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 …