Law Commons^™

Hair Me Out: Why Discrimination Against Black Hair Is Race Discrimination Under Title Vii, Alexis Boyd

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In May 2010, Chastity Jones sought employment as a customer service representative at Catastrophe Management Solutions (“CMS”), a claims processing company located in Mobile, Alabama. When asked for an inperson interview, Jones, a Black woman, arrived in a suit and her hair in “short dreadlocks,” or locs, a type of natural hairstyle common in the Black community. Despite being qualified for the position, Jones would later have her offer rescinded because of her hair. CMS claimed that locs “tend to get messy” and violated the “neutral” dress code and hair policy requiring employees to be “professional and business-like.” Therefore, CMS …

The Human Environment: Awakening To The Indomitable Cuban Spirit--Government, Culture, And People, Berta Hernández-Truyol

FIU Law Review

My thoughts are to write about The Human Environment. I will address the recent events concerning the increased silencing of dissent and the criminal law reforms that prohibit peaceful gatherings.

Tax And Time: On The Use And Misuse Of Legal Imagination, Anthony C. Infanti

Book Chapters

In daily life and in tax law, time is taken for granted as something that is ever present but beyond our control. Time moves endlessly and relentlessly forward, constantly slipping from our grasp. But what if life were more like science fiction? What if we could, at will, move through time to alter its course? Or what if we could harness time by turning it into an exchangeable commodity, truly using time as money? In fact, there is no need to open a novel or watch a movie to experience time travel or to see time used as a medium …

Critical Tax Theory: Insights From The Us And Opportunities For All, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

Articles

At a moment when Australia -- and the world -- finds itself at a "critical juncture" as it reckons with a global pandemic as well as the inequalities that COVID-19 has laid bare, voicing -- and listening to -- critical tax perspectives has become more vital than ever. The economic impact of COVID-19 has precipitated talk of tax reform as nations consider how to pay for aid distributed during the pandemic and how to restart their economies. But more than just a time of crisis, the pandemic can be seen as an unexpected opportunity to break with a past plagued …

Does U.S. Federal Employment Law Now Cover Caste Discrimination Based On Untouchability?: If All Else Fails There Is The Possible Application Of Bostock V. Clayton County, Kevin D. Brown, Lalit Khandare, Annapurna Waughray, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Theodore M. Shaw

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article discusses the issue of whether a victim of caste discrimination based on untouchability can assert a claim of intentional employment discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981. This article contends that there are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is a form of religious discrimination under Title VII. The question of whether caste discrimination is a form of race or national origin discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981 depends upon how the courts apply these definitions to caste discrimination based on untouchability. There are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is recognized within the concept …

Integrating Doctrine And Diversity Speaker Series: When Law School Classroom Discussions Of Diversity Issues Go Wrong, Roger Williams University School Of Law, City University Of New York School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Cindy Chau

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

It's About Bloody Time And Space, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

Time frames relationships of power, especially in the context of law. One of the clearest ways in which time is implicated in both law and society is via discourses about women’s biological functions. This Article is an introduction to a larger project that analyzes legal discourses regarding a crucial aspect of women’s calendrically-associated biological functions: women’s menstrual periods. Over the course of the project, I explore legal discourses about menstruation through the notion of what literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin calls “chronotopes”—a connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships. Temporality, Bakhtin argues, is closely associated with certain paradigmatic spaces, and the combination …

Beyond Sex-Plus: Acknowledging Black Women In Employment Law And Policy, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It has been more than 30 years since Kimberlé Crenshaw published her pathbreaking article critiquing the inadequacy of antidiscrimination law in addressing claims at the intersection of race and sex discrimination. This Article focuses on the challenges Black women continue to face when bringing intersectional claims, despite experiencing high rates of discrimination and harassment. The new status quo has not resolved the problems that she documented, and has introduced a set of second generation intersectionality issues. Most significantly, many courts now recognize that Black women experience discrimination differently than do white women or Black men. Yet, despite the professionally and …

On Beauty And Policing, I. India Thusi

Northwestern University Law Review

“To protect and serve” is the motto of police departments from Los Angeles to Cape Town. When police officers deviate from the twin goals of protection and service, for example by using excessive force or by maintaining hostile relations with the community, scholars recommend more training, more oversight, or more resources in policing. However, police appear to be motivated by a superseding goal in the area of sex work policing. In some places, the policing of sex workers is connected to police officers’ perceptions of beauty, producing a hierarchy of desirable bodies as enforced by those sworn to protect and …

A Taxing Feminism, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

Book Chapters

Feminist perspectives are not new to tax law. The first academic piece bringing a feminist perspective to bear on tax law dates to the early 1970s, when Grace Blumberg published “Sexism in the Code: A Comparative Study of Income Taxation of Working Wives and Mothers.” Contemporaneously, none other than Ruth Bader Ginsburg (along with her tax lawyer husband Marty Ginsburg) brought a feminist perspective to bear on tax law when she argued Moritz v. Commissioner before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, as depicted in the movie On the Basis of Sex. Since then, numerous other contributions have been …

Are Opinions On Abortion Based On Racial Attitudes?, Ashley Mueller

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My specific research question that I will be addressing through my Honors Research Project is; Does one’s race influence their opinions and criminalization of abortion in the United States? In addition to this question I will be discussing if these views have changed over time depending on race, and how their backgrounds, due to their race, may differentiate these views.

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Bridget J. Crawford, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Bridget J. Crawford, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Publications

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

Drugs' Other Side Effects, Craig J. Konnoth

Publications

Drugs often induce unintended, adverse physiological reactions in those that take them—what we commonly refer to as “side-effects.” However, drugs can produce other, broader, unintended, even non-physiological harms. For example, some argue that taking Truvada, a drug that prevents HIV transmission, increases promiscuity and decreases condom use. Expensive Hepatitis C treatments threaten to bankrupt state Medicaid programs. BiDil, which purported to treat heart conditions for self-identified African-Americans, has been criticized for reifying racial categories. Although the Food & Drug Administration (“FDA”) has broad discretion under the Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics Act (“FDCA”) to regulate drugs, it generally considers only traditional …

"Playing It Safe" With Empirical Evidence: Selective Use Of Social Science In Supreme Court Cases About Racial Justice And Marriage Equality, Russell K. Robinson, David M. Frost

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay seeks to draw connections between race, sexual orientation, and social science in Supreme Court litigation. In some respects, advocates for racial minorities and sexual minorities face divergent trajectories. Among those asserting civil rights claims, LGBT rights claimants have been uniquely successful at the Court ever since Romer v. Evans in the mid-1990s. During this period, advocates for racial minorities have fought to preserve earlier victories in cases such as Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and have failed to overturn precedents that strictly limit equal protection possibilities, such as McCleskey v. Kemp. Nonetheless, we argue …

Personhood Seeking New Life With Republican Control, Jonathan F. Will, I. Glenn Cohen, Eli Y. Adashi

Indiana Law Journal

Just three days prior to the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States, Representative Jody B. Hice (R-GA) introduced the Sanctity of Human Life Act (H.R. 586), which, if enacted, would provide that the rights associated with legal personhood begin at fertilization. Then, in October 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services released its draft strategic plan, which identifies a core policy of protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception. While often touted as a means to outlaw abortion, protecting the “lives” of single-celled zygotes may also have implications for the practice …

Rwu First Amendment Blog: Diana Hassel's Blog: How Will Supreme Court Slice Wedding Cake Case 01-11-2018, Diana Hassel

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

The Loving Analogy: Race And The Early Same-Sex Marriage Debate, Samuel W D Walburn

The Purdue Historian

In the early same-sex marriage debates advocates and opponents of marriage equality often relied upon comparing mixed-race marriage jurisprudence and the Loving v Virginia decision in order to conceptualize same-sex marriage cases. Liberal commentators relied upon the analogy between the Loving decision in order to carve out space for the protection of same-sex marriage rights. Conservative scholars, however, denounced the equal protection and due process claims that relied on the sameness of race and sexuality as inexact parallels. Finally, queer and black radicals called the goal of marriage equality into question by highlighting the white supremacist and heterosexist nature of …

Introduction To Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

Book Chapters

Could a feminist perspective change the shape of the tax law? Most people understand that feminist reasoning has tremendous potential to affect, for example, the law of employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and reproductive rights. Few people may be aware, however, that feminist analysis can likewise transform tax law (as well as other statutory or code-based areas of the law). By highlighting the importance of perspective, background, and preconceptions on the reading and interpretation of statutes, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions shows what a difference feminist analysis can make to statutory interpretation. This volume, part of the Feminist Judgments Series, brings …

The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention [Batterer Intervention Program (Bip) Standards Data, As Of 2015], Carolyn B. Ramsey

Research Data

These 19 comparative data tables relating to state and local certification standards for batterer intervention programs (BIPs), as of 2015, are electronic Appendices B-T to Carolyn B. Ramsey, The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence and the Failure of Intervention, 120 Penn. St. L. Rev. 337 (2015), available at http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/56/. Appendix A is not reproduced here because it simply contains citations to the state and local standards, but it is published with the journal article.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Lorraine Lalli's Post: Judge Reeves On Racial Violence, Same-Sex Marriage, 01/12/2016, Lorraine Lalli

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Shaping Diversity And Inclusion Policy With Research, Julie Ashdown

Fordham Law Review

The legal profession in England and Wales is perceived as pale, male, and stale (that is, white, male, and older), but is that actually the case? And, if it is, what could or should a representative body like the Law Society do about it? This Article considers the situation from the perspective of solicitors. It reviews the research that the Law Society has commissioned over the last twenty years and how the findings have impacted policymaking. This Article looks at the main initiatives resulting from the research and considers whether they have made a difference and what the continuing challenges …

Foreword: Diversity In The Legal Profession: A Comparative Perspective, Deborah L. Rhode

Fordham Law Review

In principle, the legal profession in the United States and United Kingdom is deeply committed to diversity and inclusion. In practice, it lags behind. This colloquium explores what stands in the way. Leading scholars from both countries look at the gap between aspirations and achievement, and suggest some concrete strategies for change.

Busy Doing Nothing: An Exploration Of The Disconnect Between Gender Equity Issues Faced By Large Law Firms In The United Kingdom And The Diversity Management Initiatives Devised To Address Them, Savita Kumra

Fordham Law Review

The Article has three parts: the first reviews the data showing women’s increased participation in the legal sector and assesses why increased participation has not led to inclusion at senior levels. The main barriers are macro and micro processes of social reproduction, poor access to mentors and influential business networks, and gender bias in society at large.

In the second part, the response by large law firms is assessed. This has largely consisted of “business case” approaches to diversity management. The key characteristics of these approaches are presented, as is an overview of key practices adopted by large law firms. …

Going Public: Diversity Disclosures By Large U.K. Law Firms, Steven Vaughan

Fordham Law Review

The Legal Services Board (LSB) has been the parent regulator of legal services in England and Wales since 2009. Born of the wide-ranging reforms introduced by the Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA), the LSB is tasked with promoting the regulatory objectives contained within the LSA, including “encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession.” In July 2011, the LSB introduced a rule requiring the collection of data on workforce diversity and the publication of that data by the legal profession. This was the first—and indeed, is the only—direct regulatory intervention taken with regard to diversity in the legal profession. …

Bicultural Experience In The Legal Profession: A Developmental Network Approach, Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey

Fordham Law Review

A developmental network refers to the egocentric network of individuals who take an active interest in and concerted actions toward advancing a protégé’s career. In Part I of this Article, I draw upon the literature to outline the lived experiences of black lawyers, highlighting the need for them to manage their working identity. In Part II, I further develop bicultural experience as a construct for exploring racial minority experience in a professional context with recent developments from the acculturation literature. In Part III, I introduce the developmental network as a vehicle for understanding developmental relationships. Part IV summarizes the methodology …

Difference Blindness Vs. Bias Awareness: Why Law Firms With The Best Of Intentions Have Failed To Create Diverse Partnerships, Russell G. Pearce, Eli Wald, Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen

Fordham Law Review

This Article uses the example of BigLaw firms to explore the challenges that many elite organizations face in providing equal opportunity to their workers. Despite good intentions and the investment of significant resources, large law firms have been consistently unable to deliver diverse partnership structures—especially in more senior positions of power. Building on implicit and institutional bias scholarship and on successful approaches described in the organizational behavior literature, we argue that a significant barrier to systemic diversity at the law firm partnership level has been, paradoxically, the insistence on difference blindness standards that seek to evaluate each person on their …

How Diversity Can Redeem The Mcdonnell Douglas Standard: Mounting An Effective Title Vii Defense Of The Commitment To Diversity In The Legal Profession, Stacy Hawkins

Fordham Law Review

This Article undertakes an analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, of the developing body of Title VII diversity law. The jurisprudence of diversity was first developed by the U.S. Supreme Court in equal protection cases, but it has not been confined to that context. In particular, lower federal courts have been adjudicating cases asserting an interest in diversity as a means of challenging or justifying race/ethnicity- or gender-conscious policies and/or practices under Title VII. These cases have given rise to a body of Title VII diversity law that has remained largely unexplored in the scholarly literature. Because these cases have gone …

Diversity In The Legal Profession: Perspectives From Managing Partners And General Counsel, Deborah L. Rhode, Lucy Buford Ricca

Fordham Law Review

Within the American legal profession, diversity is widely embraced in principle but seldom realized in practice. Women and minorities are grossly underrepresented at the top and overrepresented at the bottom. What accounts for this disparity and what can be done to address it are the subjects of this Article. It provides the first comprehensive portrait of the problem from the vantage of leaders of the nation’s largest legal organizations. Through their perspectives, this Article seeks to identify best practices for diversity in law firms and in-house legal departments, as well as the obstacles standing in the way.

Part I begins …