Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Introduction: Access To Healthcare Symposium, Yvonne F. Lindgren

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The four Articles in this Access to Healthcare symposium edition address the different ways that the U.S. healthcare delivery system is failing marginalized communities, including individuals who are disabled, who are birthing, who are women of color or represent another marginalized group, or who live in poverty. The result is a rich conversation that uncovers the complex systems that contribute to unequal access to health care and unjust disparities in health outcomes in the United States.

Attorney As Accompagnateur: Resilient Lawyering When Victory Is Uncertain Or Nearly Impossible, Margaret Reuter

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Social justice lawyers come to the profession intending to make a difference through the instruments of law. And gloriously, they often make a difference in people’s lives for the better. They make our world a more just, compassionate, and tolerant place. But there is no denying that, in poverty law practice, legal success can be elusive, ephemeral, or perhaps a mirage. How does that lawyer feel when the legal remedies at her disposal, even if “successful,” fail to mitigate the injustices suffered by her clients? Are there definitions of professional satisfaction and success that are enduring, even if legal success …

A Culture Of Silence: Exploring The Impact Of The Historically Contentious Relationship Between African-Americans And The Police, Mikah K. Thompson

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The relationship between African-Americans and the police has traditionally been focused on authority, control, and the enforcement of laws we now acknowledge were racially discriminatory. This historical relationship, when combined with a modern-day narrative that the police disproportionately stop, arrest, and utilize deadly force against African-Americans, has resulted in pervasive, inter-generational fear and distrust of the police. Most African-Americans view police officers not as the heroic protectors they can call upon when in need of help or the hard-hitting investigators they would trust to look into a family member’s murder. Instead, many African-Americans believe police officers have bought into the …

Changing Workforce Demographics And The Future Of The Protected Class Approach, Nancy Levit

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The composition and identity characteristics of the American workforce are changing. The population in this country is rising, aging, and becoming much more racially and ethnically diverse. Appearance norms are shifting too. These changes have enormous implications for constitutional and employment discrimination law. In both equal protection and employment discrimination cases, recovery usually depends on membership in a constitutionally or statutorily protected category. Yet the statutory approach to anti-discrimination law has stagnated. Part of the difficulty of the protected class approach is that it is based on something of a paradox — the paradox of exceptionalism. Class-based protection requires individuals …

The Logic Of Legal Remedies And The Relative Weight Of Norms: Assessing The Public Interest In The Tort Reform Debate, Irma S. Russell

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This article explores the background principles of consistency and proportionality in legal rules and remedies. It identifies the relative strength of the interests of individuals and the public as the key to justifying the remedies available in different areas of law. Understanding the normative guidance of particular legal rules reveals the strength of society's judgment of the interests at stake in different remedies. For example, the principle of consistency generally means that a legal doctrine applying an objective measure of one's interest must apply a like-kind measure to all interests considered, absent some explicit and justifiable basis for different formulations. …

Introduction: Theorizing The Connections Among Systems Of Subordination, Nancy Levit

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Theorizing the Connections Among Systems of Subordination introduces a symposium that addresses issues on the leading edge of identity theory, race theory, and critical social theory. It explains the concepts of anti-essentialism, intersectionality, multiple consciousness, multi-dimensionality, and post-intersectionality. It investigates the ways specific types of oppression - such as racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia - support and feed off of one another. It explores the dynamics of subordination that make different forms of subordination connected to each other - the mechanisms by which subordinating systems buttress each other. Where one sees sexism, one frequently can find racism; where classism exists, …

Keeping Feminism In Its Place: Sex Segregation And The Domestication Of Female Academics, Nancy Levit

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The thesis of Keeping Feminism in Its Place is that women are being "domesticated" in the legal academy. This occurs in two ways, one theoretical and one very practical: denigration of feminism on the theoretical level and sex segregation of men and women on the experiential level intertwine to disadvantage women in academia in complex and subtle ways.

The article examines occupational sex segregation and role differentiation between male and female law professors, demonstrating statistically that in legal academia, women are congregated in lower-ranking, lower-paying, lower-prestige positions. It also traces how segregation by sex persists in substantive course teaching assignments. …

A Different Kind Of Sameness: Beyond Formal Equality And Antisubordination Strategies In Gay Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

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Gay legal theory is at a crossroads reminiscent of the sameness/difference debate in feminist circles and the integrationist debate in critical race theory. Formal equality theorists take the heterosexual model as the norm and then seek to show that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals - except for their choice of partners - are just like heterosexuals. Antisubordination theorists attack the heterosexual model itself and seek to show that a society that insists on such a model is unjust. Neither of these strategies is wholly satisfactory. The formal equality model will fail to bring about fundamental reforms as long as sexual …

Juror Empathy And Race, Douglas O. Linder

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No abstract provided.

Retreat From The Melting Pot: Cultural Pluralism And Public Policy, Douglas O. Linder

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No abstract provided.

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

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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 …

Bail In Missouri Revisited, Mark Berger

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During the early part of the 1960's, interest in the civil rights movement generated concern over the inequities of bail administration. In the latter part of the decade the same problems were revealed in major studies of the nation's criminal justice system. Contributions to the legal literature in this period, encompassing statistical and evaluative studies as well as academic analysis, helped to focus further attention on bail. Moreover, a major effort was undertaken by the United States Department of Justice to promote the sharing of bail program information and ideas. There are signs, however, that some of the earlier interest …

Constitutional Approaches To Metropolitan Planning, John W. Ragsdale Jr

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No abstract provided.