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Full-Text Articles in Law

Salary History And Pay Parity, Jennifer Safstrom Oct 2019

Salary History And Pay Parity, Jennifer Safstrom

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Inquiries about a prospective applicant's salary history are controversial because of the role such inequities play in the broader gender pay equity debate. The use of prior salary to determine compensation can perpetuate pay discrimination for women, especially women of color, and lock them into cycles of underpayment when these inequities are carried over from job to job. Reliance on salary history perpetuates historical discrimination and is antithetical to the language and purpose of Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the legal reasoning relied upon to interpret these laws, especially …


States As Civil Rights Actors, Jennifer Safstrom Apr 2019

States As Civil Rights Actors, Jennifer Safstrom

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A British politician, David Miliband, once said, "My advice is very simple: if you can win a small battle, it gives you confidence in the political process to take on bigger battles, and so it is very much a bottom-up grass-roots way of doing politics." While his perspective--of starting small and building up--is an often-used strategy used by advocates of all stripes, his quote does not give sufficient credence to the intrinsic value of these small battles. These efforts are an end unto themselves, as the smaller battles within each state are not just training to take on larger federal …


In Defense Of Human Rights, Karima Bennoune Jan 2019

In Defense Of Human Rights, Karima Bennoune

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article argues that international human rights law, and the human rights movement more generally, need more defenders than critics in the current international political environment. Groups ranging from academics to governments have taken stances critical of human rights, and this Article seeks to defend the rights framework from some of these while also arguing for the importance of human rights in today's world. Noting that the field of human rights is not beyond criticism, this Article embraces some of those criticisms. However, it suggests that human rights law specialists need to spend at least as much time defending human …


They, Them, And Theirs, Jessica A. Clarke Jan 2019

They, Them, And Theirs, Jessica A. Clarke

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Nonbinary gender identities have quickly gone from obscurity to prominence in American public life, with growing acceptance of gender-neutral pronouns, such as “they, them, and theirs,” and recognition of a third gender category by U.S. states including California, Oregon, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Washington. People with nonbinary gender identities do not exclusively identify as men or women. Feminist legal reformers have long argued that discrimination on the basis of gender nonconformity — in other words, discrimination against men perceived as feminine or women perceived as masculine — is a harmful type of sex discrimination that the law should redress. But …