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Social and Behavioral Sciences

2001

Civil rights

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Buffalo's "Prophet Of Protest": The Political Leadership And Activism Of Reverend Dr. Bennett W. Smith, Sr., Sherri Wallace Jun 2001

Buffalo's "Prophet Of Protest": The Political Leadership And Activism Of Reverend Dr. Bennett W. Smith, Sr., Sherri Wallace

Sherri L. Wallace

Recently voted as one of Western New York's most influential people for the twentieth century (Gallivan 1999), the Reverend Dr. [Bennett W. Smith, Sr.] Sr.'s own electoral and political activism clearly emanate from the ethical expressions of the social justice ministry of his late friend and comrade, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King characterized social justice in terms of "comprehensive social empowerment." He believed that freedom for African-Americans without empowerment (i.e. "Civil Rights"), land and/or other social/economic resources, was not "true" freedom (Walker 1991, 24). King's philosophy, similar to Stokely Carmichael's view of "Black Power," articulated a "call …


"Thou Shalt Not Put A Stumbling Block Before The Blind": The Americans With Disabilities Act And Public Transit For The Disabled, Michael E Lewyn Jun 2001

"Thou Shalt Not Put A Stumbling Block Before The Blind": The Americans With Disabilities Act And Public Transit For The Disabled, Michael E Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ordered local governments to make bus and train systems more accessible to the disabled. The ADA imposed costly requirements upon local public transit systems but did not give local governments funds with which to satisfy this mandate. By reducing the funds available to transit systems, the ADA has sometimes forced cutbacks in transit service for everyone (including, ironically, the disabled to the extent that disabled people were able to use public transit before the ADA's enactment). Thus, the ADA has occasionally been counterproductive.

The root cause of the ADA's inadequacy is that the ADA …


School Liability For Peer Sexual Harassment After Davis: Shifting From Intent To Causation In Discrimination Law, Deborah L. Brake Jan 2001

School Liability For Peer Sexual Harassment After Davis: Shifting From Intent To Causation In Discrimination Law, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

This essay seeks to explain the Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education case as an interpretation of discrimination that notably and correctly focuses on how institutions cause sex-based harm, rather than on whether officials within chose institutions act with a discriminatory intent. In the process, I discuss what appears to be the implicit theory of discrimination underlying the Davis decision: that schools cause the discrimination by exacerbating the harm that results from sexual harassment by students. I then explore the significance of the deliberate indifference requirement in this context, concluding that the standard, for all its flaws, is distinct …