Law Commons^™

Constitutional Law—State Employees Have Private Cause Of Action Against Employers Under Family And Medical Leave Act—Nevada Department Of Human Resources V. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721 (2003)., Gabriel H. Teninbaum

ExpressO

The Eleventh Amendment of the United States Constitution provides that non-consenting states are not subject to suit in federal court. Congress may, however, abrogate the states’ sovereign immunity by enacting legislation to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the Supreme Court of the United States considered whether Congress acted within its constitutional authority by abrogating sovereign immunity under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which allows private causes of action against state employers to enforce the FMLA’s family-leave provision. The Court held abrogation was proper under the FMLA and state …

The Best Interest Standard: How Broad Judicial Discretion And Influences Of Social And Political Suggestion Have Led To An Abandonment Of The Rule’S Primary Purpose In Child Custody Decisions, Lakeisha J. Johnson

ExpressO

The vital questions in child custody disputes all concern that which is in the best interest of the child. Historically, interpretations of the “best interest” standard have been founded upon presumptions steeped in the notion of natural rights and duties based largely upon a mix of scientific and subjective conclusions regarding gender-based parenting roles and the need to sustain them. My research demonstrates that, as courts attempt to avoid the decisions of the past and submit to the societal will of the present, the modern application of the “best interest of the child” standard has led unexpectedly to an abandonment …

The Grammar Of Incest: Boundary Violation, Disgust, And The Slippery Slope Trope, Courtney M. Cahill

ExpressO

This Article examines the role that the incest taboo has played in shaping a normative vision of the family in the law, and argues that the law must reappraise the extent to which disgust, rather than reasoned argument, sustains laws governing sexual and familial choice. It takes issue with the claim that discussion of the taboo has led to its erosion, and contends that it has remained a powerful symbol of non-normative sexuality that is used as the extreme case against which kinship relations are measured. In order to explain why the taboo has persisted over time as a point …

Paradoxes Of Health And Equality: When A Boy Becomes A Girl, Noa Ben-Asher

ExpressO

This paper is about an unusual child custody dispute between the parents of a six-year-old child and the child welfare services of Franklin County, Ohio. The conflict emerged when the child’s parents complied with their male child’s professed desire to be treated as a girl by attempting to enroll the child in the first grade as a girl. The paper treats this case as an exemplary test-case of contemporary co-dependence between scientific-medical discourse and liberal-rights discourse. The paper analyzes the positions of the two sides of the custody dispute according to the classic modern distinction between mind and body. On …

Intersexuality And Universal Marriage, Michael L. Rosin

ExpressO

The proposed Federal Marriage Amendment would raise to the constitutional level the traditional understanding of marriage as the union of one woman and one man. In so doing it would raise to the constitutional level the questions of who is a woman and who is a man. There is currently no settled case or statute law answering these questions. A 1979 Australian annulment case declaring a husband with XX sex chromosomes to be neither a man nor a woman demonstrates the law’s inability to deal with the physically intersexed. Legal scholars defending the traditional view of marriage cite 19th century …

Textual Harassment: A New Historicist Reappraisal With Gender In Mind, Hila Keren

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Sex, Lies, And Clients: From Bill Clinton To Oscar Wilde, Steven Lubet

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Alley Behind First Street, Northeast: Criminal Abortion In The Nation's Capital 1873-1973, Douglas R. Miller

ExpressO

The thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade found our country no less divided over abortion than it was during the era of its prohibition. As the bitter struggle over judicial nominations throughout the present administration suggests, abortion’s future remains at the forefront of American political debate.

In their push for increased limitations, abortion opponents generally overlook the historical consequences of prohibition. Abortion rights proponents often invoke history in their opposition to new restrictions, but tend to do so superficially, and only in a manner that supports their position.

This article attempts a more complex study of criminal abortion’s legal and …

Textual Harassment: A New Historicist Reappraisal, Hila Keren

ExpressO

This year marks the four hundredth anniversary of the Parol Evidence Rule, the rule that dictates that the interpretation of a written contract should be determined solely according to its text and not influenced by prior contradictory external information. This article uses the occasion to offer a fresh interdisciplinary view of the Rule. The analysis presents a unique contribution to the heated debate regarding the desired levels of formalism and textualism in present-day contract law, by using New-Historicist tools.

Unexplored aspects of the roots of the Rule are illuminated through an in-depth investigation of the first case of the contractual …

Morals-Based Justifications For Lawmaking: Before And After Lawrence V. Texas, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

Morals-Based Justifications for Lawmaking: Before and After Lawrence v. Texas looks in depth at the dissonance between the Supreme Court’s rhetorical support for morals-based lawmaking and the Court’s jurisprudence. In taking this approach, the article responds to a central post-Lawrence question regarding the sufficiency of a government’s moral agenda as a justification for restricting individual rights. It turns out, on close review of the cases going back to the mid-1800s, that the Court has almost never relied explicitly on a morals rationale to sustain an allegedly rights-infringing government action.

The article develops several explanations for this avoidance of explicit morals …

International Child Abductions: The Challenges Facing America , Charles F. Hall

ExpressO

International child abductors often escape domestic law enforcement and disappear without consequence or resolution. International child abductions occur too frequently; in the United States alone, the number of children abducted abroad every year has risen to over 1,000. Currently, 11,000 American children live abroad with their abductors. These abductions occur despite international treaties and the Congressional resolutions that have significantly stiffened the penalties for those caught. Effectively combating international child abductions requires drafting resolutions that are acceptable across the diverse societies and cultures of the international community. Without such resolutions to fill the gaps of current treaties this problem will …

Equality Without Tiers, Suzanne Goldberg

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

No abstract provided.

Abstinence-Only Adolescent Education: Ineffective, Unpopular And Unconstitutional, James J. Mcgrath

ExpressO

This article examines the recent changes in the funding of “abstinence only” educational programs that attempt to reduce the incidence of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Although funding for these programs was previously ruled to be facially constitutional, this is no longer the case as their lack of efficacy for their stated purpose has been exposed. Newer programs are in direct violation of unconstitutional conditions doctrine, and none of these programs address a significant segment of the student population, lesbian and gay students. My article addresses this oversight as dangerous public health policy as well as a potential constitutional …

Lawrence V. Texas: When Profound And Deep Convictions Collide With Liberty Interests, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Essay offers a brief analysis of Lawrence v. Texas, arguing that Justice Kennedy's recognition of a liberty interest is preferable to the Equal Protection analysis urged by the Petitioners and advanced by Justice O'Connor. Equality arguments based on orientation and group affiliation in the absence of a core right to sexual autonomy reinforce a view of stable gay identities that is ultimately disingenuous and disempowering. After seventeen years of attempts by pro-gay advocates to bifurcate conduct from status and sidestep Bowers v. Hardwick, Justice Kennedy's majority opinion has conclusively put the sex back into homosexual. Under Equal Protection analysis, …

A New Image In The Looking Glass: Faculty Mentoring, Invitational Rhetoric, And The Second-Class Status Of Women In U.S. Academia, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

This article maintains that because Title VII alone does not have the ability to further the progress women have made in academic hiring, retention, and promotion, looking to remedies in addition to Title VII will be advantageous in helping to improve the status of women in U.S. academia. The article suggests as an additional remedy the implementation of faculty mentoring opportunities for junior female faculty members. A key way of initiating and furthering such mentoring opportunities is a type of discourse called invitational rhetoric, which is “an invitation to understanding as a means to create...relationship[s] rooted in equality, immanent value, …

Econometric Analyses Of U.S. Abortion Policy: A Critical Review, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.