Law Commons^™

Radtalks: What Could Be Possible If The Law Really Stood For Black Lives?, Purvi Shah, Colette Pichon Battle, Vincent Warren, Alicia Garza, Elle Hearns, Carl Williams, Norris Henderson, Umi Selah, Maurice Mitchell

City University of New York Law Review

A Series of Talks Delivered at the Law for Black Lives Convening, Organized by the Bertha Justice Institute at the Center for Constitutional Rights

Defining The Indian Civil Rights Act's "Sufficiently Trained" Tribal Court Judge, Jill Elizabeth Tompkins

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Orange Is The New Equal Protection Violation: How Evidence-Based Sentencing Harms Male Offenders, Shaina D. Massie

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action And The Crisis In Higher Education, Scott D. Gerber

ConLawNOW

At all but the nation’s top colleges and universities, enrollments are down and budgets are strapped. Although many offer ideas why, the heavy-headed use of racial and ethnic preferences in student admissions, financial aid, and faculty hiring is also to blame, but also nobody ever mentions that. The term “affirmative action” originated with an executive order signed by President John F. Kennedy on March 6, 1961. Fast forward five decades and, to borrow a line from Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, “We’re not in Kansas any more.” Bluntly stated, there is systemic discrimination in all three categories of affirmative …

Constitutional Law-Aliens-Equal Protection Clause Does Not Require Extension Of Special Immigrant Status To Aliens From Non-Contiguous Countries, Laurie C. Gregory

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The South African Criminal Code In Implementing Apartheid, Garry Seltzer

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Confusing Clarity: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act After Young V. Ups, Inc., Jessica M. Bretl

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

On March 25, 2015, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Young v. UPS, Inc.—the most recent case in the Court’s pregnancy discrimination jurisprudence. Young focused on an interpretation of one clause of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and how that interpretation would shape claims of employment discrimination by pregnant employees seeking work accommodations. This Comment argues that the majority opinion in Young did not clarify, but only muddied the waters: the Young framework presents challenges for the lower courts tasked with applying the framework and creates uncertainty for future pregnancy discrimination litigation.

Part I of this Comment provides …

My Coworker, My Enemy: Solidarity, Workplace Control, And The Class Politics Of Title Vii, Ahmed A. White

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecture - "A Love Supreme", Gregory S. Parks

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Storytelling: The Murder Of Voter Id, Tracy Mccants Lewis

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Equal Access In Cyberspace: On Bridging The Digital Divide In Public Accommodations Coverage Through Amendment To The Americans With Disabilities Act, Laura Wolk

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note will proceed in three Parts. Part I will trace the development of the case law on this issue, which has culminated in a circuit split. It will also discuss the influence of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which has not exercised its regulatory authority on the subject but which has initiated enforcement actions consistent with an interpretation that includes freestanding websites. Part II will argue, based on the text, congressional silence, and the statute’s dual principal purposes, that private commercial websites do not fall within the purview of Title III. Part III will propose that disability rights advocates …

You Have The Right To Be Confused! Understanding Miranda After 50 Years, Bryan Taylor

Pace Law Review

Part I of this article briefly explores the background and historical context that ultimately led to the Miranda decision. As the late Dr. Carl Sagan once said, “you have to know the past to understand the present.” Understanding the circumstances and cases leading up to Miranda helps in the overall application of Miranda to cases of today. Part II addresses whether a statement should be allowed into evidence and provides a practical working approach to conduct a Miranda analysis. This innovative approach provides a step-by-step process in determining the admissibility of statements pursuant to Miranda and its progeny. This process …

Unequal Access To Justice: Solla V. Berlin And The Unprincipled Evisceration Of New York’S Eaja, Armen H. Merjian

Pace Law Review

Solla is noteworthy not merely in light of the baleful effects of its ruling, but because of its reasoning: it is categorically wrong. The decision wholly elides a cornerstone and settled principle of New York welfare law, namely, that in the administration of public assistance, the municipalities act as the agents of the State, while blatantly violating the most fundamental of agency principles, namely, that a principal is vicariously liable for the actions of its agent acting within the scope of its authority. Indeed, this principal/agent relationship is established both by statute and by decades of uniform state and federal …

From Nipples To Powder, Marian Kousaie

Akron Law Review

Working moms are a force to be reckoned with. They often balance demanding jobs with equally demanding familial obligations. They pack lunches, schedule play dates, and head the soccer team carpool while juggling client needs and prepping for board meetings. But sometimes, when a new mother is ready to jump back into the workforce, she is met with a difficult decision—whether or not to continue breastfeeding her baby. Even though she is a force to be reckoned with, does her workplace provide the support that she needs to continue to provide breast milk to her baby? Questions present themselves about …

Constitutional Rights In Post-9/11 America, Meredith Aby

Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal

On September 21, 2011, Meredith Aby accepted an invitation to speak on the subject of freedom of speech and association in ten years after 9/11. Her speech, which was sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University, the Kessel Peace Institute, and the Mankato Area Activist Collective, is more than a powerful defense of free speech the right to dissent. It is the personal account of an ordinary person of extraordinary conviction—an activist, a mother, a partner, a teacher, and a debate coach—for whom standing up for right to oppose one’s government is more than an abstract …

Sexual Orientation Discrimination Under Title Vii After Baldwin V. Foxx, Ryan H. Nelson

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Baldwin v. Foxx opined—for the first time—that employment discrimination based on sexual orientation violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This Article tackles the two administrative law questions that Baldwin poses: what level of deference should a court afford Baldwin, and should such deference force that court to overturn precedent holding that sexual orientation discrimination lies beyond the purview of Title VII?

First, after the Supreme Court’s opinion in Barnhart, lower courts have split on whether Chevron Step Zero should be governed by the rule-of-law test announced in Christensen …

Naiming The States Where Loving Will Be Recognized: On Tea Leaves, Horizontal Federalism, And Same-Sex Marriage, Mark Strasser

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Allyship To The Intersex Community On Cosmetic, Non-Consensual Genital "Normalizing" Surgery, Robert Hupf

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Married On Sunday, Fired On Monday: Approaches To Federal Lgbt Civil Rights Protections, Lisa Bornstein, Megan Bench

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Toward A Socially Responsible Application Of The Criminal Law To The Problem Of Street Harassment, Maeve Olney

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Culture Shifting At Warp Speed: How The Law, Public Engagement, And Will & Grace Led To Social Change For Lgbt People, Stacey L. Sobel

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article concludes that in order for culture shifting to occur, there has to be active engagement in advocacy on multiple fronts. The pace of cultural change would have been significantly slower if advocates had not pursued litigation, legislation, and public engagement strategies. Rule shifting and culture shifting would also have occurred more slowly but for the vigorous efforts of LGBT equality opponents. The competing advocacy efforts on both sides of LGBT issues have resulted in lawsuits and laws limiting the rights of the LGBT community in some instances and granting rights in others. These advocacy efforts created a …

Evading Miller, Robert S. Chang, David A. Perez, Luke M. Rona, Christopher M. Schafbuch

Seattle University Law Review

Miller v. Alabama appeared to strengthen constitutional protections for juvenile sentencing that the United States Supreme Court recognized in Roper v. Simmons and Graham v. Florida. In Roper, the Court held that executing a person for a crime committed as a juvenile is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In Graham, the Court held that sentencing a person to life without parole for a nonhomicide offense committed as a juvenile is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In Miller, the Court held that a mandatory sentence of life without parole for a homicide offense committed by a juvenile is also unconstitutional under …

Race And Crime Sixty Years After Brown V. Board Of Education, Donald A. Dripps

San Diego Law Review

Whether the Court, let alone the electorate, has the political will to start down this path is another question. But I remind myself that Dr. King did not despair in his Birmingham jail cell, that Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not despair when asked by the Dean of the Harvard Law School why she was taking a place from a man, and that Evan Wolfson did not despair when the high Court declared that any claim of a constitutional right to private sex between consenting adults was “at best, facetious.”

Ever since abolitionism, the heroes of every American civil rights movement …

Juridical Subordination, Roy L. Brooks, Kelly C. Smith

San Diego Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to play out the various conceptualizations of the black equality interest in post-civil rights America. How is the claim of juridical subordination manifested in current Supreme Court cases, and what might civil rights law look like if the Court were to avoid juridical subordination? Our ambition is not to analyze every landmark Supreme Court civil rights case—page limitations prevent us from doing that—but to provide a framework for analysis, setting the table for the juridical subordination inquiry. Furthermore, we do not here attempt to reconcile the disparate ways in which the black equality norm …

Growing Charter School Segregation And The Need For Integration In Light Of Obama’S Race To The Top Program, Brooke Finley

San Diego Law Review

This Article contends that increasing the number of charter schools across the United States per the Obama administration’s RTT initiative is not the answer to closing the racial and economic achievement gap, at least not without significantly more accountability and oversight. Part II describes the RTT initiative and its promotion of more charter schools. This Article suggests that advocating for charter schools may be problematic without proper supervision put in place by the government. Charter schools are privately managed schools that receive public funding, yet they are exempt from some rules that all other taxpayer-funded schools must abide by that …

Introduction, Stephen C. Ferruolo

San Diego Law Review

When Lynne Lasry, President of the Law Alumni Board, suggested we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the University of San Diego School of Law with a public program on Brown v. Board of Education, which was decided on May 17, 1954, just a month after the law school welcomed its first class in April 1954, I enthusiastically endorsed the idea. However, I have to admit that I did not foresee just how fitting commemorating these two milestones would become and what a significant opportunity it would be to both celebrate what our law school has achieved in its relatively short …

The Battle Of The Branches: The Impact Of The Judiciary And Title Vi On Desegregation In The American Public School System, Kelsey D. Mccarthy

San Diego Law Review

This Comment analyzes the debate regarding the catalyst for desegregation in the American public school system: judicial intervention or Congress’s legislative action, specifically through implementation of Title VI, which authorized revocation of funds to school districts that did not comply with the desegregation mandate. Part I will summarize the historical events and developments that paved the way to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown. Part II looks at how the Brown decision alone was not enough to effectuate immediate change in southern schools, despite the court’s order in the second Brown decision, Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II) that …

Beginning With Brown: Springboard For Gender Equality And Social Change, M. Margaret Mckeown

San Diego Law Review

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the Supreme Court’s opinion in Brown v. Board of the Education was not the end of litigation over discriminatory practices, nor was it the beginning of the end. It was, however, the end of the beginning. Brown marked a dramatic capstone to a series of lawsuits challenging the concept of “separate but equal” embodied in Plessy v. Ferguson. But it also signaled a new phase of civil rights litigation: advocates emboldened by Brown’s resounding endorsement of equality sought new constitutional protections against discrimination. Among them were women seeking to extend Brown’s logic towards a constitutional mandate …

Brown, Fisher, And The Necessity Of Context To Achieve Racial Equity In Public Institutions, Kiyana Davis Kiel

San Diego Law Review

The United States Constitution is a social, as well as legal, document and should be interpreted and applied as such. Context is crucial in constitutional interpretations. The law cannot and should not exist in a vacuum. When interpreting the Constitution, the lasting and pervasive impact of structural and institutional racism and the undercurrents of white privilege should not be ignored. In other words, when interpreting the Constitution, the civil rights of non-white society members must be acknowledged and addressed. Purely literal interpretations of law must give way to both legal—precedential—and societal contexts and, in particular, racial equity in the context …

Dispute Resolution Lessons Gleaned From The Arrest Of Professor Gates And "The Beer Summit", Elayne E. Greenberg

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

No abstract provided.