Sexuality and the Law Commons^™

Constitutional Rights And Judicial Independence: Lessons From Iowa, Ian C. Bartrum

Scholarly Works

Iowa held its 2010 judicial retention elections in the shadow of Varnum v. Brien, the 2009 Supreme Court opinion recognizing same sex marriage. As the result of highly politicized campaign, three talented jurists lost their seats on the Court.

This commentary examines that election and offers a structural solution that might better protect constitutional rights against majoritarian intimidation.

Gay Vet’S Separation Pay Claim Alive, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Perry V. Schwarzenegger And The Future Of Same-Sex Marriage Law, Clifford Rosky

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker held that Proposition 8 — an amendment to the California Constitution that prohibits same-sex couples from marrying — violates the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. To date, legal experts have claimed that although Judge Walker’s factual findings may be novel and significant, his legal analysis is familiar and not likely to have a significant impact, in this case or others. This Article argues that the common wisdom about Judge Walker’s ruling is misguided, because it overlooks novel aspects of Judge Walker’s legal analysis that have the potential …

Transgender Marriage: Which Came First, The Marriage Or The Transition?, Meghan Chrisner

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Christian Legal Society V. Martinez: Legal Issues, Arguments And Analysis, Alicia M. Lendon

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Employment, Sexual Orientation And Religious Beliefs: Do Religious Educational Institutions Have A Protected Right To Discriminate In The Selection And Discharge Of Employees?, Ralph D. Mawdsley

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The life blood of religious educational institutions is their doctrinal statements and codes of conduct that set standards for employee and student life. The purpose of this paper is to examine the freedom of religious educational institutions to make employment decisions related to three homosexuality related areas: sexual orientation, same-sex sexual activity outside marriage, and same-sex marriage. At the core of the discussion is the basic question whether religious educational institutions have a protected right to enforce doctrinal statements or codes of conduct addressing one or more of these areas.

This paper will examine legal issues related to the ability …

Dignifying Rights: A Comment On Jeremy Waldron’S Dignity, Rights, And Responsibilities, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

In Dignity, Rights, and Responsibilities1 Jeremy Waldron offers a characteristically thoughtful and elegant account of rights, or as he calls it, responsibility-rights. As Waldron rightfully acknowledges, rights understood as a form of responsibility are not meant to capture every species of rights, but to provide us with a new analytic resource for better understanding a particular subset of rights that curiously entail a form of responsibility on the part of the rights holder. The link between rights and responsibility, Waldron argues, is built upon a strong foundational commitment to human dignity. The most compelling contribution of Waldron's paper is his …

What Happened In Iowa?, David Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Reply to Nicole Mansker & Neal Devins, Do Judicial Elections Facilitate Popular Constitutionalism; Can They?, 111 Colum. L. Rev. Sidebar 27 (2011).

November 2, 2010 is the latest milestone in the evolution of state judicial elections from sleepy, sterile affairs into meaningful political contests. Following an aggressive ouster campaign, voters in Iowa removed three supreme court justices, including the chief justice, who had joined an opinion finding a right to same-sex marriage under the state constitution. Supporters of the campaign rallied around the mantra, “It’s we the people, not we the courts.” Voter turnout surged to unprecedented levels; the national …

Peeking Out From Behind The Curtain, Ian Reese

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Absconded by airport security to middle-of-nowhere Russia, Nikolai Alexeyev sat for several days in early September 2010 unaware of his infractions or of his fate. Like a page from a Cold-War spy novel, the point of his abduction was to terrorize; Alexeyev’s abductors psychologically tortured and berated him with homophobic remarks. Nikolai Alexeyev is the leading gay rights activist in Russia and has been a twisting thorn in the side of local and national government for several years. Upon his release, he resolved to agitate further by leading a public demonstration to boycott the Swiss International Air Lines for its …

Democracy, Gender Equality, And Customary Law: Constitutionalizing Internal Cultural Disruption, Susan H. Williams

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Customary law often includes gender discriminatory rules that violate women's rights under constitutional equality guarantees. Dialogic democracy theory offers valuable tools that can help a legal system both to protect customary law and to protect the equality of its women citizens. By focusing on the need for challenge and on the dialogue within the cultural community, the legal system can create incentives and conditions to support the capacity of women to shape the customary law of their own communities. This approach is necessary because legal rights for women, when imposed by the larger society, often result in backlash within minority …

Erotic Entitlements Part I: A Reply To Sex Therapy In The Age Of Viagra: “Money Can’T Buy Melove”, Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

This is the first of three inquiries into what might be thought of as erotic entitlement. It explores the role of the erotic in regulatory and distributive regimes. Conceived as a reply to Susan Stiritz and Susan Appleton‘s provocative and rich essay Sex Therapy in the Age of Viagra, it starts by summarizing the innovations of their argument. It next uses their paper to pose some questions. First, in this time of contentious feminist, constitutional, and human rights sexual discourse, how is the erotic defined? How is the erotic related to and distinct from desire, the sexual, and even the …

Common Law Same-Sex Marriage, Peter Nicolas

Articles

In this Essay, I demonstrate that, with the extension of the right to marry to same-sex couples in Iowa, the District of Columbia, and New Hampshire (all states that recognize common law marriage), there now exists the possibility that—for the first time in the United States—a same-sex couple may enter into a legally recognized common law marriage.

In the Essay, I first show, as a doctrinal matter, that same-sex couples have the right to enter into common law marriages in these three jurisdictions, and I explain and compare the criteria for entering into common law marriages in each of them. …

Peaceful Penetration: Proxy Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage, And Recognition, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

National Report: Belgium, Frederik Swennen, Yves-Henri Leleu

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Homosexual Single Individuals’ Right To Adopt Before The European Court Of Human Rights And In The French Legal Context, Elena Falletti

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Public Sex, Same-Sex Marriage, And The Afterlife Of Homophobia, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

The summer of 2011 marked an important turning-point in the geography and politics of sex: public sex, previously a domain dominated by the specter of a hypersexualized gay man, became the province of the irresponsible, foolish, and self-destructive heterosexual man, such as Anthony Weiner. Meanwhile, homosexuals were busy domesticating their sexuality in the private domain of the family. Just as hetero-sex shamefully seeped out into the open, homo-sex disappeared from view into the dignified pickets of private kinship. In this essay I examine the panic that unfolded in connection with Representative Weiner’s tweets as a kind of afterlife of homophobia; …

Interview With Professor Martha Albertson Fineman, Linnéa Wegerstad, Niklas Selberg

Linnéa Wegerstad

No abstract provided.

How Equality Constitutes Liberty: The Alignment Of Cls V. Martinez, Julie Nice

Julie A. Nice

Across the constitutional doctrines protecting individual liberty from governmental interference, judicial inquiry often focuses on the unequal infringement of liberty. Many of the most important individual rights have emerged from the synergy between equality and liberty. But the Court has not yet provided any framework for understanding the various ways that liberty and equality interrelate. Neither has any consensus developed around any scholarly attempt to understand the relationship between liberty and equality. Without any grand theory, the search for understanding this important relationship is thus left to induction, as scholars examine one case at a time to glean both specific …

Sex And Hiv Disclosure, Aziza Ahmed, Beri Hull

Aziza Ahmed

No abstract provided.

The Value Of Critique And Distributive Analysis To Addressing The Needs Of Sex Workers In The Context Of Hiv: A Response To Libby Adler’S “Gay Rights And Lefts”, Aziza Ahmed

Aziza Ahmed

No abstract provided.