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Two Wrongs Make A Right: Hybrid Claims Of Discrimination, Ming Hsu Chen Jan 2004

Two Wrongs Make A Right: Hybrid Claims Of Discrimination, Ming Hsu Chen

Publications

This Note reinterprets and recontextualizes the pronouncement in Employment Division v. Smith (Smith II) that exemptions from generally applicable laws will not be granted unless claims of free exercise are accompanied by the assertion of another constitutional right. It argues that when Arab American Muslims, and others who are of minority race and religion, bring claims for exemption from generally applicable laws on the basis of free exercise and equal protection principles, they ought to be able to invoke Smith II's hybridity exception, thus meriting heightened judicial scrutiny and increased solicitude from courts.


Bolling Alone, Richard A. Primus Jan 2004

Bolling Alone, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Under the doctrine of reverse incorporation, generally identified with the Supreme Court's decision in Bolling v. Sharpe, equal protection binds the federal government even though the Equal Protection Clause by its terms is addressed only to states. Since Bolling, however, the courts have almost never granted relief to litigants claiming unconstitutional racial discrimination by the federal government. Courts have periodically found unconstitutional federal discrimination on nonracial grounds such as sex and alienage, and reverse incorporation has also limited the scope of affirmative action. But in the presumed core area of preventing federal discrimination against racial minorities, Boiling has virtually no …


Grutter And Gratz: A Critical Analysis, Lackland H. Bloom Jr. Jan 2004

Grutter And Gratz: A Critical Analysis, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article will analyze the Grutter and Gratz opinions, especially Justice O'Connor's important opinion for the majority in Grutter, and will consider the significance of these decisions in terms of university admissions policy, justifications for racial preferences, and equal protection doctrine. The article will conclude that the Court's defense of the use of racial preferences does not square well with the Powell opinion in Bakke on which it relied so heavily. It will suggest that the Court could have offered a more persuasive explanation for the result it reached but probably felt precluded by precedent from doing so.