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Articles 1 - 30 of 30
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Era Brief October 2021, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
The Era Brief October 2021, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
We are excited to return to campus and rejoin the vibrant law school community. Our work at the ERA Project has taken on a renewed sense of urgency as we seek to advance sex equality in a time when the right to bodily autonomy is under threat from restrictions on reproductive and transgender rights.
The Equal Rights Amendment And The Equality Act: Talking Points, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
The Equal Rights Amendment And The Equality Act: Talking Points, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed nearly 100 years ago, is still needed today.
- The ERA is a constitutional amendment that would protect against discrimination on the basis of sex—including on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
- The ERA would also usher in advancements in sex equality in all three branches of government, empower advocates, and encourage recognition of related forms of discrimination such as pregnancy discrimination.
- By including the ERA in our Constitution, the United States would catch up with the more than 100 other countries with constitutional protections against sex-based discrimination.
The Equal Rights Amendment And The Equality Act: Two Equality Measures Explained, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
The Equal Rights Amendment And The Equality Act: Two Equality Measures Explained, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
When the United States Constitution was written in 1787, its defining phrase “We the people” did not include women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, or immigrants. In 2021, these groups, among others, still lack fundamental equality under the law. Two pieces of legislation are pending in Congress that would strengthen legal protections against discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity: the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the Equality Act.
The Era Brief June 2021, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
The Era Brief June 2021, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
At the ERA Project we get asked all the time: “Why do we need the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)?” “Doesn’t the Constitution already prohibit sex discrimination?” “What difference would it make to add explicit sex discrimination protections in the Constitution as the 28th Amendment?”
Religion's Ascension To A Top-Tier Right During Covid: New Report Unpacks The Supreme Court’S Recent Religious Liberty Cases, Law, Rights, And Religion Project
Religion's Ascension To A Top-Tier Right During Covid: New Report Unpacks The Supreme Court’S Recent Religious Liberty Cases, Law, Rights, And Religion Project
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
A new report released by The Law, Rights, and Religion Project (LRRP) at Columbia Law School — We The People (of Faith): The Supremacy of Religious Rights in the Shadow of a Pandemic — shows how the Supreme Court’s COVID-era opinions have created a hierarchy of constitutional rights, with religious rights at the top. This legal regime will have a resounding impact on U.S. law, affecting policymakers’ ability to protect public health, prevent discrimination, and secure labor rights long after the current COVID-19 crisis has abated.
In Fulton Decision, Scotus Solidifies Expansion Of Religious Exercise Rights, Law, Rights, And Religion Project
In Fulton Decision, Scotus Solidifies Expansion Of Religious Exercise Rights, Law, Rights, And Religion Project
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
On June 17, 2021, the Supreme Court solidified a dramatic shift in its reading of the constitutional protections for religious liberty. The Court ruled that religious organizations that contract with local governments to provide foster care services should be exempted from compliance with city non-discrimination requirements if the city permits any discretionary exemptions from those laws.
May 2021 Era Update, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
May 2021 Era Update, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
The campaign to finalize the Equal Rights Amendment is being waged on several fronts. One in the courts, one in Congress. Last week, there were developments in two important lawsuits seeking to have the Equal Rights Amendment declared finalized and a valid part of the U.S. Constitution, thus securing explicit sex equality protections in the Constitution.
Era Project Faq On The District Court's Decision In Virginia V. Ferriero, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
Era Project Faq On The District Court's Decision In Virginia V. Ferriero, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
The states that brought the lawsuit do not have standing. This means that the states that brought the lawsuit were not injured by the fact that the Archivist refused to publish the amendment. Their argument is that the Archivist’s refusal to publish the Amendment undermined their sovereign power to ratify a change to the Constitution.
Faq On The Current Status Of The Equal Rights Amendment To The U.S. Constitution, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
Faq On The Current Status Of The Equal Rights Amendment To The U.S. Constitution, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
Several measures have been introduced into the U.S. Congress this session that relate to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). One is a resolution that would lift the deadline for ratification of the ERA that was passed by Congress in 1972, and the other is a new ERA that would begin a new process of amending the Constitution to add explicit protections for sex equality. This FAQ is designed to explain what each of these measures would do and the legal complexities that surround them.
Era Joint Resolution On Timeline For Ratification, Ben Cardin, Lisa Murkowski
Era Joint Resolution On Timeline For Ratification, Ben Cardin, Lisa Murkowski
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
Removing the deadline for the ratification of the equal rights amendment.
Defining Crime, Delegating Authority – How Different Are Administrative Crimes?, Daniel C. Richman
Defining Crime, Delegating Authority – How Different Are Administrative Crimes?, Daniel C. Richman
Faculty Scholarship
As the Supreme Court reconsiders whether Congress can so freely provide for criminal enforcement of agency rules, this Article assesses the critique of administrative crimes though a federal criminal law lens. It explores the extent to which this critique carries over to other instances of mostly well-accepted, delegated federal criminal lawmaking – to courts, states, foreign governments, and international institutions. By considering these other delegations through the lens of the administrative crime critique, the Article destabilizes the critique’s doctrinal foundations. It then suggests that if one really cares about liberty – not the abstract “liberty” said to be protected by …
The Compensation Constraint And The Scope Of The Takings Clause, Thomas W. Merrill
The Compensation Constraint And The Scope Of The Takings Clause, Thomas W. Merrill
Faculty Scholarship
The idea I wish to explore in this Essay is whether the established methods for determining just compensation can shed light on the meaning of other issues that arise in litigation under the Takings Clause. Specifically, is it possible to “reverse engineer” the Takings Clause by reasoning from settled understandings about how to determine just compensation in order to reach certain conclusions about when the Clause applies, what interests in private property are covered by the Clause, and what does it mean to take such property?
The proposed exercise is positive or descriptive in nature rather than normative. The hypothesis …
We The People (Of Faith): The Supremacy Of Religious Rights In The Shadow Of A Pandemic, Elizabeth Reiner Platt, Katherine M. Franke, Lilia Hadjiivanova
We The People (Of Faith): The Supremacy Of Religious Rights In The Shadow Of A Pandemic, Elizabeth Reiner Platt, Katherine M. Franke, Lilia Hadjiivanova
Faculty Scholarship
Late on a Friday evening in April 2021, over a year into the COVID-19 crisis, the Supreme Court issued a brief opinion that dramatically transformed constitutional law. In the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, the Court ruled in Tandon v. Newsom that state and local governments seeking to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus may not restrict in-person religious gatherings more rigorously than any other type of activity, such as shopping for groceries or working at a warehouse. The opinion was only one in a barrage of cases filed in federal courts across the country — many …
Constructing Countervailing Power: Law And Organizing In An Era Of Political Inequality, Kate Andrias
Constructing Countervailing Power: Law And Organizing In An Era Of Political Inequality, Kate Andrias
Faculty Scholarship
This Article proposes an innovative approach to remedying the crisis of political inequality: using law to facilitate organizing by the poor and working class, not only as workers, but also as tenants, debtors, welfare beneficiaries, and others. The piece draws on the social-movements literature, and the successes and failures of labor law, to show how law can supplement the deficient regimes of campaign finance and lobbying reform and enable lower-income groups to build organizations capable of countervailing the political power of the wealthy. As such, the Article offers a new direction forward for the public-law literature on political power and …
Anti-Modalities, David E. Pozen, Adam Samaha
Anti-Modalities, David E. Pozen, Adam Samaha
Faculty Scholarship
Constitutional argument runs on the rails of “modalities.” These are the accepted categories of reasoning used to make claims about the content of supreme law. Some of the modalities, such as ethical and prudential arguments, seem strikingly open ended at first sight. Their contours come into clearer view, however, when we attend to the kinds of claims that are not made by constitutional interpreters – the analytical and rhetorical moves that are familiar in debates over public policy and political morality but are considered out of bounds in debates over constitutional meaning. In this Article, we seek to identify the …
Power Transitions In A Troubled Democracy, Peter L. Strauss, Gillian E. Metzger
Power Transitions In A Troubled Democracy, Peter L. Strauss, Gillian E. Metzger
Faculty Scholarship
Written as our contribution to a festschrift for the noted Italian administrative law scholar Marco D’Alberti, this essay addresses transition between Presidents Trump and Biden, in the context of political power transitions in the United States more generally. Although the Trump-Biden transition was marked by extraordinary behaviors and events, we thought even the transition’s mundane elements might prove interesting to those for whom transitions occur in a parliamentary context. There, succession can happen quickly once an election’s results are known, and happens with the new political government immediately formed and in office. The layer of a new administration’s political leadership …
A Perfectly Empty Gift, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus
A Perfectly Empty Gift, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus
Faculty Scholarship
“Almost citizens.” What does that even mean? It’s like being “kind of pregnant,” isn’t it? In other words, nonsense. Citizenship isn’t an “almost” kind of thing. It’s all or nothing. Unless, I suppose, the word “almost” is used in a simple temporal sense – as in, “Our naturalization ceremony is tomorrow. We’re almost citizens! Yay!” There, the phrase “almost citizens” makes sense. Otherwise not. Right?
Wrong. “Almost citizens,” in a sense as ambiguous as it sounds, is what Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U S Constitution, and Empire is about. “Almost citizens” describes what Puerto Ricans were from 1898, when …
Propertied Rites, Kellen R. Funk
Propertied Rites, Kellen R. Funk
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay reviews Jack Rakove’s Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan’s Church State Corporation with an eye towards the complex management of religious property in U.S. constitutional doctrine. Part I summarizes Rakove’s book and highlights its value in the context of recent scholarship on early American legislative theory. Part II critiques Rakove’s turn from description towards advocacy of James Madison’s liberal protestant political theology. Part III summarizes Sullivan’s book as a particularly potent rebuttal to Rakove’s. Part IV takes up Sullivan’s method to consider the most recent crisis of religious property before the Supreme Court, that of government …
Long Live The Common Law Of Copyright!: Georgia V. Public.Resource.Org., Inc. And The Debate Over Judicial Role In Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Long Live The Common Law Of Copyright!: Georgia V. Public.Resource.Org., Inc. And The Debate Over Judicial Role In Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Faculty Scholarship
In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., the Supreme Court resurrected a nineteenth-century copyright doctrine – the government edicts doctrine – and applied it to statutory annotations prepared by a legislative agency. While the substance of the decision has serious implications for due process and the rule of law, the Court’s treatment of the doctrine recognized an invigorated role for courts in the development of copyright law through the use of principled reasoning. In expounding the doctrine, the Court announced a vision for the judicial role in copyright adjudication that is at odds with the dominant approach under the Copyright …
The Puzzles And Possibilities Of Article V, David E. Pozen, Thomas P. Schmidt
The Puzzles And Possibilities Of Article V, David E. Pozen, Thomas P. Schmidt
Faculty Scholarship
Legal scholars describe Article V of the U.S. Constitution, which sets forth rules for amending the document, as an uncommonly stringent and specific constitutional provision. A unanimous Supreme Court has said that a “mere reading demonstrates” that “Article V is clear in statement and in meaning, contains no ambiguity, and calls for no resort to rules of construction.” Although it is familiar that a small set of amendments, most notably the Reconstruction Amendments, elicited credible challenges to their validity, these episodes are seen as anomalous and unrepresentative. Americans are accustomed to disagreeing over the meaning of the constitutional text, but …
The Three Permissions: Presidential Removal And The Statutory Limits Of Agency Independence, Jane Manners, Lev Menand
The Three Permissions: Presidential Removal And The Statutory Limits Of Agency Independence, Jane Manners, Lev Menand
Faculty Scholarship
Seven words stand between the President and the heads of over a dozen “independent agencies”: inefficiency, neglect of duty, and malfeasance in office (INM). The President can remove the heads of these agencies for INM and only INM. But neither Congress nor the courts have defined INM and hence the extent of agency independence. Stepping into this void, some proponents of presidential power argue that INM allows the President to dismiss officials who do not follow presidential directives. Others contend that INM is unconstitutional because it prevents Presidents from fulfilling their duty to take care that the laws are faithfully …
Elected-Official-Affiliated Nonprofits: Closing The Public Integrity Gap, Richard Briffault
Elected-Official-Affiliated Nonprofits: Closing The Public Integrity Gap, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Recent years have witnessed the growing use by elected officials, particularly state and local chief executives, of affiliated nonprofit organizations to advance their policy goals. Some of these organizations engage in public advocacy to advance a governor’s or mayor’s legislative program. Others operate more like conventional charities, raising philanthropic support for a range of governmental social welfare programs. Elected officials fundraise for these organizations, which are often staffed by close associates of those elected officials, and the organizations’ public communications frequently feature prominently the name or likeness of their elected-official sponsor. As these organizations do not engage in electioneering, they …
Towards A Law Of Inclusive Planning: A Response To “Fair Housing For A Non-Sexist City”, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
Towards A Law Of Inclusive Planning: A Response To “Fair Housing For A Non-Sexist City”, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
Faculty Scholarship
Noah Kazis’s important article, Fair Housing for a Non-sexist City, shows how law shapes the contours of neighborhoods and embeds forms of inequality, and how fair housing law can provide a remedy. Kazis surfaces two dimensions of housing that generate inequality and that are sometimes invisible. Kazis highlights the role of planning and design rules – the seemingly identity-neutral zoning, code enforcement, and land-use decisions that act as a form of law. Kazis also reveals how gendered norms underlie those rules and policies. These aspects of Kazis’s project link to commentary on the often invisible, gendered norms that shape …
The Big Data Regulator, Rebooted: Why And How The Fda Can And Should Disclose Confidential Data On Prescription Drugs And Vaccines, Christopher J. Morten, Amy Kapczynski
The Big Data Regulator, Rebooted: Why And How The Fda Can And Should Disclose Confidential Data On Prescription Drugs And Vaccines, Christopher J. Morten, Amy Kapczynski
Faculty Scholarship
Medicines and vaccines are complex products, and it is often extraordinarily difficult to know whether they help or hurt. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) holds an enormous reservoir of data that sheds light on that precise question, yet currently releases only a trickle to researchers, doctors, and patients. Recent examples show that data secrecy can be deadly, and existing laws such as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cannot solve the problem. We present here a wealth of new evidence about the urgency of the problem and argue that the FDA must “reboot” its rules to proactively disclose all …
Slavery's Constitution: Rethinking The Federal Consensus, Maeve Glass
Slavery's Constitution: Rethinking The Federal Consensus, Maeve Glass
Faculty Scholarship
For at least half a century, scholars of the early American Constitution have noted the archival prominence of a doctrine known as the “federal consensus.” This doctrine instructed that Congress had no power to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it existed. Despite its ubiquity in the records, our understanding of how and why this doctrine emerged is hazy at best. Working from a conceptual map of America’s founding that features thirteen local governments coalescing into two feuding sections of North and South, commentators have tended to explain the federal consensus either as a vestige of …
Arguing About The Jus Ad Bellum, Monica Hakimi
Arguing About The Jus Ad Bellum, Monica Hakimi
Faculty Scholarship
Quite a bit of research suggests that international law’s argumentative practice has value insofar as it leads to or affirms some kind of normative settlement. This chapter uses the argumentative practice in the jus ad bellum to counter that view. The chapter’s central claim is that arguments about the jus ad bellum are valuable, even when they do not lead to normative settlement and the law’s content on the issue in dispute remains contested. The reason they are valuable is that they promote certain values that are associated with the rule of law.
Re-Reading Chevron, Thomas W. Merrill
Re-Reading Chevron, Thomas W. Merrill
Faculty Scholarship
Though increasingly disfavored by the Supreme Court, Chevron remains central to administrative law doctrine. This Article suggests a way for the Court to reformulate the Chevron doctrine without overruling the Chevron decision. Through careful attention to the language of Chevron itself, the Court can honor the decision’s underlying value of harnessing comparative institutional advantage in judicial review, while setting aside a highly selective reading that unduly narrows judicial review. This re-reading would put the Chevron doctrine – and with it, an entire branch of administrative law – on firmer footing.
The Uncertain Future Of Administrative Law, Jeremy K. Kessler, Charles F. Sabel
The Uncertain Future Of Administrative Law, Jeremy K. Kessler, Charles F. Sabel
Faculty Scholarship
A volatile series of presidential transitions has only intensified the century-long conflict between progressive defenders and conservative critics of the administrative state. Yet neither side has adequately confronted the fact that the growth of uncertainty and the corresponding spread of guidance – a kind of provisional “rule” that invites its own revision – mark a break in the development of the administrative state as significant as the rise of notice-and-comment rulemaking in the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas rulemaking corrected social shortsightedness by enlisting science in the service of lawful administration, guidance acknowledges that both science and law are in need …
Taking Appropriations Seriously, Gillian E. Metzger
Taking Appropriations Seriously, Gillian E. Metzger
Faculty Scholarship
Appropriations lie at the core of the administrative state and are becoming increasingly important as deep partisan divides have stymied substantive legislation. Both Congress and the President exploit appropriations to control government and advance their policy agendas, with the border wall battle being just one of several recent high-profile examples. Yet in public law doctrine, appropriations are ignored, pulled out for special legal treatment, or subjected to legal frameworks ill-suited for appropriations realities. This Article documents how appropriations are marginalized in a variety of public law contexts and assesses the reasons for this unjustified treatment. Appropriations’ doctrinal marginalization does not …
The Democracy Principle In State Constitutions, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Miriam Seifter
The Democracy Principle In State Constitutions, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Miriam Seifter
Faculty Scholarship
In recent years, antidemocratic behavior has rippled across the nation. Lame-duck state legislatures have stripped popularly elected governors of their powers; extreme partisan gerrymanders have warped representative institutions; state officials have nullified popularly adopted initiatives. The federal constitution offers few resources to address these problems, and ballot-box solutions cannot work when antidemocratic actions undermine elections themselves. Commentators increasingly decry the rule of the many by the few.
This Article argues that a vital response has been neglected. State constitutions embody a deep commitment to democracy. Unlike the federal constitution, they were drafted – and have been repeatedly rewritten and amended …