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2013

Equal protection

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Challenging The Death Penalty With Statistics: Furman, Mccleskey And A Single County Case Study, Steven Shatz, Teresa Dalton Mar 2013

Challenging The Death Penalty With Statistics: Furman, Mccleskey And A Single County Case Study, Steven Shatz, Teresa Dalton

Steven F. Shatz

In the forty year history of the Supreme Court's modern death penalty jurisprudence, two cases — Furman v. Georgia (1972) and McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) — stand out above all others. Both cases turned on the Court's consideration of empirical evidence, but they appear to have reached divergent — even altogether inconsistent—results. In Furman, the Court relied on statistical evidence that the death penalty was infrequently applied to death-eligible defendants to hold that the Georgia death penalty scheme was unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In McCleskey, the Court, despite being presented with statistical evidence that race played a significant role …

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Urban Bias, Rural Sexual Minorities, And The Courts, Luke Boso Dec 2012

Urban Bias, Rural Sexual Minorities, And The Courts, Luke Boso

Luke A. Boso

Urban bias shapes social perceptions about sexual minorities. Predominant cultural narratives geographically situate sexual minorities in urban gay communities, dictate the contours of how to be a modern gay person, and urge sexual minorities to “come out” and assimilate into gay communities and culture. This Article contests the urban presumption commonly applied to all sexual minorities and focuses specifically on how it affects rural sexual minorities, who remain largely invisible in the public discourse about sexuality and equality.

This Article makes two important contributions. First, by exposing urban bias, it contributes to a broader discussion about how law and society …

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