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Boston University School of Law

Faculty Scholarship

Series

2018

Supreme Court

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

A Few Observations About The Curious State Of Massachusetts Labor Law: Public-Sector Unions After Janus, Maria O'Brien Jan 2018

A Few Observations About The Curious State Of Massachusetts Labor Law: Public-Sector Unions After Janus, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

This essay focuses on this hurried, even panicked response to Janus in Massachusetts and evaluates the likely outcome that encouraging a public union to treat member employees in one way and non-member employees in a distinctly less generous way will have for employees and the unions. I begin, in Part II, by noting (and explaining) the first and most apparent oddity in this story: why is an employer - i.e. the state - rushing to help its putative, arms-length bargaining partners? In Massachusetts, there are many different public-sector unions. School teachers, 13 firefighters,14 clerical workers, 15 state and local …


Obama's Conversion On Same-Sex Marriage: The Social Foundations Of Individual Rights, Robert L. Tsai Jan 2018

Obama's Conversion On Same-Sex Marriage: The Social Foundations Of Individual Rights, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores how presidents who wish to seize a leadership role over the development of rights must tend to the social foundations of those rights. Broad cultural changes alone do not guarantee success, nor do they dictate the substance of constitutional ideas. Rather, presidential aides must actively re-characterize the social conditions in which rights are made, disseminated, and enforced. An administration must articulate a strategically plausible theory of a particular right, ensure there is cultural and institutional support for that right, and work to minimize blowback. Executive branch officials must seek to transform and popularize legal concepts while working …


From Loving V. Virginia To Washington V. Davis: The Erosion Of The Supreme Court's Equal Protection Intent Analysis, Angela Onwuachi-Willig Jan 2018

From Loving V. Virginia To Washington V. Davis: The Erosion Of The Supreme Court's Equal Protection Intent Analysis, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

In 1967, the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion that contained its most searing and explicit condemnation of white supremacy: Loving v. Virginia. At issue in Loving was the constitutionality of a statutory scheme in the state of Virginia that prohibited marriages between individuals solely on the basis of race. Among other things, provisions in this statutory scheme punished intermarriage between a "white person" and a "colored person," meaning not only Blacks, but also Asian Americans and American Indians who did not fall under the Pocahontas Exception. The provisions also punished evasion of the state's interracial marriage ban by …