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Full-Text Articles in Law
Gay Panic And The Case For Gay Shield Laws, Kelly Strader, Molly Selvin, Lindsey Hay
Gay Panic And The Case For Gay Shield Laws, Kelly Strader, Molly Selvin, Lindsey Hay
Kelly Strader
In a highly publicized “gay panic” case, Brandon McInerney shot and killed Larry King in their middle school classroom. King was a self-identified gay student who sometimes wore jewelry and makeup to school and, according to those who knew him, was possibly transgender. Tried as an adult for first-degree murder, McInerney asserted a heat of passion defense based upon King’s alleged sexual advances. The jury deadlocked, with a majority accepting McInerney’s defense. Drawing largely upon qualitative empirical research, this article uses the Larry King murder case as a prism though which to view the doctrinal, theoretical, and policy bases of …
The Ninth Circuit’S Treatment Of Sexual Orientation: Defining “Rational Basis Review With Bite”, Ian C. Bartrum
The Ninth Circuit’S Treatment Of Sexual Orientation: Defining “Rational Basis Review With Bite”, Ian C. Bartrum
Scholarly Works
When the Ninth Circuit handed down Witt v. Department of the Air Force, President Obama and then-Solicitor General Kagan declined to take an appeal to the Supreme Court. At the time, it seemed that most advocates of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” believed that the administration made that decision because it was afraid the Supreme Court would reverse the Ninth Circuit. If that fear was perhaps well-founded in 2009, it is certainly less so now. In the wake of SmithKline Beecham Corp. v. Abbott Laboratories, as well as recent District Court decisions, opponents of federal constitutional protection for gay people …
The Sneetches As An Allegory For The Gay Rights Struggle: Three Prisms, Peter Nicolas
The Sneetches As An Allegory For The Gay Rights Struggle: Three Prisms, Peter Nicolas
Articles
In this essay, I invoke both versions of Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches as an allegory for the modern struggle for gay rights in the United States viewed through three different prisms. The first and most obvious of these prisms is the battle between the heterosexual majority and the gay minority represented by the two groups of Sneetches. Members of the majority seek to distinguish themselves with markers of social acceptance such as marriage, parenting, and military service, as well as access to certain other markers of social acceptance, including the ability to donate blood and become members in private organizations …
Risky Arguments In Social-Justice Litigation: The Case Of Sex Discrimination And Marriage Equality, Suzanne B. Goldberg
Risky Arguments In Social-Justice Litigation: The Case Of Sex Discrimination And Marriage Equality, Suzanne B. Goldberg
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay takes up the puzzle of the risky argument or, more precisely, the puzzle of why certain arguments do not get much traction in advocacy and adjudication even when some judges find them to be utterly convincing. Through a close examination of the sex discrimination argument's evanescence in contemporary marriage litigation, this Essay draws lessons about how and why arguments become risky in social-justice cases and whether they should be made nonetheless. The marriage context is particularly fruitful because some judges, advocates, and scholars find it "obviously correct" that laws excluding same-sex couples from marriage discriminate facially based on …