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Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Law

Federal Jurisdiction - Doctrine Of Equitable Abstention Applied To Civil Rights Case, David W. Robertson Dec 2012

Federal Jurisdiction - Doctrine Of Equitable Abstention Applied To Civil Rights Case, David W. Robertson

Dr David Robertson

No abstract provided.


Limited Leverage: Federal Remedies And Policing Reform, Rachel A. Harmon Nov 2012

Limited Leverage: Federal Remedies And Policing Reform, Rachel A. Harmon

Rachel A. Harmon

With respect to deterring police misconduct, federal remedies are almost as good as they are ever going to get. Federal remedies for police misconduct, and most other remedies for misconduct, promote change by making misconduct costly for police departments and municipalities. Improving federal remedies would encourage some additional departments to seek the positive expected return on reform measures likely to reduce misconduct. But existing federal remedies all focus on either increasing the cost of misconduct or reducing its benefits. The problem is that even if existing federal remedies are altered to maximize deterrence, they cannot be employed to impose a …


Equality Standards For Health Insurance Coverage: Will The Mental Health Parity And Addiction Equity Act End The Discrimination?, Ellen M. Weber Oct 2012

Equality Standards For Health Insurance Coverage: Will The Mental Health Parity And Addiction Equity Act End The Discrimination?, Ellen M. Weber

Ellen M. Weber

Congress enacted the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008 to end discriminatory health insurance coverage for persons with mental health and substance use disorders in large employer health plans. Adopting a comprehensive regulatory approach akin to other civil rights laws, the Parity Act requires “equity” in all plan features, including cost-sharing, durational limits and, most critically, the plan management practices that are used to deny many families medically necessary behavioral health care. Beginning in 2014, all health plans regulated by the Affordable Care Act must also comply with parity standards, effectively ending the second-class insurance status of …


Conceptualizing Constitutional Litigation As Anti-Government Expression: A Speech-Centered Theory Of Court Access, Robert L. Tsai Aug 2012

Conceptualizing Constitutional Litigation As Anti-Government Expression: A Speech-Centered Theory Of Court Access, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This Article proposes a speech-based right of court access. First, it finds the traditional due process approach to be analytically incoherent and of limited practical value. Second, it contends that history, constitutional structure, and theory all support conceiving of the right of access as the modern analogue to the right to petition government for redress. Third, the Article explores the ways in which the civil rights plaintiff's lawsuit tracks the behavior of the traditional dissident. Fourth, by way of a case study, the essay argues that recent restrictions - notably, a congressional limitation on the amount of fees counsel for …


The Bill Of Rights And The Emerging Democracies, Jacek Kurczewski, Barry Sullivan Aug 2012

The Bill Of Rights And The Emerging Democracies, Jacek Kurczewski, Barry Sullivan

Barry Sullivan

Today, the influence of the US Bill of Rights can be traced through its remote offspring, including the Helsinki Agreement, the German Basic Law, the post-war French constitutions, and the European Convention on Human Rights. These documents have influenced recent developments in the emerging democracies of eastern and central Europe.


Are Same-Sex Marriages Really A Threat To Religious Liberty?, Eric Alan Isaacson Apr 2012

Are Same-Sex Marriages Really A Threat To Religious Liberty?, Eric Alan Isaacson

Eric Alan Isaacson

Some have contended that same-sex couples' marriages pose a grave danger to the religious liberty of social conservatives whose faith traditions do not bless same-sex unions. Those who oppose recognizing same-sex couples' right to marry have even contended that their clergy and churches might be subject to hate-crime prosecutions and loss of tax-exempt status if same-sex couples may lawfully marriage. This article seeks to answer those objections, pointing out that many limitations on religious marriages -- such as Roman Catholic doctrine barring remarriage by those who are civilly divorced -- parallel religious rules similarly limiting or withholding recognition from same-sex …


Illegal Emigration: The Continuing Life Of Invalid Deportation Orders, Richard Frankel Feb 2012

Illegal Emigration: The Continuing Life Of Invalid Deportation Orders, Richard Frankel

Richard Frankel

Federal appeals courts overturn more than one thousand deportation orders every year. A significant number of those reversals involve non-citizens who are abroad because they have been deported as a result of losing their cases at the administrative level. Although an order overturning a deportation order ordinarily restores non-citizens to their prior status of being lawfully present in the United States, federal immigration authorities have used the fact of the non-citizen’s now-invalidated deportation to subject such non-citizens to a new and previously inapplicable set of standards that has the effect of preventing them from returning. Under this practice, non-citizens who …


Children, Chimps, And Rights Arguments From "Marginal" Cases, Richard Cupp Feb 2012

Children, Chimps, And Rights Arguments From "Marginal" Cases, Richard Cupp

Richard L. Cupp Jr.

Are animals the new children regarding legal personhood and rights? Animal law is likely the fastest-growing course offering in United States law schools over the past decade. The core question in this subject is how close law should come to treating animals like humans, with the penultimate issue being whether animals should be granted legal personhood status and some legal rights. Most writers addressing this issue, including prominent scholars such as Cass Sunstein, Lawrence Tribe, Martha Nussbaum and Alan Dershowitz, have supported extending a legal rights paradigm to at least some animals. A thesis that is often called the “argument …


Screaming To Be Heard: Black Feminism And The Fight For A Voice From The 1950s - 1970s, Preston D. Mitchum Feb 2012

Screaming To Be Heard: Black Feminism And The Fight For A Voice From The 1950s - 1970s, Preston D. Mitchum

Preston D. Mitchum

No abstract provided.


Accommodating Vulnerability, Annette Ruth Appell Jan 2012

Accommodating Vulnerability, Annette Ruth Appell

annette appell

Unlike other social categories, such as race, gender, sexual identity, and disability, the category of childhood has received little critical examination in the legal academy. Like other socio-legal categories with natural referents, however, childhood masks the contingency and normativity of behavior, expectations, power, and regulation, rendering the social order natural and inevitable. Childhood also scripts behavior and produces subordination and privilege in a manner unique to the adult–child dichotomy, but which also intersects with class, gender, race, sexuality, sexual identity, and ability. As such, the category bears examination not only for what it reveals about ourselves—adults, but also how to …


Common-Law Interpretation Of Appropriate Education: The Road Not Taken In Rowley, Mark C. Weber Jan 2012

Common-Law Interpretation Of Appropriate Education: The Road Not Taken In Rowley, Mark C. Weber

Mark C. Weber

Thirty years old in 2012, Board of Education v. Rowley is the case that established a some-benefit or floor-of-opportunity standard for the services public school districts must provide to children who have disabilities. But the some-benefit approach is by no means the only one the Court could have adopted. It could have endorsed the view of the lower courts that each child with a disability must be given the opportunity to achieve his or her potential commensurate with the opportunity offered other children. Or it could have adopted a standard based on achievement of the child’s full potential or the …


Inside The Civil Rights Ring: Statutory Jabs And Constitutional Haymakers, Aaron J. Shuler Dec 2011

Inside The Civil Rights Ring: Statutory Jabs And Constitutional Haymakers, Aaron J. Shuler

Aaron J Shuler

Civil rights litigators use statutory and constitutional attacks to combat inequality. Each approach has its advantages and drawbacks developed through interpretation by U.S. courts. The first major decision that shaped modern civil rights was the Civil Rights Cases that dodged a constitutional attack to withdraw most private acts of discrimination out of reach until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and validated in Heart of Atlanta v. U.S. In addition to the coupling of statutory attacks with private discrimination and constitutional challenges to state biases, statutory attacks have proven to be more adept at addressing disparate impacts as …


The Long And Winding Road From Monroe To Connick, Sheldon Nahmod Dec 2011

The Long And Winding Road From Monroe To Connick, Sheldon Nahmod

Sheldon Nahmod

In this article, I address the historical and doctrinal development of § 1983 local government liability, beginning with Monroe v. Pape in 1961 and culminating in the Supreme Court’s controversial 2011 failure to train decision in Connick v. Thompson. Connick has made it exceptionally difficult for § 1983 plaintiffs to prevail against local governments in failure to train cases. In the course of my analysis, I also consider the oral argument and opinions in Connick as well as various aspects of § 1983 doctrine. I ultimately situate Connick in the Court’s federalism jurisprudence which doubles back to Justice Frankfurter’s view …