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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Music Of Mass Incarceration, Andrea L. Dennis Nov 2020

The Music Of Mass Incarceration, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

Intellectual property law reaches every aspect of the world, society, and creativity. Sometimes, creative expression is at the very crux of societal conflict and change. Through its history, rap music has demonstrated passionate creative expression, exploding with emotion and truths. Now the most popular musical genre in America, rap has always shared—and consistently critiqued—disproportionate effects of the criminal legal system on Black communities. The world is increasingly hearing these tunes with special acuity and paying more attention to the lyrics. Virtually every music recording artist would consider the following numbers a major career achievement: 500 percent increase; 222 percent growth; …


Reconceptualizing Hybrid Rights, Dan T. Coenen Jan 2020

Reconceptualizing Hybrid Rights, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

In landmark decisions on religious liberty and same-sex marriage, and many other cases as well, the Supreme Court has placed its imprimatur on so called “hybrid rights.” These rights spring from the interaction of two or more constitutional clauses, none of which alone suffices to give rise to the operative protection. Controversy surrounds hybrid rights in part because there exists no judicial account of their justifiability. To be sure, some scholarly treatments suggest that these rights emanate from the “structures” or “penumbras” of the Constitution. But critics respond that hybrid rights lack legitimacy for that very reason because structural and …


Access Law Schools & Diversifying The Profession, Deseriee A. Kennedy Jan 2020

Access Law Schools & Diversifying The Profession, Deseriee A. Kennedy

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Lawyers do not reflect the racial diversity in the United States. The legal profession continues to struggle with ways to achieve and maintain racial diversity. Law schools play a critical role in the path to practice, and therefore an examination of the barriers to the profession they created is warranted. This essay critiques the over-reliance on standardized testing in law school admissions and advocates for an open admissions process that prioritizes racial and academic diversity. It suggests that the benefits of minimizing the role of standardized tests far outweigh any perceived costs in legal education. This essay concludes that the …


Feminist Perspectives On Bostock V. Clay County, Georgia, Ann C. Mcginley, Nicole Porter, Danielle Weatherby, Ryan Nelson, Pamela Wilkins, Catherine Archibald Jan 2020

Feminist Perspectives On Bostock V. Clay County, Georgia, Ann C. Mcginley, Nicole Porter, Danielle Weatherby, Ryan Nelson, Pamela Wilkins, Catherine Archibald

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This jointly-authored essay is a conversation about the Supreme Court’s recent and groundbreaking decision (Bostock v. Clayton County) that held that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is discrimination based on sex, and therefore prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While many scholars are writing about this case, we are doing something unique. We are analyzing this decision from feminist perspectives. We are the editors and four of the authors of a book recently published by Cambridge University Press: Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Employment Discrimination Opinions. This book contains fifteen Supreme Court and Courts …


Boots And Bail On The Ground: Assessing The Implementation Of Misdemeanor Bail Reforms In Georgia, Andrea Woods, Sandra G. Mayson, Lauren Sudeall, Guthrie Armstrong, Anthony Potts Jan 2020

Boots And Bail On The Ground: Assessing The Implementation Of Misdemeanor Bail Reforms In Georgia, Andrea Woods, Sandra G. Mayson, Lauren Sudeall, Guthrie Armstrong, Anthony Potts

Scholarly Works

This Article presents a mixed-methods study of misdemeanor bail practice across Georgia in the wake of reform. We observed bail hearings and interviewed system actors in a representative sample of fifty-five counties in order to assess the extent to which pretrial practice conforms to legal standards clarified in Senate Bill 407 and Walker v. Calhoun. We also analyzed jail population data published by county jails and by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. We found that a handful of counties have made promising headway in adhering to law and best practices, but that the majority have some distance to …


Aging On Air: Sex, Age, And Television News, Rebecca H. White Jan 2020

Aging On Air: Sex, Age, And Television News, Rebecca H. White

Scholarly Works

The best piece of advice I received when I began teaching law was to adopt Charlie Sullivan's and Mike Zimmer's casebook for my Employment Discrimination class. Before I became a law professor, I had no clue how important choosing the right textbook is, not only for the students but for the teacher. I also was unaware of how much I had to learn about a subject I thought I knew well. I had been litigating employment discrimination cases for several years, but when I began teaching, I quickly learned how much I did not know. Charlie's and Mike's casebook, through …


Detention By Any Other Name, Sandra G. Mayson Jan 2020

Detention By Any Other Name, Sandra G. Mayson

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An unaffordable bail requirement has precisely the same effect as an order of pretrial detention: the accused person is jailed pending trial. It follows as a logical matter that an order requiring an unaffordable bail bond as a condition of release should be subject to the same substantive and procedural protections as an order denying bail altogether. Yet this has not been the practice.

This Article lays out the logical and legal case for the proposition that an order that functionally imposes detention must be treated as an order of detention. It addresses counterarguments and complexities, including both empirical and …


The Professional Responsibility Case For Valid And Nondiscriminatory Bar Exams, Joan W. Howarth Jan 2020

The Professional Responsibility Case For Valid And Nondiscriminatory Bar Exams, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

Title VII protects against workplace discrimination in part through the scrutiny of employment tests whose results differ based on race, gender, or ethnicity. Such tests are said to have a disparate impact, and their use is illegal unless their validity can be established. Validity means that the test is job-related and measures what it purports to measure. Further, under Title VII, even a valid employment test with a disparate impact could be struck down if less discriminatory alternatives exist.

Licensing tests, including bar exams, have been found to be outside these Title VII protections. But the nondiscrimination values that animate …