Law Commons^™

Equal Protection

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lawyers And Social Justice, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Employment Discrimination: Recent Developments In The Supreme Court (The Supreme Court And Local Government Law: The 1994-1995 Term), Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Overcoming "Stigmas": Lesbian And Gay Districts And Black Electoral Empowerment, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the United States, historically, members of racial and sexual minority groups have been prevented from effectively participating in governmental decisionmaking because the political districting system denies them adequate representation in the political process. Following the 1990 census, blacks, in particular, saw significant gains in their political representation as a result of redistricting, only to suffer a sharp reduction of their voting rights with the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in the Shaw and Miller cases. Whereas voting rights litigation once explored ways to prevent minority vote dilution, today's jurisprudence focuses on the ramifications of the "stigma" faced by blacks …

Art Of Judgement In Planned Parenthood V. Casey, James Boyd White

Articles

This article was excerpted and abridged with permission from a chapter in Professor White's recent book Acts of Hope: Creating Authority in Literature, Law, and Politics. In the book, he explores the nature of authority in various cultural contexts. Here he examines the Joint Opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which has been attacked both from the right, on the grounds that it tried to keep Roe v. Wade alive, and from the left, on the grounds that it significantly weakens the force of that case. Professor White, by contrast, admires it greatly, and in this chapter explains …

Are Back Pay And Damages In Age Discrimination Cases Subject To Income Taxes?, Matthew J. Barrett

Journal Articles

The Internal Revenue Code excludes damages received "on account of personal injuries" from federal income taxation. In this case, the Supreme Court decides if back pay and damages received under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act qualify for this exclusion. The Court's decision could affect thousands of workers who have brought, or may bring, federal age discrimination claims after losing their jobs in downsizings. It may also resolve the tax status of punitive damages.

Affirmative Action As A Women's Issue, Helen Norton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Integrating The "Underclass": Confronting America's Enduring Apartheid, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton's American Apartheid argues that housing integration has inappropriately disappeared from the national agenda and is critical to remedying the problems of the so-called "underclass." Reviewer Olati Johnson praises the authors' refusal to dichotomize race and class and the roles both play in creating and maintaining housing segregation. However, she argues, Massey and Denton fail to examine critically either the concept of the underclass or the integration ideology they espouse. Specifically, she contends, the authors fail to confront the limits of integration strategies in providing affordable housing or combating the problem of tokenism. Massey and Denton …

New York Law School Reporter V. 11, No. 12, December 1994, New York Law School

Student Newspapers

No abstract provided.

Lawyering Askew: Excesses In The Pursuit Of Fees And Justice, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

Lawyer-bashing in America has long been a national pastime, having somehow escaped the palliative of political correctness that has greatly diminished other scurrilous pursuits like Jewish-American-Princess-baiting and Polish-joking.

Much of the profession's negative image can be ascribed to the sheer number of people hanging out their shingles as attorneys at law - just about as many per capita as there are inmates currently serving time in all the state prisons. Lawyers are likewise chastised for the hard-sell hucksterism of their advertising, the exponential growth of their caseloads, and the endless upward spiral of their fee scales. No doubt such perceptions, …

Racist Speech, Outsider Jurisprudence, And The Meaning Of America, Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Punishment Of Hate: Toward A Normative Theory Of Bias-Motivated Crimes, Frederick M. Lawrence

Michigan Law Review

This article explores how bias crimes differ from parallel crimes and why this distinction makes a crucial difference in our criminal law. Bias crimes differ from parallel crimes as a matter of both the resulting harm and the mental state of the offender. The nature of the injury sustained by the immediate victim of a bias crime exceeds the harm caused by a parallel crime. Moreover, bias crimes inflict a palpable harm on the broader target community of the crime as well as on society at large, while parallel crimes do not generally cause such widespread injury.

The distinction between …

Section 4: Civil Rights, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Salvaging The Opportunity: A Response To Professor Clark, Michael J. Yelnosky

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, Professor Yelnosky responds to Professor Clark's critique of his previous article, Filling an Enforcement Void: Using Testers to Uncover and Remedy Discrimination in Hiring for Lower-Skilled, Entry-Level Jobs. Professor Yelnosky first clarifies that Professor Clark has adopted several of the points Professor Yelnosky originally made in his earlier article. He then responds to the portions of Professor Clark's article that challenge his prior conclusions. He builds on and defends his previous arguments that: (1) testing is best suited to uncover hiring discrimination for lower-skilled jobs; (2) disincentives to bringing tester lawsuits make it unwise to rely …

Reading, Writing, And Sexual Harassment: Finding A Constitutional Remedy When Schools Fail To Address Peer Abuse, Karen Mellencamp Davis

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"Even My Own Mother Couldn't Recognize Me": Television News And Public Understanding, Jane Rhodes

Federal Communications Law Journal

Broadcast journalists face conflicting responsibilities: the need to attract a large audience through visually entertaining products versus the need to present information that enhances public understanding. The Author argues that the media's social responsibility has become blurred in recent years as competition within the broadcast industry has increased. To keep the ratings up, many journalists are trying to force information into catchy sound bites without thinking about how such dissemination distorts that information. The Author argues that in spite of the increasing competition faced by broadcast journalists, they need to examine their professional practice and personal biases closely, with an …

Diversity: The Emerging Modern Separate But Equal Doctrine, Robert N. Davis

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

No abstract provided.

Racial Segregation In Canadian Legal History: Viola Desmond's Challenge, Nova Scotia, 1946, Constance Backhouse

Dalhousie Law Journal

Viola Desmond's courageous efforts to eliminate racial segregation are not as well known to Canadians in general. However, the legal response to Viola Desmond' s challenge provides one of the best examples of the historical role of law in sustaining racism in Canada.

Taxing Times For Lesbians And Gay Men: Equality At What Cost?, Claire Fl Young

Dalhousie Law Journal

In this article I shall briefly review some of those struggles and the current state of the law. This forms the backdrop to an issue that I view as being of fundamental importance to lesbians and gay men in their fight for equality and which has not received much attention; that is the tax system. I shall focus on two aspects. First, I shall analyse the use of the tax system as a spending programme and a tool by which to subsidise particular activities. In this context I shall examine the federal government's refusal to recognise lesbian and gay relationships, …

Employment Discrimination Testing: Theories Of Standing And A Reply To Professor Yelnosky, Leroy D. Clark

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, Professor Clark addresses the legal issues surrounding the use of testers-individuals who deliberately apply for employment to detect sex and race discrimination. He surveys three theoretical justifications for granting standing to organizations that run testing programs. Professor Clark then responds to a previous article by Professor Yelnosky, disputing some of his conclusions. Professor Clark indicates that testing is just as necessary in higher-level employment as lower-level employment; shows that testers can obtain meaningful relief from the courts; analyzes the impact of the 1991 Civil Rights Act amendments; and encourages Congress to authorize the EEOC to run tester …

Federalism And Civil Rights: Complementary And Competing Paradigms, James F. Blumstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

Until the Nixon Administration, federalism was not talked about much in the United States in the post-New Deal period and was not taken seriously as an intellectual matter. Increasingly, however, federalism has become an important domestic' and a critical worldwide issue. It may not be an exaggeration to say that federalism has indeed become the pervasive legal/political issue around the world.

In this Article I will make four points. First, by way of background and overview, I will conclude that the goal of federalism is and should be to encourage and facilitate geographically-based political autonomy without placing at risk the …

Employment Discrimination Claims Under Erisa Section 510: Should Courts Require Exhaustion Of Arbitral And Plan Remedies?, Jared A. Goldstein

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines whether courts should require section 510 claimants to exhaust either plan-based or arbitral remedies before seeking judicial relief. It begins by comparing the basis for an exhaustion requirement with respect to benefits claims with the basis for such a requirement with respect to statutory claims - like those under section 510. Part I examines the rationale courts have offered for requiring exhaustion of plan remedies for benefits claims. Part I concludes that federal courts have correctly determined that Congress intended individuals bringing benefits claims to exhaust the remedies provided by the plan before seeking judicial relief. Part …

Asian Americans: The "Reticent" Minority And Their Paradoxes, Pat K. Chew

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

No Time For Trumpets: Title Vii, Equality, And The Fin De Sièchle, D. Marvin Jones

Michigan Law Review

My essay seeks to examine the internal architecture of the discursive barrier - the wall - that the Supreme Court has built within the doctrinal framework of Title VII and concomitantly within the discourse of equality. To understand how the Court has erected this discursive wall, we must begin with history. Equality, while historically a vehicle for national identity and contemporaneously for modernist conceptions of justice, is synchronically and diachronically indeterminate. Equality is a deeply sedimented concept with not one objective meaning but successive levels of meaning built up over time. Each of those historic understandings is itself a unity …

Only Girls Wear Barrettes: Dress And Appearance Standards, Community Norms, And Workplace Equality, Katharine T. Bartlett

Michigan Law Review

In this essay I study both the judicial rationales and the scholarly criticisms thereof, agreeing with critics that community norms are too discriminatory to provide a satisfactory benchmark for defining workplace equality, but also questioning the usual implications of this critique. Critics assume that it is possible, and desirable, to evaluate dress and appearance rules without regard to the norms and expectations of the community - that is, according to stable or universal versions of equality that are uninfected by community norms. I question this assumption, arguing that equality, no less than other legal concepts, cannot transcend the norms of …

Title Vii And The Complex Female Subject, Kathryn Abrams

Michigan Law Review

One strength of Title VII has been its capacity to accommodate the changing conceptions of discrimination and the self-conceptions of subject groups. In the first decades of its enforcement, advocates have raised - and courts have endorsed - a range of contrasting conceptions in order to broaden the employment opportunities of protected groups. This flexibility is particularly evident with respect to women.

After exploring recent doctrinal efforts to respond to complex claimants, I address these questions and assess the prospects of change. Although the unitary or categorical notions of group identity under which Title VII has historically been enforced might …

The Anticaste Principle, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

In this essay, I seek to defend a particular understanding of equality, one that is an understanding of liberty as well. I call this conception "the anticaste principle." Put too briefly, the anticaste principle forbids social and legal practices from translating highly visible and morally irrelevant differences into systemic social disadvantage, unless there is a very good reason for society to do so. On this view, a special problem of inequality arises when members of a group suffer from a range of disadvantages because of a group-based characteristic that is both visible for all to see and irrelevant from a …

Structuralist And Cultural Domination Theories Meet Title Vii: Some Contemporary Influences, Martha Chamallas

Michigan Law Review

This essay first looks at three important theoretical approaches - motivational, structural, and cultural - that mark the scholarly discourses on workplace equality since 1965. The motivational or individual choice theory is well established and has dominated legal discourse throughout this period. I concentrate in this essay on the other two visions, dating structuralist accounts from the mid1970s and cultural domination theories from the mid-1980s.

Caste And The Civil Rights Laws: From Jim Crow To Same-Sex Marriages, Richard A. Epstein

Michigan Law Review

In this essay I address the notion of caste in two separate contexts: in the traditional disputes over race and sex, and in the more modem disputes over sexual orientation. In both cases the idea of caste and its kindred notions of subordination and hierarchy are used to justify massive forms of government intervention. In all cases I think that these arguments are incorrect. In their place, I argue that the idea of caste should be confined to categories of formal, or legal, distinctions between persons before the law. This more limited notion of caste supplies no justification for the …

Employment Discrimination Law In Perspective: Three Concepts Of Equality, John J. Donohue Iii

Michigan Law Review

The essay begins with a discussion of which groups deserve the protection of employment discrimination law. With the protected categories of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act etched into the American consciousness, many might consider the appropriate categories to be fully self-evident. But of course, they are not, and many jurisdictions continue to struggle over whether certain dispreferred groups merit the law's solicitude.