Law Commons^™

Erasing Race, Llezlie Green

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Low-wage workers frequently experience exploitation, including wage theft, at the intersection of their racial identities and their economic vulnerabilities. Scholars, however, rarely consider the role of wage and hwur exploitation in broader racial subordination frameworks. This Essay considers the narratives that have informed the detachment of racial justice from the worker exploitation narrative and the distancing of economic justice from the civil rights narrative. It then contends that social movements, like the Fight for $15, can disrupt narrow understandings of low-wage worker exploitation and proffer more nuanced narratives that connect race, economic justice, and civil rights to a broader antisubordination …

Equality Is A Brokered Idea, Robert Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay examines the Supreme Court's stunning decision in the census case, Department of Commerce v. New York. I characterize Chief Justice John Roberts' decision to side with the liberals as an example of pursuing the ends of equality by other means – this time, through the rule of reason. Although the appeal was limited in scope, the stakes for political and racial equality were sky high. In blocking the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, 5 members of the Court found the justification the administration gave to be a pretext. In this instance, that lie …

Reclaiming The Navajo Range: Resolving The Conflict Between Grazing Rights And Development, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Grazing is fundamental to Navajo identity, yet management of the Navajo range remains highly problematic. This Essay connects the federal government's devastating livestock reduction effort of the 1930s with the inability of the Navajo Nation to place meaningful limits on grazing and the power of grazing permittees. It argues that the Navajo Nation should consider reasserting the tribe's traditional understanding that property rights depend on use as a way to create space for reservation development.

Looking For Competencies In All Of The Right Places, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Collective Representation And Employee Voice In The U.S. Public Sector Workplace: Looking North For Solutions?, Martin H. Malin

All Faculty Scholarship

Legislation enacted in many states following the 2010 elections in the United States strengthened unilateral public employer control and weakened employee voice. This rebalancing of power occurred in the context of state public employee labour relations acts modeled on the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), but with a narrower scope of bargaining than in the private sector. This narrow scope channels unions’ voice away from the quality of public services and towards protecting members from the effects of decisions unilaterally imposed by management. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that the freedom of association guaranteed by the Charter of …

What Marriage Equality Arguments Portend For Domestic Partner Employee Benefits, Nancy Polikoff

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Unmasking A Pretext For Res Ipsa Loquitur: A Proposal To Let Employment Discrimination Speak For Itself, William R. Corbett

Journal Articles

Has too much tort law been incorporated into the case law under the federal employment discrimination statutes? The debate on this issue has been reinvigorated by the Supreme Court’s decision in Staub v. Proctor Hospital, 131 S. Ct. 1186 (2011). In Staub the Court referred to the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, a federal employment discrimination statute, as a “federal tort.” The Court then adopted the tort doctrine of proximate cause as the standard for evaluating subordinate bias (or “cat’s paw”) liability. Staub was not the first case in which the Court has suggested that a federal employment …

Danbury Hatters In Sweden: An American Perspective Of Employer Remedies For Illegal Collective Actions, César F. Rosado Marzán, Margot Nikitas

All Faculty Scholarship

The European Court of Justice's ("ECJ") Laval quartet held that worker collective actions that impacted freedom of services and establishment in the E.U. violated E.U. law. After Laval, the Swedish Labor Court imposed exemplary or punitive damages on labor unions for violating E.U. law. These cases have generated critical discussions regarding not only the proper balance between markets and workers’ freedom of association, but also what should be the proper remedies for employers who suffer illegal actions by labor unions under E.U. law. While any reforms to rebalance fundamental freedoms as a result of the Laval quartet will have to …

Punishment And Work Law Compliance: Lessons From Chile, César F. Rosado Marzán

All Faculty Scholarship

Workplace law activists and reformers find it increasingly more difficult to obtain redress for violation of workers’ rights. Some of them are calling for stricter enforcement and tougher penalties to bring employers into compliance. However, after seven and half months of participant observation at the Labor Directorate and the labor courts of Chile, institutions that use punishment as their main tools of enforcement, I am skeptical about the likelihood of success of mere punishment for effective workplace law enforcement and compliance. I am skeptical even though Chile is a country recognized as the Latin American “jaguar” for its successful economy …

Hotness Discrimination: Appearance Discrimination As A Mirror For Reflecting On The Body Of Employment Discrimination Law, William R. Corbett

Journal Articles

This essay considers the topic of appearance-based employment discrimination. The essay introduces the topic by juxtaposing the “hot” story of the summer, the bank employee who claims that she was fired for “being too hot,” with Professor Deborah Rhode’s recently published book, The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law. In the essay, I argue that although appearance discrimination is one of the most common forms of discrimination in employment and other areas of life and generally is regarded as at least unfair and perhaps immoral, neither federal nor many state employment discrimination laws will be amended …

Review Of 'Understanding Labor And Employment Law In China' By Ronald C. Brown, Nicholas C. Howson

Law & Economics Working Papers

Review of Ronald C. Brown's UNDERSTANDING LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT LAW IN CHINA (Cambridge University Press, 2010) which review describes an alternative way of describing and analyzing law and legal institutions in contemporary China generally, and labor law specifically.

Babbling About Employment Discrimination Law: Does The Builder Understand The Blueprint For The Great Tower?, William R. Corbett

Journal Articles

The article focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in which the Court held that a plaintiff asserting an intentional age discrimination claim cannot avail himself of the mixed-motives proof structure and instead must prove but-for causation. Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 129 S. Ct. 2343 (2009). The decision was controversial, and it has provoked calls for a legislative response. My article considers Gross from two perspectives. First, Gross is the second Supreme Court decision, following Desert Palace, Inc. v. Costa, 539 U.S. 90 (2003), to interpret the effects of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 on the …

The Role Of Erisa Preemption In Health Reform: Opportunities And Limits, Peter D. Jacobson

O'Neill Institute Papers

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) is a federal law regulating the administration of private employer-sponsored benefits including health benefits (i.e., health insurance offered by an employer). In general, since the federal government has exercised its authority to preempt state regulation of the administration of private employer-sponsored health plans, states are blocked from enforcing laws interfering with ERISA.

As many states pursue health care reform experiments, ERISA preemption becomes relevant as a potential limit on the scope and type of reforms states are able to enact. The dominant trend in ERISA litigation has been to preempt state legislation and …

Gender Equality In Reconciling Work And Childcare In South Korea, Kook Hee Lee

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

This paper presents an ideal legislative model for South Korea to realize gender equality in reconciling work and childcare. The comparative study on the U.S. and German system is the basis for the legislative model. This paper selects the U.S. and German systems as a comparison group because they are representing the equal treatment approach and special treatment approach in the feminist legal theory. The current system in South Korea fails to realize gender equality because it provides maternity leave exclusive to women to limit women’s right to work and lacks financial support for parental leave. Maternity leave limits women’s …

Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs In Federal Court: From Bad To Worse?, Kevin M. Clermont, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article utilizes the Administrative Office's data to convey the realities of federal employment discrimination litigation. Litigants in these "jobs" cases appeal more often than other litigants, with the defendants doing far better on those appeals than the plaintiffs. These troublesome facts help explain why today fewer plaintiffs are undertaking the frustrating route into federal district court, where plaintiffs must pursue their claims relatively often all the way through trial and where at both pretrial and trial these plaintiffs lose unusually often.

Fixing Employment Discrimination Law, William R. Corbett

Journal Articles

Employment discrimination law in the United States is "broken." The proof structures that are used to analyze claims,rule on motions, and instruct juries are fraught with crucial uncertainties. The state of disrepair is so bad that lawyers and judges do not know how to analyze any given case. It is time for Congress to repair the proof structures through legislation, and it is a propitious time to do so. This article proposes the repairs that Congress should enact.

Erisa Misrepresentation And Nondisclosure Claims: Securities Litigation Under The Guise Of Erisa?, Clovis Trevino Bravo

Georgetown Law Student Series

In the wake of recent corporate scandals and dramatic market downturns, many employees whose retirement savings plans were heavily invested in the stock of their employer have seen their account balances substantially depleted. To recover for their losses, plan participants have filed lawsuits under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) alleging that plan fiduciaries made misrepresentations or failed to disclose material information about the suitability of investing in the company stock. These suits are generally derivative or companion cases to securities class actions based on the same allegations of misrepresentations or nondisclosures. Even though there is a significant overlap …

Michelle Obama: The "Darker Side" Of Presidential Spousal Involvement And Activism, Gregory S. Parks, Quinetta M. Roberson, Phd

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Pundits and commentators have attempted to make sense of the role that race and gender have played in the 2008 presidential campaign. Whereas researchers are drawing on varying bodies of scholarship (legal, cognitive and social psychology, and political science) to illuminate the role that Senator Obama’s race and Senator Clinton’s gender has/had on their campaign, Michelle Obama has been left out of the discussion. As Senator Clinton once noted, elections are like hiring decisions. As such, new frontiers in employment discrimination law place Michelle Obama in context within the current presidential campaign. First, racism and sexism are both alive and …

Summary Judgment Rates Over Time, Across Case Categories, And Across Districts: An Empirical Study Of Three Large Federal Districts, Theodore Eisenberg, Charlotte Lanvers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Prior research on summary judgment hypothesizes a substantial increase in summary judgment rates after a trilogy of Supreme Court cases in 1986 and a disproportionate adverse effect of summary judgment on civil rights cases. This article analyzes summary judgment rates in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (EDPA) and the Northern District of Georgia (NDGA), for two time periods, 1980-81 and 2001-02. It also analyzes summary judgment rates for the Central District of California (CDCA) for 1980-81 and for other civil rights cases in the CDCA in 1975-76. The combined sample consists of over 5,000 cases. The three-district sample for 1980-81 …

Exploring The Impact Of The Marriage Amendments: Can Public Employers Offer Domestic Partner Benefits To Their Gay And Lesbian Employees?, Tiffany C. Graham

Working Paper Series

The article focuses on an issue that is shaping up to be the new front in the same-sex marriage wars: whether applying the terms of the more broadly-constructed amendments to public employers will bar them from offering domestic partner benefits to their gay and lesbian employees. The first part of the article offers an overview of domestic partner benefits plans and discusses the manner in which they are currently being threatened by the more broadly-constructed marriage amendments. The second part takes a close look at the litigation in National Pride at Work v. Michigan. This case represents the first time …

Do Cognitive Biases Affect Adjudication?: A Study Of Labor Arbitrators (With Monica Biernat), Martin H. Malin, Monica Biernat

All Faculty Scholarship

Labor arbitrators were presented with four cases to decide, each involving a challenge to discipline or discharge of an employee resulting from a work-family conflict. Arbitrators were randomly given versions of the cases in which the gender and one other characteristivc of the employee were varied. The results showed little evidence of direct gender bias in decision-making but did reflect bias against single parents and employees with eldercare, as opposed to childcare, responsibilities. Implications for other adjudicators, including judges, jurors and administrative agency officials are discussed.

Due Process In Employment Arbitration: The State Of The Law And The Need For Self-Regulation, Martin H. Malin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Labor Unions: A Corporatist Institution In A Competitive World, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

Union membership, as a percentage of the private sector workforce, has been in decline for 50 years. I argue that the cause of this unrelenting decline is a single, fundamental factor – the change in the United States economy from a corporatist-regulated economy to one based on free competition. Most labor commentators have explained the decline by a confluence of unrelated economic and legal forces. Labor economists typically stress economic explanations, which vary from compositional shifts in the job structure to increased competition both domestically and internationally. On the other hand, labor law commentators naturally focus on labor law explanations, …

Cultural Communities In A Global Labor Market: Immigration Restrictions As Residential Segregation, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

Economists recognize that nations can gain from trade through not only the free movement of goods across national boundaries but also the free movement of services, capital, and labor across national boundaries. Despite the presumption that economic theory raises in favor of international labor mobility, the nations of the world maintain restrictions on immigration and show little inclination to liberalize these barriers significantly. Michael Walzer defends immigration restrictions as policies necessary to maintain distinct cultural communities and rejects the alternative of voluntary residential segregation at the local level. I argue that we should instead prefer voluntary segregation at the local …

New International Human Rights Standards On Unauthorized Immigrant Worker Rights: Seizing An Opportunity To Pull Governments Out Of The Shadows, Beth Lyon

Working Paper Series

Governments cannot ignore international human rights standards for unauthorized migrant workers forever. This chapter presents a call for comparative work on the issue of the legal regimes affecting unauthorized immigrant workers in order to bring governments into greater awareness and compliance with their obligations to unauthorized immigrant workers.

Global illegal migration by laborers seeking economic opportunities is expanding, resulting in an increasing number of migrants in every country who are working in violation of immigration laws. Unauthorized immigrant workers are numerous enough to form a recognizable group in every major world economy, because most receiving countries have immigration laws that …

Latino Inter-Ethnic Discrimination And The "Diversity Defense", Tanya K. Hernandez

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

With the growing racial and ethnic diversity of the U.S. population and workforce, scholars have begun to address the ways in which coalition building across groups will continue to be necessary but will become even more complex. The growing scholarship has focused on analyzing how best to promote effective coalition building. Thus far, scholars have not examined what that growing racial and ethnic diversity will mean in the individuated context of racial and ethnic discrimination claims. In other words, what will anti-discrimination litigation look like when all the parties involved are non-White but a racial hierarchy is alleged to exist …

Freeing Racial Harassment From The Sexual Harassment Model, Pat K. Chew

Articles

Judges, academics, and lawyers alike base their legal analyses of workplace racial harassment on the sexual harassment model. Legal principles derived from sexual harassment jurisprudence are presumed to be equally appropriate for racial harassment cases. The implicit assumption is that the social harms and public policy goals of racial harassment and sexual harassment are sufficiently similar to justify analogous scrutiny and remedies. Parties to racial harassment cases cite the reasoning and elements of sexual harassment cases without hesitation, as if racial harassment and sexual harassment are behaviorally and legally indistinguishable.

This Article, however, questions the assumption that there should be …

Retaliation, Deborah Brake

Articles

This Article takes a comprehensive look at retaliation and its place in discrimination law. The Article begins by examining current social science literature to understand how retaliation operates as a social practice to silence challenges to discrimination and preserve inequality. Then, using the recent controversy over whether to imply a private right of action for retaliation from a general ban on discrimination as a launching point, the Article theorizes the connections between retaliation and discrimination as legal constructs, and contends that retaliation should be viewed as a species of intentional discrimination. The Article argues that situating retaliation as a practice …

Employment Discrimination In A High Velocity Labor Market, Alan Hyde

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

Silicon Valley employers employ few African-Americans, Latino/as, or older workers, yet do not fit the usual paradigms of employment discrimination: they exhibit no taste for uniformity and do not employ job tournaments or internal labor markets. A new model of employment discrimination attributes disparate hiring in Silicon Valley to a combination of: demands for specific skill sets at hiring (the opposite of the subjective criteria that have long beguiled scholars of discrimination) and concomitant refusal to train; hiring through networks of personal contacts; and rewards to career paths that alternate employment with self-employment. Overcoming the disparate impact of these employment …

Neutrality Agreements And Card Check Recognition: Prospects For Changing Paradigms, James J. Brudney

The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Working Paper Series

This article is the first comprehensive treatment of neutrality agreements, which are themselves the most important development in Labor Law for decades. The labor movement's new approach to organizing displaces NLRB-supervised elections with negotiated agreements that provide (i) for employers to remain neutral during an upcoming union campaign, and (ii), in most instances, for employees to decide if they want to be represented through signing authorization cards rather than through a secret ballot election. The article demonstrates the substantial, perhaps predominant, role played by this new contractually-based approach over the past 5-10 years; it also explains why so many employers …