Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Law

Enforcing Equity, Daiquiri J. Steele Nov 2023

Enforcing Equity, Daiquiri J. Steele

Northwestern University Law Review

Federal administrative agencies that enforce workplace laws have dual responsibilities: (1) to prevent or remedy noncompliance with the underlying workplace law and (2) to prevent or remedy noncompliance with the law’s antiretaliation provisions. Disparities based on race, sex, and their intersection exist with respect to both of these types of employer noncompliance, as female workers and workers of color experience more violations of the substantive provisions and the retaliation provisions of these laws. While effective enforcement is vital to preserving workplace regulation as a whole, there is also an equity component to enforcement. Because workplace law violations disproportionately harm women …


Gender And Deception: Moral Perceptions And Legal Responses, Gregory Klass, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan Aug 2023

Gender And Deception: Moral Perceptions And Legal Responses, Gregory Klass, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

Northwestern University Law Review

Decades of social science research has shown that the identity of the parties in a legal action can affect case outcomes. Parties’ race, gender, class, and age all affect decisions of prosecutors, judges, juries, and other actors in a criminal prosecution or civil litigation. Less studied has been how identity might affect other forms of legal regulation. This Essay begins to explore perceptions of deceptive behavior—i.e., how wrongful it is, and the extent to which it should be regulated or punished—and the relationship of those perceptions to the gender of the actors. We hypothesize that ordinary people tend to perceive …


Healthcare Inequities In The United States And Beyond Are Taking Black Women’S Lives, Alichia Mcintosh Apr 2023

Healthcare Inequities In The United States And Beyond Are Taking Black Women’S Lives, Alichia Mcintosh

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Black women have been dying at devastating rates due to health complications at the hands of the United States’ healthcare and legal systems. This Note explores these distressing rates and how they compare to White women while analyzing the fatalities and diagnoses among several health complications and diseases. These fatalities persist due to the United States’ history of racism—such as the institution of slavery and over 100 years of Black bodies experiencing Jim Crow laws—and the socioeconomic disadvantages Black women disproportionally face. This Note emphasizes that these disparities continue because the United States has failed to implement treaties—which it is …


White-Collar Crime, Sentencing Gender Disparities Post-Booker, And Implications For Criminal Sentencing, Sarah Turner Jan 2023

White-Collar Crime, Sentencing Gender Disparities Post-Booker, And Implications For Criminal Sentencing, Sarah Turner

JCLC Online

“White-collar crime” is an amorphous term that has yet to be conclusively defined since its first use in 1939. This category of criminal activity results in what can be characterized as either economic harm or an impediment to the government’s ability to run successfully while minimizing conflicts of interest. Sentencing of white-collar crimes came into question in the late twentieth century due to a perception that white-collar offenders were receiving much lower sentences than offenders committing more traditional crimes. Additionally, the relationship between sentencing outcomes and status characteristics like race, age, citizen status, and gender were cause for concern. Different …


The Need For Fairness And Accuracy For Women In Sentencing: Surmounting Challenges To Gender-Specific Statistical Risk Assessment Tools, Elizabeth E. Wainstein Jan 2023

The Need For Fairness And Accuracy For Women In Sentencing: Surmounting Challenges To Gender-Specific Statistical Risk Assessment Tools, Elizabeth E. Wainstein

JCLC Online

States across the country have increasingly adopted statistical risk assessment tools in multiple stages of their criminal legal systems with the hope of reducing incarceration without increasing crime. These tools use various characteristics to estimate an individual’s future risk of recidivism, and judges consider the results of these assessments when determining levels of custody or community supervision for convicted individuals. Despite much debate amongst academics and activists on the utility and fairness of these tools, one critique seems beyond debate: the tools are built for men, not women. These tools are based on criteria, statistics, and theory drawn from the …