Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Sense And Nonsense: Standing In The Racial Districting Cases As A Window On The Supreme Court's View Of The Right To Vote, Judith Reed

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Congressional redistricting draws the lines within which battles for political power will be fought. It is no surprise, therefore, that the redistricting process has long been the subject of social debate and legal dispute. The Supreme Court has not been able to resolve this dispute, in part, because the Justices have conflicting interpretations of the right to vote. While some Justices view voting as an individual right, others maintain that voting is correctly perceived as group right. This lack of consensus regarding the definition of the right to vote has led to a confusing articulation of the harm implicated by …

Critical Of Race Theory: Race, Reason, Merit And Civility, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

A hazard lurks in any but the most careful representation of another's viewpoint. Call it "slippage" or the "essentialist error," the point is that communication rarely does complete justice to its object. The problem is compounded when the communication is mediated. We all know that between a story and its retelling, something will get lost in translation. Consider feminism, gay legal theory, and critical race theory, and their depictions in academic journals and the popular media. Newspapers and news magazines have recently published a spate of academic trash talk accusing critical race theorists of "playing the race card" and indulging …

Bcgseu: Turning A Page In Canadian Human Rights Law, Dianne Pothier

Dianne Pothier Collection

The Supreme Court of Canada's decision in British Columbia Government and Service Employees' Union (BCGSEU) v. British Columbia (Public Service Employee Relations Commission)' starts like a classic Lord Denning judgment. Within the first few lines, without even knowing what the legal issue really is, you know who is going to win because of how that person is presented. Justice McLachlin's judgment, speaking for a unanimous nine-person Court, begins by noting that the grievor, Tawney Meiorin, "did her work well" but nonetheless "lost her job."' It was that dissonance that made the facts of the case compelling for reinstatement. But what …

Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court increasingly has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a mandate for the state to treat citizens as if they were equal-as a limitation on the state's ability to draw distinctions on the basis of characteristics such as race and, to a lesser extent, gender. In the context of race, the Court has struck down not only race-specific policies designed to harm the historically oppressed, but race conscious policies designed to foster racial equality. Although in theory the Court has left open the possibility that benign uses of race may be constitutional under some set of facts, in …

Deadweight Costs And Intrinsic Wrongs Of Nativism: Economics, Freedom, And Legal Suppression Of Spanish, William W. Bratton, Drucilla L. Cornell

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law And Economics Of English Only, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dignity And Discrimination: Toward A Pluralistic Understanding Of Workplace Harassment, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part I of this article briefly examines some of the drawbacks and inconsistencies of Title VII sexual harassment jurisprudence and shows that Title VII does not provide an adequate framework for understanding many common forms of workplace harassment. Title VII is unquestionably a critical means of fighting against workplace discrimination; however, by emphasizing discrimination at the expense of dignity, the Title VII workplace harassment paradigm provides an incomplete understanding of the wrongs of workplace harassment.

Part II of this article asserts the importance of an approach to sexual harassment that distinguishes between the nature of the harm of workplace sexual …

Separating Equals: Educational Research And The Long Term Consequences Of Sex Segregation, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

The article imports into the legal literature for the first time the full range of single sex education research, from this country and others, and examines sociological research that has been omitted from the debate. Rarely do proponents consider what educational and social effects sex-exclusive schooling will have on boys. Rarer still is any consideration of the effect of educational segregation in a society that is already relentlessly segregated by sex. While the educational research regarding the efficacy of single sex schools is mixed at best, the sociological research is absolutely clear that separation on the basis of identity characteristics …