Digital Commons Network^™

The Heart Of The Game: Putting Race And Educational Equity At The Center Of Title Ix, Deborah L. Brake, Verna L. Williams

Articles

This article examines how race and educational equity issues shape women's sports experiences, building upon the narrative of Darnellia Russell, a high school basketball player profiled in the documentary The Heart of the Game. Darnellia is a star player who, because of an unintended pregnancy, has to fight to play the game she loves.

This girl's story provides a unique and underutilized lens through which to examine gender and athletics, as well as evaluate the legal framework for gender equality in sport. In focusing on this narrative, we seek to give voice to black female athletes and to express their …

Intellectual Property And Americana, Or Why Ip Gets The Blues, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This essay, prepared as part of a Symposium on intellectual property law and business models, suggests the re-examination of the role of intellectual property law in the persistence of cultural forms of all sorts, including (but not limited to) business models. Some argue that the absence of intellectual property law inhibits the emergence of durable or persistent cultural forms; copyright and patent regimes are justified precisely because they supply foundations for durability. The essay tests that proposition via brief reviews of three persistent but very different cultural models, each of which represents a distinct form of American culture: The Rocky …

Perceiving Subtle Sexism: Mapping The Social-Psychological Forces And Legal Narratives That Obscure Gender Bias, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

This essay seeks to explain the Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education case as an interpretation of discrimination that notably and correctly focuses on how institutions cause sex-based harm, rather than on whether officials within chosen institutions act with a discriminatory intent. In the process, I discuss what appears to be the implicit theory of discrimination underlying the Davis decision: that schools cause the discrimination by exacerbating the harm that results from sexual harassment by students. I then explore the significance of the deliberate indifference requirement in this context, concluding that the standard, for all its flaws, is distinct …

Race, Religion And Law: The Tension Between Spirit And Its Institutionalization, George H. Taylor

Articles

My reflections flow from some recent writings by the critical race scholar Derrick Bell. Bell acknowledges that in prior work he has focused on the "the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of racism" but now suggests the possibility of a "deeper foundation" arising from the conjunction that "[m]ost racists are also Christians." This statement is Bell at his best: at once both extremely provocative and extremely unsettling. I want to explore and develop two aspects of Bell's argument.

First, if we want to examine and understand the many dimensions of racism, it is not enough to employ economic, political, or …

Social Software, Groups, And Governance, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Formal groups play an important role in the law. Informal groups largely lie outside it. Should the law be more attentive to informal groups? The paper argues that this and related questions are appearing more frequently as a number of computer technologies, which I collect under the heading social software, increase the salience of groups. In turn, that salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. The paper suggests that there may be important social benefits associated with informal groups, and that the law should move towards a framework for encouraging and recognizing them. …

The Idea Of The Law Review: Scholarship, Prestige, And Open Access, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Essay was written as part of a Symposium on open access publishing for legal scholarship. It makes the claim that open access publishing models will succeed, or not, to the extent that they account for the existing economy of prestige that drives law reviews and legal scholarship. What may seem like a lot of uncharitable commentary is intended instead as an expression of guarded optimism: Imaginative reuse of some existing tools of scholarly publishing (even by some marginalized members of the prestige economy - or perhaps especially by them) may facilitate the emergence of a viable open access norm.

Metaphor, Objects, And Commodities, George H. Taylor, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Article is a contribution to a Symposium that focuses on the ideas of Margaret Jane Radin as a point of departure, and particularly on her analyses of propertization and commodification. While Radin focuses on the harms associated with commodification of the person, relying on Hegel's idea of alienation, we argue that objectification, and in particular objectification of various features of the digital environment, may have important system benefits. We present an extended critique of Radin's analysis, basing the critique in part on Gadamer's argument that meaning and application are interrelated and that meaning changes with application. Central to this …

Rewriting Fair Use And The Future Of Copyright Reform, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Essay describes a social practices approach to the production of creative expression, as a construct to guide reform of copyright law. Specifically, it reimagines copyright's fair use doctrine by basing its statutory text explicitly on social practices. It argues that the social practices approach is consistent with the historical development of the fair use doctrine and with the policy goals of copyright law, and that the approach should be recognized in the text of the statute as well as in judicial applications of fair use.

Minority Rights, Minority Wrongs, Elena Baylis

Articles

Many of the new democracies established in the last twenty years are severely ethnically divided, with numerous minority groups, languages, and religions. As part of the process of democratization, there has also been an explosion of “national human rights institutions,” that is, independent government agencies whose purpose is to promote enforcement of human rights. But despite the significance of minority concerns to the stability and success of these new democracies, and despite the relevance of minority rights to the mandates of national human rights institutions, a surprisingly limited number of national human rights institutions have directed programs and resources to …

Racism As 'The National Crucial Sin': Theology And Derrick Bell, George H. Taylor

Articles

The Article probes a paradox that lies at the heart of the work of critical race scholar Derrick Bell. Bell claims on the one hand that racism is permanent, and yet on the other he argues that the fight against racism is both necessary and meaningful. Although Bell's thesis of racism's permanence has been criticized for rendering action for racial justice unavailing, the Article advances an understanding of Bell that supports and defends the integrity of his paradox. The Article draws upon the work of Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and Niebuhr's paradox that social action is both necessary and meaningful …

The Narratives Of Cyberspace Law (Or, Learning From Casablanca), Michael J. Madison

Articles

Cyberspace scholars have wrestled extensively with the question of the "right" metaphorical approach to the Internet, in order to guide legal and policy decisions. Literary theorists have wrestled with the perception that cyberspace undermines conventional ideas about narrative. This Essay suggests that each group could learn from the other. Cyberspace tells a better story than literary scholars believe, and the lawyers should pay more attention to the narrative attributes of cyberspace. To illustrate the argument, the Essay proposes a specific story framework for cyberspace: the film Casablanca.

Racism's Past And Law's Future, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

Legal scholars, lawmakers and, increasingly, the general public seem to place ever-increasing hope in the potential of law and legal theory, and of enforceable uniform international legal standards. Many appear to believe that identifying and enacting laws and a legal framework that correspond worldwide to human rights will solve the age-old problem of legalized barbarism. The historical propensity of courts, even in democratic states, to legitimate and enable racist policies provides compelling evidence that the current level of faith in law is misplaced.

This Article argues the limitations of law and legal theory, contesting the view that on their own …

Child Placement Decisions: The Relevance Of Facial Resemblance And Biological Relationships, David J. Herring

Articles

This article discusses two studies of evolution and human behavior addressing child-adult relationships and explores implications for policies and practices surrounding placement of children in foster homes. The first study indicates that men favor children whose facial features resemble their own facial features. This study may justify public child welfare decisionmakers in considering facial resemblance as they attempt to place children in safe foster homes.

The second study indicates that parents are likely to invest more in children who are biologically related to them, thus enhancing their long term well-being. Among other implications, this study may justify public child welfare …

Critical Praxis, Spirit Healing And Community Activism: Preserving A Subversive Dialogue On Reparations, Christian Sundquist

Articles

African-American reparations have the potential to deconstruct racial privilege, promote racial reconciliation, and heal the psychic injuries of the African-American community. However, many models of reparations have given up on the promise of reparations in exchange for the slim possibility of short-term progress.

A subversive dialogue on African-American reparations, however, will inevitably critique equal opportunity, individualism, and white innocence and privilege. Embraced by the majority, and internalized by the African-American community, the principles of individualism, equal opportunity, and meritocracy reinforce white innocence and privilege to the extent that future, current and past inequality are cast as the natural and inevitable …

Rights Of Access And The Shape Of The Internet, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Article reviews recent developments in the law of access to information, that is, cases involving click-through agreements, the doctrine of trespass to chattels, the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and civil claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Though the objects of these different doctrines substantially overlap, the different doctrines yield different presumptions regarding the respective rights of information owners and information consumers. The Article reviews those presumptions in light of different metaphorical premises on which courts rely: Internet-as-place, in the trespass, DMCA, and CFAA contexts, and contract-as-assent, in the click-through context. It argues that …

Equal Opportunity, Individual Liberty And Meritocracy In Education: Reinforcing Structures Of Privilege And Inequality, Christian Sundquist

Articles

The paradigm of equal opportunity inevitably seeks to reproduce and maintain structures of class and racial privilege. The deficit story of equal opportunity is as follows: equal opportunity is a truly objective, neutral, and fair method to allocate educational, employment, and political resources to members of society, without regard to race, class, gender or ethnicity. The ideal of equality assumes the possibility of an objective measure of merit under which individuals' free choices and preferences may be evaluated. Accordingly, through the creation of a baseline that presupposes the inherent sameness of all people and disregards systemic discrimination as a fallacy, …

School Liability For Peer Sexual Harassment After Davis: Shifting From Intent To Causation In Discrimination Law, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

This essay seeks to explain the Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education case as an interpretation of discrimination that notably and correctly focuses on how institutions cause sex-based harm, rather than on whether officials within chose institutions act with a discriminatory intent. In the process, I discuss what appears to be the implicit theory of discrimination underlying the Davis decision: that schools cause the discrimination by exacerbating the harm that results from sexual harassment by students. I then explore the significance of the deliberate indifference requirement in this context, concluding that the standard, for all its flaws, is distinct …

What's My Copy Right?, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This piece consists of an early 21st century whimsy, a dialogue that borrows and blends history and humor to illustrate some puzzles of copyright law in the context of digital technology (with references to Folsom v. Marsh and Abbott & Costello).

Complexity And Copyright In Contradiction, Michael J. Madison

Articles

The title of the article is a deliberate play on architect Robert Venturi's classic of post-modern architectural theory, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. The article analyzes metaphorical 'architectures' of copyright and cyberspace using architectural and land use theories developed for the physical world. It applies this analysis to copyright law through the lens of the First Amendment. I argue that the 'simplicity' of digital engineering is undermining desirable 'complexity' in legal and physical structures that regulate expressive works.

The Cruelest Of The Gender Police: Student-To-Student Sexual Harassment And Anti-Gay Peer Harassment Under Title Ix, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

Title IX, like other sex discrimination laws, addresses discrimination that occurs because of an individual’s sex. Courts interpreting Title IX, like those interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, have struggled to demarcate a line separating discrimination because of sex from discrimination because of sexual orientation. This article constructs an argument for viewing anti-gay discrimination, and in particular anti-gay harassment between students, as a form of sex discrimination under Title IX. The article first explores why school inaction in the face of sexual harassment discriminates on the basis of sex. Although sex discrimination law generally has long …

Legal-Ware: Contract And Copyright In The Digital Age, Michael J. Madison

Articles

ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, which enforced a shrinkwrap license for computer software, has encouraged the expansion of the shrinkwrap form beyond computer programs, forward, onto the Internet, and backward, toward such traditional works as books and magazines. Authors and publishers are using that case to advance norms of information use that exclude, practically and conceptually, a robust public domain and a meaningful doctrine of fair use. Contesting such efforts by focusing on the contractual nature of traditional shrinkwrap, by relying on market principles, on adhesion theory, on commercial law concepts of usage and custom, or on federal preemption doctrine, feeds …

Of Diagnoses And Discrimination: Discriminatory Nontreatment Of Infants With Hiv Infection, Mary Crossley

Articles

Evidence of physician attitudes favoring the withholding of needed medical treatment from infants infected with HIV compels a reassessment of the applicability and adequacy of existing law in dealing with selective nontreatment. Although we can hope to have learned some lessons from the Baby Doe controversy of the mid-1980s, whether the legislation emerging from that controversy, the Child Abuse Amendments of 1984, has ever adequately dealt with the problem of nontreatment remains far from clear. Today, the medical and social characteristics of most infants infected with HIV introduce new variables into our assessment of that legislation. At stake are the …