Law Commons^™

Access To Justice, Rationality, And Personal Jurisdiction, Adam N. Steinman

Vanderbilt Law Review

After more than twenty years of silence, the Supreme Court has addressed personal jurisdiction six times over the last six Terms. This Article examines the Court's recent decisions in terms of their effect on access to justice and the enforcement of substantive law. The Court's new case law has unquestionably made it harder to establish general jurisdiction-that is, the kind of jurisdiction that requires no affiliation at all between the forum state and the litigation. Although this shift has been justifiably criticized, meaningful access and enforcement can be preserved through other aspects of the jurisdictional framework, namely (1) the basic …

Valuing The Risk Of Workplace Sexual Harassment, Joni Hersch

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Using data on sexual harassment charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I calculate the risk of sexual harassment by gender, industry, and age and establish that white females, but not nonwhite females, receive a compensating wage differential for exposure to a higher risk of sexual harassment. I use this risk premium to calculate the value of statistical harassment (VSH) in a manner analogous to the calculation of the value of statistical life (VSL). The VSH is around $7.6 million, about three-quarters of the size of the most-commonly cited levels of the VSL, and far above the maximum damages …

The Political Economy Of Corporate Exit, Susan S. Kuo, Benjamin Means

Vanderbilt Law Review

Critics contend that corporations subvert democracy by using their economic resources to lobby for corporate-friendly policies and to elect accommodating politicians.' Those who take a more sanguine view-notably, a majority of the Supreme Court-reject the claim that corporate dollars corrupt the political process. Yet, there is general agreement that corporate political activity includes financial contributions, lobbying efforts, participation in trade groups, and political advertising, all of which give corporations a "voice" in public decisionmaking.

This Essay contends that the accepted definition of corporate political activity is too narrow and overlooks the importance of "exit." When faced with objectionable laws or …

Bankrupted Slaves, Rafael I. Pardo

Vanderbilt Law Review

Responsible societies reckon with the pernicious and ugly chapters in their histories. Wherever we look, there exist ever-present reminders of how we failed as a society in permitting the enslavement of millions of black men, women, and children during the first century of this nation's history. No corner of society remains unstained. As such, it is incumbent on institutions to confront their involvement in this horrific past to fully comprehend the kaleidoscopic nature of institutional complicity in legitimating and entrenching slavery. Only by doing so can we properly continue the march of progress, finding ways to improve society, not letting …

Cedaw, The Islamic State, And Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Christine Gibbons

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Tales of the Islamic State (ISIL) and the group's brutality shocked the world for several years. Now, however, ISIL has been nearly defeated. As ISIL has lost territorial control, the world has learned more details about its cruel enslavement system, including the severe sexual violence that ISIL inflicted on the Yazidis. Now, many advocates are calling for justice for the Yazidis and other victims of ISIL's sexual violence. This Note uses the case of the Yazidis to examine the strengths and limits of the international framework for addressing conflict-related sexual violence. In particular, this Note examines the history of the …

Debating The Past's Authority In Alabama, Sara Mayeux

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

With some exceptions, the major project of civil rights litigators today is not forward movement but the work of preserving as much as possible the gains of the 1960s against legal and political battering.29 Meanwhile, and ironically, the rise of conservative progress metanarratives reflects the achievement of both liberal and radical scholars of forcing into mainstream discourse greater recognition of the evils of slavery and Jim Crow. Respectable conservatives now join in denouncing the most flagrant forms of racial terror running through the American past (pace certain allies of the Trump Administration). But doing so places them in a bind, …