Law Commons^™

Brief For Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara Allen Babcock, Jeffrey Bellin, Robert P. Burns, Sherman J. Clark, James E. Coleman Jr., Lisa Kern Griffin, Robert P. Mosteller, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Which Came First, People Or Pollution? A Review Of Theory And Evidence From Longitudinal Environmental Justice Studies, Paul Mohai, Robin Saha

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

A considerable number of quantitative analyses have been conducted in the past several decades that demonstrate the existence of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of a wide variety of environmental hazards. The vast majority of these have been cross-sectional, snapshot studies employing data on hazardous facilities and population characteristics at only one point in time. Although some limited hypotheses can be tested with cross-sectional data, fully understanding how present-day disparities come about requires longitudinal analyses that examine the demographic characteristics of sites at the time of facility siting and track demographic changes after siting. Relatively few such studies …

How The Black Lives Matter Movement Can Improve The Justice System, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This op-ed piece argues that because the criminal justice system's loss of moral credibility contributes to increased criminality and because blacks are disproportionately the victims of crimes, especially violent crimes, the most valuable contribution that the Black Lives Matter movement can make is not to tear down the system’s reputation but rather to propose and support reforms that will build it up, thereby improving its crime-control effectiveness and reducing black victimization.

Officiating Removal, Leah Litman

Articles

For the last several years, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has quietly attempted to curtail capital defendants' representation in state postconviction proceedings. In 2011, various justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court began to call for federally funded community defender organizations to stop representing capital defendants in state postconviction proceedings. The justices argued, among other things, that the organizations' representation of capital defendants constituted impermissible federal interference with state governmental processes and burdened state judicial resources. The court also alleged the community defender organizations were in violation of federal statutes, which only authorized the organizations to assist state prisoners in federal, but …

After Obergefell V. Hodges: The Continuing Battle Over Equal Rights For Sexual Minorities In The United States, Simone Chriss, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article examines the pathbreaking U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that held same-sex marriage was a fundamental right that could not be denied by any state, despite the myriad same-sex marriage bans that had been passed in a majority of states. After explaining the constitutional jurisprudence of due process and equal protection, the article then examines the history of the same-sex marriage movement and the Obergefell decision. We conclude by discussing how the jurisprudential theory of the case, fundamental rights under the due process clause, narrows the scope of the case’s precedential value. Although gay rights activists …

Comments On Proposed Treasury Regulations Defining Terms Relating To Marital Status, Anthony C. Infanti, The American Bar Association

Articles

These comments respond to proposed Treasury Regulations defining terms relating to marital status in the Internal Revenue Code following the Supreme Court's decision in the Windsor and Obergefell cases. The comments applaud the Internal Revenue Service for reading gendered terms relating to marital status in a gender-neutral fashion. For a number of reasons, however, the comments recommend that the final regulations omit the proposed rule for determining an individual’s marital status and, in its place, codify the current deference to local law in determining marital status for federal tax purposes. Most importantly, the comments further recommend that the final regulations …

Blinding Prosecutors To Defendants’ Race: A Policy Proposal To Reduce Unconscious Bias In The Criminal Justice System, Sunita Sah, Christopher Robertson, Shima Baughman

Faculty Scholarship

Racial minorities are disproportionately imprisoned in the United States. This disparity is unlikely to be due solely to differences in criminal behavior. Behavioral science research has documented that prosecutors harbor unconscious racial biases. These unconscious biases play a role whenever prosecutors exercise their broad discretion, such as in choosing what crimes to charge and when negotiating plea bargains. To reduce this risk of unconscious racial bias, we propose a policy change: Prosecutors should be blinded to the race of criminal defendants wherever feasible. This could be accomplished by removing information identifying or suggesting the defendant’s race from police dossiers shared …

Measuring The Impact Of Plausibility Pleading, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

Ashcroft v. Iqbal and its predecessor, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, introduced a change to federal pleading standards that had remained essentially static for five decades. Both decisions have occupied the attention of academics, jurists, and practitioners since their announcement. Iqbal alone has, as of this writing, been cited by more than 95,000 judicial opinions, more than 1,400 law review articles, and innumerable briefs and motions. Many scholars have criticized Iqbal and Twombly for altering the meaning of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure outside the traditional procedures contemplated by the Rules Enabling Act. Almost all commentators agree that …

Sexual Minority Stigma And System Justification Theory: How Changing The Status Quo Impacts Marriage And Housing Equality, Jordan A. Blenner

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Sexual minorities (i.e. lesbians and gay men) experience systemic discrimination throughout the United States. Prior to the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), in many states, same-sex couples could not marry and sexual minorities were not protected from sexual orientation housing discrimination (Human Rights Campaign, 2015). The current, two-experiment study applied Jost and Banaji’s (1994) System Justification Theory to marriage and housing discrimination. When sexual minorities question dissimilar treatment, thereby threatening the status quo, members of the heterosexual majority rationalize sexual minority discrimination to maintain their dominant status (Alexander, 2001; Brescoll, Uhlmann, & Newman, 2013; Citizens for Equal …

Trending @ Rwu Law: Mikela Almeida's Post: Esther Clark Competition Held In R. I. Supreme Court, Mikela Almeida

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Labor Law & Labor Relations Professors In Support Of Respondents, Fred T. Korematsu Center For Law And Equality, Charlotte Garden, Counsel For Amici Curiae

Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association

April Miller Et Al. Vs. Kim Davis (Date Filled November 13, 2015), United States District Court For The Eastern District Of Kentucky

Media Collection

APRIL MILLER, PH.D., et al. PLAINTIFFS v. KIM DAVIS, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS ROWAN COUNTY CLERK, et al. DEFENDANTS and RESPONSE OF THIRD-PARTY DEFENDANTS TO PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION TO ENFORCE SEPTEMBER 3 AND SEPTEMBER 8 ORDERS KIM DAVIS THIRD-PARTY PLAINTIFF v. STEVEN L. BESHEAR, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS GOVERNOR OF KENTUCKY, et al. THIRD-PARTY DEFENDANTS

Discrimination As Disruption: Addressing Hostile Environments Without Violating The Constitution, Cara Mcclellan

All Faculty Scholarship

In early March 2015, a video surfaced showing members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity at the University of Oklahoma chanting: “There will never be a nigger at SAE . . . you can hang him from a tree, but he’ll never sign with me.” Following the wide circulation of this video, the university’s president expelled two students leading the chants in the video for creating a hostile racial environment on campus. Legal commentators criticized this disciplinary action, arguing that it violated the First Amendment and principles of academic freedom. On the other hand, a review of Title VI …

April Miller Et Al. Vs. Kim Davis (Date Filled November 9, 2015), United States Court Of Appeals For The Sixth Circuit

Media Collection

APRIL MILLER, PH.D; KAREN ANN ROBERTS; SHANTEL BURKE; STEPHEN NAPIER; JODY FERNANDEZ; KEVIN HOLLOWAY; L. AARON SKAGGS; AND BARRY SPARTMAN, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. KIM DAVIS, INDIVIDUALLY, Defendant-Third-Party Plaintiff-Appellant, and STEVEN L. BESHEAR, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS GOVERNOR OF KENTUCKY, AND WAYNE ONKST, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS STATE LIBRARIAN AND COMMISSIONER, KENTUCKY DEPARTMENT FOR LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES, Third-Party Defendants-Appellees. ON APPEAL FROM U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY, CIVIL ACTION NO. 15-CV-00044, HON. DAVID L. BUNNING BRIEF FOR AMICUS CURIAE EAGLE FORUM EDUCATION & LEGAL DEFENSE FUND IN SUPPORT OF APPELLANT IN SUPPORT OF REVERSAL

Defamation: The Play, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Reply Brief For Petitioner. Paske V. Fitzgerald, 136 S.Ct. 536 (2015) (No. 15-162), 2015 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs Lexis 3941, 2015 Wl 6748880, Eric Schnapper, Margaret A. Harris

Court Briefs

QUESTIONS PRESENTED McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green established a common method of analyzing evidence of an unlawful discriminatory motive. If a plaintiff establishes a prima facie case of discrimination, the defendant must articulate a legitimate, non-discriminatory purpose for the disputed action; where the defendant has done so, the plaintiff has the burden of demonstrating that the proffered purpose was a pretext for discrimination. This Court has repeatedly explained that the burden of establishing a prima facie case is “not onerous.” United States Postal Service Board of Governors v. Aikens held, in the context of a case which had gone to …

Teaching "Ferguson", Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

What we now refer to simply as "Ferguson" erupted in August of 20T4 and immediately raised a cluster o f legal issues. What crime had Michael Brown allegedly committed? Did Officer Darren Wilson commit a crime when he shot at Brown? Protests ensued, and they in turn inspired a police response, a response that seemed to many more violent than the protests themselves. What of the First Amendment rights o f the protesters and o f the journalists covering them? What laws were they-protestors and some journalists-supposedly breaking?¹

As the days and weeks passed, the legal issues multiplied, and …

Marriage (In)Equality And The Historical Legacies Of Feminism, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, I measure the majority’s opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges against two legacies of second-wave feminist legal advocacy: the largely successful campaign to make civil marriage formally gender-neutral; and the lesser-known struggle against laws and practices that penalized women who lived their lives outside of marriage. Obergefell obliquely acknowledges marriage equality’s debt to the first legacy without explicitly adopting sex equality arguments against same-sex marriage bans. The legacy of feminist campaigns for nonmarital equality, by contrast, is absent from Obergefell’s reasoning and belied by rhetoric that both glorifies marriage and implicitly disparages nonmarriage. Even so, the history …

What The Marriage Equality Cases Tell Us About Voter Id, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Two years ago, United States u. Windsor tossed out the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"). Thereafter, proponents of marriage equality secured dozens of notable victories in the lower courts, a smattering of setbacks, and last June, the victory they sought in Obergefell v. Hodges. During this same period, opponents of electoral restrictions such as voter identification have seen far less sustained success. Decided the day before Windsor, Shelby County v. Holder scrapped a key provision of the Voting Rights Act ("VRA") while making clear that plaintiffs might still challenge disputed voting regulations under Section 2 of the VRA and the …

Distinguishing Disparate Treatment From Disparate Impact; Confusion On The Court, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

In two decisions in the 2014-2015 Term, Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc., and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch, Inc., the Court seemed to give contradictory answers to an important unresolved conceptual definitional question: Does disparate treatment include assigning members of a protected group based on their protected status to a larger disfavored group that is defined by neutral principles and that includes others who are not members of the protected group? Or does such assignment have only a disparate impact on the protected status group?

In Young, the first of these decisions, all members of the …

Beyond Marriage Equality Symposium, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Christopher Gerlica's Post: Beyond Same-Sex Marriage, Christopher Gerlica

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Lgbt Equality: The Challenges Ahead, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Reply Brief For Plaintiff-Appellant Guy Zappulla, Betsy Ginsberg

Amicus Briefs

Betsy Ginsberg filed a Reply Brief for Plaintiff-Appellant Guy Zappulla.

2015 Esther Clark Moot Court Competition: Finals, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Judge Clifton On Fairness, Equality, Rwu Law, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Logan Honored For Diversity, Equal Justice, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Jennifer Reis, Robert Sammons

Audio & Video History Collection

No abstract provided.

Kim Davis Part 1, Robert Sammons

Audio & Video History Collection

No abstract provided.

Melinda Andrews, Robert Sammons

Audio & Video History Collection

No abstract provided.