitution is essentially a guarantee that the categories delineated by legal rules will be "rational" and will be rationally related to legitimate state ends. To …

Review Of Affirmative Action After Metro Broadcasting V. Fcc: The Solution Almost Nobody Wanted, Douglas O. Linder

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Natural Law Of Rhythm And Equality, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

The quest for natural law can easily seem futile to the secularist, and the legal terrain beyond human institutions has often been abandoned to the theologians and the supernaturalists. Most contemporary legal philosophers tend to focus on law as process, on legal positivism and legal realism, on the relativity of values or on the legal masking of class, race or gender interests. This piece will not do direct battle with these philosophies, all of which may have internal integrity and legitimacy within their chosen spheres. Instead, this piece will reexplore the possibility and propriety of linking the reality of law …

Surrogacy, Slavery, And The Ownership Of Life, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mastery, Slavery, And Emancipation, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Hegel's dialectic of master and slave in the Phenomenology of Mind portrays a master unable to win genuine recognition from a slave because unwilling to confer it. The dialectic implies that freedom has to be conceived as association based on mutual respect, rather than independence. This article offers a communitarian interpretation of emancipation inspired by Hegel's dialectic of master and slave. It proceeds from an account of slave society which, like Hegel's dialectic, equates slavery with the denial of social recognition. This account argues that the experience of slave society led both the masters and the slaves to conceive of …

The Movement To Assimilate The American Indians: Jurisprudential Study, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

In 1934, the United States made a revolutionary shift in Indian policy. Laws were passed that ended most assimilation measures and began, instead, a preservation and promotion of tribalism. Why did this happen? What changes in American thought, politics and economy could precipitate such a reversal? Felix Cohen, a former special assistant to the Attorney General, and known as the "Blackstone of American Indian Law," noted: "Like the miner's canary, the Indian marks the shifts from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the …

Government "Largesse" And Constitutional Rights: Some Paths Through And Around The Swamp, Seth F. Kreimer

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Privatization Of Prisons: An Analysis Of The State Action Requirement Of The Fourteenth Amendment And 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Introduction: The privatization of prisons raises important issues with respect to liability in suits brought by inmates. If a private company operates the prison, the state likely will be directly involved in some aspects of prison life, such as using force when necessary or making quasi-judicial decisions, but it may not be directly involved in the day-to-day operation of the institution. This dichotomy of involvement may lead to con- fusion over responsibility and accountability when a violation of rights is alleged to have occurred. When a private party, as opposed to a government employee, is charged with abridging rights guaranteed …

Securing Justice: A Response To William Bradford Reynolds, Michael A. Middleton

Faculty Publications

I doubt that William Bradford Reynolds would disagree that the self evident truths the Framers of the Declaration of Independence spoke about are as applicable today in the 1980's as they were over 200 years ago. I also doubt that Mr. Reynolds would disagree that despite the fact that black people were not considered human beings when the Constitution was framed, the fourteenth amendment to that great document was intended to bring them within the ambit of its protections. On these two basic propositions, I suspect, Mr. Reynolds and I would agree. Beyond that however, Mr. Reynolds advances a fundamentally …

Do The United States Sentencing Guidelines Deprive Defendants Of Due Process?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

It is difficult to determine whether due process requires individualized sentencing because sentencing goals and practices have varied greatly during the course of this nation's history. A court applying Judge Bork's original intent doctrine of constitutional interpretation would probably reach a result different from that reached by a court employing a more liberal view of due process protections.1o It is likely that liberals and conservatives on the current Supreme Court would disagree on whether the Guidelines violate due process.

This article argues that the Guidelines can be saved and can satisfy due process requirements if the Supreme Court interprets the …

The Judge, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.

On Complaining About The Burger Court, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Section 1983: Doctrinal Foundations And An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Desegregation Dilemma: A Vote For Voluntarism, Frank Goodman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reading The Mind Of The School Board: Segregative Intent And The De Facto/De Jure Distinction, Seth F. Kreimer

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

De Facto School Segregation: A Constitutional And Empirical Analysis, Frank I. Goodman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.