Law Commons^™

The Cost Of Non-Compensable Workplace Harm, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

This essay briefly addresses the limited fashion in which Title VII remedies sex discrimination in the workplace. Those limitations fall into three broad categories. The first encompasses how courts have applied procedural rules to Title VII claims. The second involves Title VII's explicit limitation on its coverage. The third includes substantive limitations that courts have placed on causes of action that are clearly covered by Title VII. This essay addresses those categories in turn.

Fallout From 14 Penn Plaza V. Pyett: Fractured Arbitration Systems In The Unionized Workplace, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

First, the article will review the history of arbitration of statutory employment claims, including the Pyett decision. Second, the article will look at the history and causes of legalism in arbitration. Then the article will consider the probable responses of employers and unions to Pyett. While predictions are necessarily speculative, it is likely that some unionized employers will seek to require employees to arbitrate statutory claims, perhaps in higher percentages than in the nonunion workplace. While unions may, and perhaps should, resist, many future collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) may contain such provisions. The article then discusses the alternative dispute resolution …

The Wild West Of Supreme Court Employment Discrimination Jurisprudence, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

This Essay considers three cases decided in the Supreme Court's 2008-2009 term and notes some of the major issues that are left open for discussion after these cases; its purpose is not to catalog every issue that these cases raise. Taken together, these cases challenge employment discrimination doctrine in a fundamental way. This provides the Fourth Circuit in particular the opportunity to continue doing what it has often done-think creatively about employment discrimination doctrine. This is an observation, not a criticism of the Fourth Circuit. It suggests that the Fourth Circuit can make a difference. Of course, the Fourth Circuit's …

(Un)Welcome Conduct And The Sexually Hostile Environment, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

As courts refine the theory underlying sexual harassment and sex discrimination, the unwelcomeness inquiry may become irrelevant to determining whether gender-based conduct is sexually harassing. In addition, the one possible remaining purpose that the unwelcomeness requirement may serve-providing notice to a putative harasser or its employer-is now served by an affirmative defense applicable to many sexual harassment claims. Consequently, its role should be reexamined. This Article does that. Part I of the Article describes a hypothetical situation that provides a context in which to consider unwelcomeness. Part II provides a brief overview of the evolving sexual harassment jurisprudence. Part III …

An Alternative Approach To The Taxation Of Employment Discrimination Recoveries Under Federal Civil Rights Statutes: Income From Human Capital, Realization, And Nonrecognition, Mary L. Heen

Law Faculty Publications

The taxation of employment discrimination recoveries under federal civil rights statutes, according to the United States Supreme Court's pronouncement in United States v. Burke, turns on whether a particular claim is sufficiently "tort-like" to warrant exclusion from income as a personal injury. In place of the "tort-like" standard, Professor Mary L Heen offers a human capital approach that she believes is both more responsive to the goals of the civil rights statutes at issue and more consistent with income tax policy.

Like personal injuries in tort, injuries caused by employment discrimination diminish an individual's human capital-they are just as surely …