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Full-Text Articles in Law

On Sexual Harassment In The Judiciary, Leah Litman, Deeva Shah Oct 2020

On Sexual Harassment In The Judiciary, Leah Litman, Deeva Shah

Articles

This Essay examines the legal profession’s role in sexual harassment, particularly in the federal courts. It argues that individuals in the profession have both an individual and collective responsibility for the professional norms that have allowed harassment to happen with little recourse for the people subject to the harassment. It suggests that the legal profession should engage in a sustained, public reflection about how our words, actions, attitudes, and institutional arrangements allow harassment to happen, and about the many different ways that we can prevent and address harassment.


Legitimacy And Agency Implementation Of Title Ix, Samuel R. Bagenstos Sep 2020

Legitimacy And Agency Implementation Of Title Ix, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination by programs receiving federal education funding. Primary responsibility for administering that statute lies in the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education (OCR). Because Title IX involves a subject that remains highly controversial in our polity (sex roles and interactions among the sexes more generally), and because it targets a highly sensitive area (education), OCR’s administration of the statute has long drawn criticism. The critics have not merely noted disagreements with the legal and policy decisions of the agency, however. Rather, they have attacked the agency’s decisions …


Thin And Thick Conceptions Of The Nineteenth Amendment Right To Vote And Congress's Power To Enforce It, Richard L. Hasen, Leah M. Litman Jul 2020

Thin And Thick Conceptions Of The Nineteenth Amendment Right To Vote And Congress's Power To Enforce It, Richard L. Hasen, Leah M. Litman

Articles

This Article, prepared for a Georgetown Law Journal symposium on the Nineteenth Amendment’s one-hundred-year anniversary, explores and defends a “thick” conception of the Nineteenth Amendment right to vote and Congress’s power to enforce it. A “thin” conception of the Nineteenth Amendment maintains that the Amendment merely prohibits states from enacting laws that prohibit women from voting once the state decides to hold an election. And a “thin” conception of Congress’s power to enforce the Nineteenth Amendment maintains that Congress may only supply remedies for official acts that violate the Amendment’s substantive guarantees. This Article argues the Nineteenth Amendment does more. …


Disability And Reproductive Justice, Samuel Bagenstos Jun 2020

Disability And Reproductive Justice, Samuel Bagenstos

Articles

In the spring of 2019, disability and abortion rights collided at the Supreme Court in a case involving an Indiana ban on “disability-selective abortions.” In a lengthy concurrence in the denial of certiorari, Justice Thomas argued that the ban was constitutional because it “promote[s] a State’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.” Just a few months earlier, disability and reproductive rights issues had intersected in a very different way in the debate over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Disability rights advocates drew attention to an opinion then-Judge Kavanaugh had written …


Reproducing Inequality Under Title Ix, Deborah L. Brake, Joanna L. Grossman Jan 2020

Reproducing Inequality Under Title Ix, Deborah L. Brake, Joanna L. Grossman

Articles

This article elaborates on and critiques the law’s separation of pregnancy, with rights grounded in sex equality under Title IX, from reproductive control, which the law treats as a matter of privacy, a species of liberty under the due process clause. While pregnancy is the subject of Title IX protection, reproductive control is parceled off into a separate legal framework grounded in privacy, rather than recognized as a matter that directly implicates educational equality. The law’s division between educational equality and liberty in two non-intersecting sets of legal rights has done no favors to the reproductive rights movement either. By …


Identity: Obstacles And Openings, Osamudia R. James Jan 2020

Identity: Obstacles And Openings, Osamudia R. James

Articles

Progress regarding equality and social identities has moved in a bipolar fashion: popular engagement with the concept of social identities has increased even as courts have signaled decreasing interest in engaging identity. Maintaining and deepening the liberatory potential of identity, particularly in legal and policymaking spheres, will require understanding trends in judicial hostility toward "identity politics," the impact of status hierarchy even within minoritized identity groups, and the threat that white racial grievance poses to identitarian claims.


Reproducing Dignity: Race, Disability, And Reproductive Controls, Mary Crossley Jan 2020

Reproducing Dignity: Race, Disability, And Reproductive Controls, Mary Crossley

Articles

Human rights treaties and American constitutional law recognize decisions about reproduction as central to human dignity. Historically and today, Black women and women with disabilities have endured numerous impairments of their freedom to form and maintain families. Other scholars have examined these barriers to motherhood. Unexplored, however, are parallels among the experiences of women in these two groups or the women for whom Blackness and disability are overlapping identities. This Article fills that void. The disturbing legacy of the Eugenics movement is manifest in many settings. Black and disabled women undergo sterilizations at disproportionately high rates. Public benefit programs discourage …


Sex-Based Discrimination In Health Care Under Section 1557: The New Final Rule And Supreme Court Developments, Brietta R. Clark, Elizabeth Pendo, Gabriella Garbero Jan 2020

Sex-Based Discrimination In Health Care Under Section 1557: The New Final Rule And Supreme Court Developments, Brietta R. Clark, Elizabeth Pendo, Gabriella Garbero

Articles

One of the primary goals of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has been the reduction and elimination of health disparities, generally defined as population-level health differences that adversely affect disadvantaged groups, including disparities associated with sex and gender. Many of PPACA’s general provisions — expanded access to public and private insurance coverage, guarantee issue and pricing reforms, and coverage mandates — were expected to reduce barriers and eliminate discriminatory practices targeting or disproportionately impacting women and transgender individuals. Provisions like the Women’s Health Amendment, which mandated women’s preventive healthcare to be covered without cost sharing, and the …


The Legal And Medical Necessity Of Abortion Care Amid The Covid-19 Pandemic, Greer Donley, Beatrice Chen, Sonya Borrero Jan 2020

The Legal And Medical Necessity Of Abortion Care Amid The Covid-19 Pandemic, Greer Donley, Beatrice Chen, Sonya Borrero

Articles

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, states have ordered the cessation of non-essential healthcare. Unfortunately, many conservative states have sought to capitalize on those orders to halt abortion care. In this short paper, we argue that abortion should not fall under any state’s non-essential healthcare order. Major medical organizations recognize that abortion is essential healthcare that must be provided even in a pandemic, and the law recognizes abortion as a time-sensitive constitutional right. Finally, we examine the constitutional arguments as to why enforcing these orders against abortion providers should not stand constitutional scrutiny. We conclude that no public health purpose …