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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Brett Kavanaugh Vs. The Exonerated Central Park Five: Exposing The President's "Presumption Of Innocence" Double Standard, Sofia Yakren
Brett Kavanaugh Vs. The Exonerated Central Park Five: Exposing The President's "Presumption Of Innocence" Double Standard, Sofia Yakren
Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development
(Excerpt)
In the service of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the United States Supreme Court, the President of the United States (and Republican Senators) both misappropriated and further eroded the already compromised concepts of due process and presumption of innocence. This Essay uses the prominent “Central Park Five” case in which five teenagers of color were wrongly convicted of a white woman’s widely-publicized beating and rape to expose the President’s disparate use of the presumption along race and status lines. This narrative is consistent with larger systemic inequities that leave poor black and brown criminal defendants less likely to benefit …
"I Still Like Smear": The Senate Judiciary Committee's Obstructing Politics Surrounding The Kavanaugh Hearing And A Solution To The Chaos That Ensued, Frank J. Tantone
"I Still Like Smear": The Senate Judiciary Committee's Obstructing Politics Surrounding The Kavanaugh Hearing And A Solution To The Chaos That Ensued, Frank J. Tantone
Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development
(Excerpt)
The incredible events and raucous behavior by members of the Committee that colored Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation process rose to a level of intensity and virulence never seen before in this specific area of American government and politics. Nevertheless, the most analogous situation that somewhat closely reflects the events that transpired in 2018 occurred seventeen years earlier. President George H.W. Bush, on July 1, 1991, nominated then District of Columbia Circuit Court Judge, Clarence Thomas, to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. Thomas’s confirmation hearing was also opposed from the outset but by civil rights and feminist organizations …
Comments On Steven Smith, Pagans And Christians In The City, Michael P. Moreland
Comments On Steven Smith, Pagans And Christians In The City, Michael P. Moreland
Journal of Catholic Legal Studies
(Excerpt)
One of the most interesting aspects of this generally very interesting book was the discussion of sexual morality in paganism and Christianity. I have thought for a while that much of the contemporary debate about religious freedom is not about religious freedom in a generic sense but instead about religious freedom in a very particular context—sex. But that is a descriptive point—much more challenging is trying to give an account of why sex should have come to be (or as Smith’s argument implies, has long been) the battlefield on which much of the fight over religious freedom takes place. …
A Tale Of Two Cities: Religious Freedom In A Secular Age, Anna Su
A Tale Of Two Cities: Religious Freedom In A Secular Age, Anna Su
Journal of Catholic Legal Studies
(Excerpt)
Understanding the terms under which Christianity and paganism could coexist in antiquity thus gives us a semblance of an answer to the question posed early on in the book. In ancient Rome, Pliny asks why Christians were being subjected to legal sanctions, while in our present time, Douglas Laycock asks why people—referring to same-sex couples suing wedding photographers, florists, and bakers who object on religious grounds to their union—would insist on these services they neither need nor want? The paganism of ancient Rome welcomed a plurality of cults and religions but only up to a certain point. When Christians …
Many Cities, One Nation: A Response To Steven Smith's Pagans And Christians In The City, Bruce P. Frohnen
Many Cities, One Nation: A Response To Steven Smith's Pagans And Christians In The City, Bruce P. Frohnen
Journal of Catholic Legal Studies
(Excerpt)
In his treatment of contemporary legal issues and, more deeply, his analysis of the manner in which changing religious assumptions and goals shape the culture from which law naturally grows, Smith has provided both a strong critique of contemporary “secular” pieties and an explanation for the culture wars so often derided or minimized by those most determined to deconstruct traditional culture. Still, I would argue that Smith’s wide-ranging, radical rethinking of contemporary social disorder does not go far enough. As Smith’s discussion of contemporary judicial treatment of social structure makes clear, today’s legal elites are at heart totalitarian in …