Law Commons^™

For Cause: Rethinking Racial Exclusion And The American Jury, Thomas Ward Frampton

Michigan Law Review

Peremptory strikes, and criticism of the permissive constitutional framework regulating them, have dominated the scholarship on race and the jury for the past several decades. But we have overlooked another important way in which the American jury reflects and reproduces racial hierarchies: massive racial disparities also pervade the use of challenges for cause. This Article examines challenges for cause and race in nearly 400 trials and, based on original archival research, presents a revisionist account of the Supreme Court’s three most recent Batson cases. It establishes that challenges for cause, no less than peremptory strikes, are an important—and unrecognized—vehicle of …

Prescription Restriction: Why Birth Control Must Be Over-The-Counter In The United States, Susannah Iles

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note argues that it is harmful and unnecessary to require women to obtain prescriptions for access to hormonal birth control. Requiring a prescription is necessarily a barrier to access which hurts women and hamstrings the ability to dictate their own reproductive plans. It is also an irrational regulation in light of the relative safety of hormonal birth control pills, particularly progestin-only formulations, compared to other drugs readily available on the shelves.

Leading medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, advocate for over-the-counter access to hormonal birth control. While acknowledging that not every woman will have positive …

Saving Title Ix: Designing More Equitable And Efficient Investigation Procedures, Emma Ellman-Golan

Michigan Law Review

In 2011, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance on Title IX compliance. This guidance has resulted in the creation of investigative and adjudicatory tribunals at colleges and universities receiving federal funds to hear claims of sexual assault, harassment, and violence. OCR’s enforcement efforts are a laudable response to an epidemic of sexual violence on college campuses, but they have faced criticism from administrators, law professors, and potential members of the Trump Administration. This Note suggests ways to alter current Title IX enforcement mechanisms to placate critics and to maintain OCR enforcement as a bulwark against …

Substantive Due Process For Noncitizens: Lessons From Obergefell, Anthony O'Rourke

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The state of Texas denies birth certificates to children born in the United States—and thus citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment—if their parents are undocumented immigrants with identification provided by their home countries’ consulates. What does this have to do with same-sex marriage? In a previous article, I demonstrated that the Supreme Court’s substantive due process analysis in United States v. Windsor is particularly relevant to the state’s regulation of undocumented immigrants. This Essay builds on my earlier analysis by examining United States v. Obergefell’s applications outside the context of same-sex marriage. Obergefell’s due process holding, I argue, can …

American Racial Jusice On Trial - Again: African American Reparations, Human Rights, And The War On Terror, Eric K. Yamamoto, Susan K. Serrano, Michelle Natividad Rodriguez

Michigan Law Review

Much has been written recently on African American reparations and reparations movements worldwide, both in the popular press and scholarly publications. Indeed, the expanding volume of writing underscores the impact on the public psyche of movements for reparations for historic injustice. Some of that writing has highlighted the legal obstacles faced by proponents of reparations lawsuits, particularly a judicial system that focuses on individual (and not group-based) claims and tends to squeeze even major social controversies into the narrow litigative paradigm of a two-person auto collision (requiring proof of standing, duty, breach, causation, and direct injury). Other writings detail the …

History's Stories, Stephan Landsman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman

The Powers Of The Michigan Civil Rights Commission, Roger C. Cramton

Michigan Law Review

The thesis of this article is that the Attorney General has misread the language and actions of the constitution-makers. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission is an important and powerful agency of government which has substantial tasks to perform. But it does not possess the exclusive powers envisioned by the Attorney General. Other governmental units-the legislature, the executive, the courts, and the local governments-may continue to play a creative and positive role in fashioning a legal order that accords to every human being in society a reasonable opportunity to realize his potentialities.

Legislative Apportionment And Representative Government: The Meaning Of Baker V. Carr, Jo Desha Lucas

Michigan Law Review

In three recent cases the Supreme Court has reopened the question of the extent to which federal courts will review the general fairness of state schemes of legislative apportionment. It is a question on which the Court has had nothing to say for over a decade, leaving the bar to patch together the current state of the law from the outcome of cases disposed of without opinion considered against a backdrop of language used in earlier decisions.

Civil Rights - Due Process - Action For Civil Conspiracy Based On Section 1983, James B. Blanchard

Michigan Law Review

In an action for damages based on sections 1983 and 1985 of the Civil Rights Act, plaintiff alleged that a county health officer and his deputy, pursuant to a conspiracy, forcibly took plaintiff to a mental hospital and confined him there for a period of two months in willful violation of a state court order requiring plaintiff to be brought before the court for a sanity hearing. Plaintiff also alleged a false return of citation to the court by the officers and an intentional suppression of facts by the officers and the examining physician regarding plaintiff's illegal detention. Plaintiff contended …

Constitutional Law - Civil Rights - Recent New York City Ordinance Bans Discrimination In Certain Private Housing Facilities, W. Stanley Walch

Michigan Law Review

A recent New York City ordinance is the first anti-discrimination legislation affecting the sale and rental of privately-owned housing to minority groups. The ordinance contains three principal provisions: It (1) forbids racial or religious discrimination by private owners in the selection of tenants or buyers for any "housing accommodation which is located in a multiple dwelling," (2) bans discrimination in the selection of purchasers by a seller of ten or more contiguous housing units, and (3) prohibits the owner or lessor of housing accommodations covered by the ordinance from discriminating because of race or religion in setting the terms of …

Civil Rights - Legislation - The Civil Rights Act Of 1957, Thomas R. Winquist S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

It is the purpose of this comment to note the nature of the prior legislation in the civil rights area, the provisions of the new act and the effect of the new act upon civil rights protection.

The Fourteenth Amendment Reconsidered, The Segregation Question, Alfred H. Kelly

Michigan Law Review

Some sixty years ago in Plessy v. Ferguson the Supreme Court of the United States adopted the now celebrated "separate but equal" doctrine as a constitutional guidepost for state segregation statutes. Justice Brown's opinion declared that state statutes imposing racial segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, provided only that the statute in question guaranteed equal facilities for the two races. Brown's argument rested on a historical theory of the intent, although he offered no evidence to support it. "The object of the amendment," he said, "was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, …

Constitutional Law - Civil Rights Act - Civil Liability Of State Judicial Officers, John C. Hall S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

In 1940 defendant, a state judge, granted an ex parte order transferring plaintiff, then a voluntary inmate of a Massachusetts school for the feeble-minded, to the Department of Defective Delinquents. Released on habeas corpus in 1951, plaintiff brought suit under the Civil Rights Act, claiming a denial of notice and hearing in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. On appeal, held, a judge is not liable at common law or under the Civil Rights Act for acts done in the exercise of his judicial function. Francis v. Crafts, (1st Cir. 1953) 203 F. (2d) …

Constitutional Law--Anti-Lynching Legislation, William B. Harvey S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Despite progress in recent years toward the elimination of lynching, the demand for adequate federal legislation to cope with the problem is unabated. For almost three decades Congress has considered a succession of anti-lynching bills, most of which have been favorably reported by committees. None has become law. Legislators and others opposing the enactment of a federal anti-lynching act have placed primary reliance on an asserted lack of constitutionality. It is argued that lynching is merely local crime within the scope of the power and responsibility of the states to enforce their own criminal law. The purpose of this comment …

Constitutional Law - Race Segregation Ordinance - Effect Of Military Order Of Governor Issued For Same Purpose

Michigan Law Review

A "segregation ordinance" of Oklahoma City, prospective in nature, made it unlawful for any negro to occupy as a residence any house or building located in a block wherein a majority of the buildings used were occupied by white persons. The initial step in the segregation of races in the city occurred when the Governor issued a military order for the separation of the races, because it appeared that riot and bloodshed were imminent; such order to remain in effect until an ordinance was passed in lieu of the order. Held, the ordinance was an invalid exercise of the …

Criminal Law And Procedure - Evidence - Presumptions

Michigan Law Review

The Alien Land Law of California forbids the acquisition of real property for agricultural purposes by aliens ineligible to citizenship; amendment 9b provides that proof of the acquisition of land by the defendant and of his being a member of a race ineligible to United States citizenship raises the presumption of ineligibility to citizenship against the defendant, and the burden is on him to show citizenship or eligibility thereto. Defendants, an American and a Japanese, were indicted for conspiracy to violate the act. No evidence as to the birthplace of the Japanese was adduced by either side, and both were …