Law Commons^™

We're All Originalists Now… Or Are We?: Bostock's Misperceived Quest To Distinguish Title Vii's Meaning From The Public's Expectations, Steven Semeraro

Hofstra Law Review

Two principal tenets underlie originalism-textualism: First, judicial interpreters of a statute should not use modern values to supplant original meaning because the law should change only through democratic processes. Second, original meaning is limited to the intersubjective original understanding that a reasonable reader would draw from a statute’s text. Meaning does not include anyone’s extratextual subjective expectations about how a statute should apply.

The divided Bostock Court’s decision that Title VII prohibits sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination reveals a contradiction between originalism-textualisms dual tenets. The mid-1960s public’s expectations about how Title VII would apply to sexual orientation and gender …

The Meaning Of Sex: Dynamic Words, Novel Applications, And Original Public Meaning, William N. Eskridge Jr., Brian G. Slocum, Stefan Th. Gries

Michigan Law Review

The meaning of sex matters. The interpretive methodology by which the meaning of sex is determined matters Both of these were at issue in the Supreme Court’s recent landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, where the Court held that Title VII protects lesbians, gay men, transgender persons, and other sexual and gender minorities against workplace discrimination. Despite unanimously agreeing that Title VII should be interpreted in accordance with its original public meaning in 1964, the opinions in Bostock failed to properly define sex or offer a coherent theory of how long-standing statutes like Title VII should be interpreted over …

Going Beyond Rule 8.4(G): A Shift To Active And Conscious Efforts To Dismantle Bias, Meredith R. Miller

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.