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Roberts's Revisions: A Narratological Reading Of The Affirmative Action Cases, Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Roberts's Revisions: A Narratological Reading Of The Affirmative Action Cases, Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Faculty Scholarship
In a seminal article published nearly twenty years ago in the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, Professor Peter Brooks posed a critical yet underexplored question: "Does the [flaw [n]eed a [n]arratology?"5 In essence, he asked whether law as a field should have a framework for deconstructing and understanding how and why a legal opinion, including the events that the opinion is centered on, has been crafted and presented in a particular way.6 After highlighting that "how a story is told can make a difference in legal outcomes," Brooks encouraged legal actors to "talk narrative talk" …
Equality Is A Brokered Idea, Robert L. Tsai
Equality Is A Brokered Idea, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
This essay examines the Supreme Court's stunning decision in the census case, Department of Commerce v. New York. I characterize Chief Justice John Roberts' decision to side with the liberals as an example of pursuing the ends of equality by other means – this time, through the rule of reason. Although the appeal was limited in scope, the stakes for political and racial equality were sky high. In blocking the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, 5 members of the Court found the justification the administration gave to be a pretext. In this instance, that lie …
Jackson V. Birmingham Board Of Education: Title Ix's Implied Private Right Of Action For Retaliation, Elizabeth Mccuskey
Jackson V. Birmingham Board Of Education: Title Ix's Implied Private Right Of Action For Retaliation, Elizabeth Mccuskey
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court has penned countless words about the sound of statutory silence.' On March 29, 2005, the Court once again grappled with the meaning of silence in a statute, splitting along familiar 5-4 lines in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education.2 When the dust cleared, a male coach of a high school girls' basketball team, who was fired in retaliation for protecting his players' Title IX3 rights, possessed a private right of action arising from the statute itself.4 Although the Court has retreated from its high-water mark of implying private rights of action,5 in …
The Unhappy History Of Civil Rights Legislation, Fifty Years Later, Jack M. Beermann
The Unhappy History Of Civil Rights Legislation, Fifty Years Later, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
Seldom, if ever, have the power and the purposes of legislation been rendered so impotent.... All that is left today are afew scattered remnants of a once grandiose scheme to nationalize the fundamental rights of the individual.
These words were written fifty years ago by Eugene Gressman, now William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina School of Law, as a description of what the courts, primarily the Supreme Court of the United States, had done with the civil rights legislation passed by Congress in the wake of the Civil War. Professor Gressman's article, The Unhappy History of …
The Supreme Court's Narrow View On Civil Rights, Jack M. Beermann
The Supreme Court's Narrow View On Civil Rights, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
The right to choose abortion, although recently significantly curtailed from its original scope,' is a federally protected liberty interest of women, and is at least protected against the imposition of "undue burdens" by state and local government.2 Some of the most serious threats to women's ability to choose abortion have come not from government regulation, but from private, national, organized efforts to prevent abortions. In addition to seeking change through the political system, some of these organizations, most notably Operation Rescue, have focused on the providers of abortion, and have attempted to prevent abortions by forcibly closing abortion clinics …