Law Commons^™

Hidden From View: Disability, Segregation And Work, Elizabeth Pendo

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The employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 were intended to bring working-age people with disabilities into the workplace by providing options for them to seek and gain meaningful, integrated employment. Although the ADA has made significant gains, the rate of progress in employment has been disappointing. While the lack of progress of people with disabilities in the traditional workplace has received attention, the work done by many, especially those with severe disabilities in segregated workplaces, remains hidden in sheltered workshops. This chapter explores the intersection of the concepts of disability, invisibility, and work and identifies the …

Identifying (With) Disability: Using Film To Teach Employment Discrimination, Elizabeth Pendo

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Building on a prior article about using film to teach health law, this Essay is intended to share my experience using the film Philadelphia as a method of enhancing coverage and discussion of the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and to provide an opportunity for recognition of, and identification with, the experiences of people with disabilities.

Participation As A Theory Of Employment, Matthew T. Bodie

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The concept of employment is an important legal category, not only for labor and employment law, but also for intellectual property law, torts, criminal law, and tax. The right-to-control test has dominated the debate over the definition of “employee” since its origins in the master-servant doctrine. However, the test no longer represents our modern notion of what it means to be an employee. This change has played itself out in research on the theory of the firm, which has shifted from a model of control to a model of participation in a team production process. This Article uses the theory …

Race, Sex And Genes At Work: Uncovering The Lessons Of Norman-Bloodsaw, Elizabeth Pendo

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The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (“GINA”) is the first federal, uniform protection against the use of genetic information in both the workplace and health insurance. Signed into law on May 21, 2008, GINA prohibits an employer or health insurer from acquiring or using an individual’s genetic information, with some exceptions. One of the goals of GINA is to eradicate actual, or perceived, discrimination based on genetic information in the workplace and in health insurance. Although the threat of genetic discrimination is often discussed in universal terms - as something that could happen to any of us - the …

Back To Color Blindness: Recent Developments In Race Discrimination Law In The United States, Marcia L. Mccormick

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The United States has a long and somewhat conflicted history of espousing egalitarian values and yet tolerating a certain level of subordination of particular groups to a greater or lesser extent at the same time. Like many countries, it struggles with reconciling the goals of equality, pluralism, and liberty, and the balance has been struck differently at different times. In the current wave of such efforts, the Supreme Court is marking an increasingly formalist approach to the question of discrimination, while Congress appears to be pushing a slightly more substantive approach to discrimination. This short paper analyzes the Court’s recent …

Decentering The Firm: The Limited Liability Company And Low Wage Immigrant Women Workers, Miriam A. Cherry

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Congress is now considering radical changes to the immigration system. This article looks at the immigration issue as a labor and employment law question, and proposes a possible solution based on this approach.

I suggest that forming Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) will benefit low-wage immigrant women workers by transforming them into business owners. By using existing legal structures to their benefit, low-wage women workers can curtail at least a portion of the exploitation that they currently experience. Instead of being hired to perform a job, having the intermediary take a cut, and then pay them some amount out of that, …

The Allure And Danger Of Practicing Law As Taxonomy, Marcia L. Mccormick

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In this article, I hope to contribute to the ongoing debate on how our society treats the problem of discrimination. Many scholars have criticized the types of antidiscrimination statutes we have enacted as well as the ways in which the courts have interpreted those laws. While I agree with many of these critiques, rather than tackle those very large issues at the outset, I focus on the test the courts currently use to evaluate the evidence to determine whether an inference can be made that discrimination has occurred. I argue that lawyers and courts have become so caught up in …