Law Commons^™

Chapters Of The Civil Jury, Doug R. Rendleman

Doug Rendleman

The civil jury, though constitutionally protected by the seventh amendment, has remained a controversial institution throughout much of Anglo-American legal history. Our romantic ideals are questioned by critics who view the civil jury as prejudiced and unpredictable; proponents note the sense of fairness and "earthy wisdom" gained by community participation in the legal process. This debate surfaces in the process of accommodation between certain substantive goals of the law and the pre-verdict and post-verdict procedural devices courts have employed to control the jury. In this article, Professor Rendleman examines this conflict in his three "chapters" involving racially motivated discharges of …

Remembering Mary Dunlap As A Student, Herma Hill Kay

Herma Hill Kay

Recounts the experience of having Mary C. Dunlap as a student at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California in Berkeley. Introduction by Dunlap and fellow students, Nancy Davis and Wendy Webster Williams of a course on Women and the Law into the Boalt Hall curriculum; Establishment of the Davis, Dunlap and Williams women' rights law firm, which was later reorganized as the public interest women's rights firm of Equal Rights Advocates, Inc.; Admittance of Dunlap of being involved in a lesbian relationship; Reason given by Dunlap for studying law.

Reauthorization Of The Voting Rights Act, Christopher Edley Jr

Christopher Edley

No abstract provided.

Attorney's Fees In Civil Rights Cases - October 2009 Term, Martin A. Schwartz

Martin A. Schwartz

No abstract provided.

Equality Standards For Health Insurance Coverage: Will The Mental Health Parity And Addiction Equity Act End The Discrimination?, Ellen M. Weber

Ellen M. Weber

Congress enacted the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008 to end discriminatory health insurance coverage for persons with mental health and substance use disorders in large employer health plans. Adopting a comprehensive regulatory approach akin to other civil rights laws, the Parity Act requires “equity” in all plan features, including cost-sharing, durational limits and, most critically, the plan management practices that are used to deny many families medically necessary behavioral health care. Beginning in 2014, all health plans regulated by the Affordable Care Act must also comply with parity standards, effectively ending the second-class insurance status of …

Bridging The Barriers: Public Health Strategies For Expanding Drug Treatment In Communities, Ellen M. Weber

Ellen M. Weber

States around the country have begun to adopt programs to divert drug offenders from jails and prisons to community-based drug treatment services. For this strategy to succeed, local officials will need to expand the availability of outpatient and residential treatment programs and address the barriers to siting treatment services, the most significant of which are community opposition and government zoning policies that facilitate community resistance. Civil rights laws, including the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Fair Housing Act (FHA), prohibit zoning discrimination against persons with histories of alcoholism and drug dependence and provide a solid legal foundation for …

Ethnicity And Prejudice: Reevaluating "National Origin" Discrimination Under Title Vii, Juan F. Perea

Juan F. Perea

No abstract provided.

Race Talk: Patricia J. Williams' Seeing A Color-Blind Future: The Paradox Of Race, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.

Towards Determining Legal Parentage By Agreement In Israel, Yehezkel Margalit

Hezi Margalit

In Israel as in other parts of the world, families, parenthood, and relations between parents and children have changed dramatically over the past few decades. So, too, developments in modern medicine have enhanced the ability to separate sexuality from fertility and parenthood. Many researchers feel that the legal system has not kept pace with these changes, and that traditional models of familial relationships no longer provide adequate tools for dealing with them. In order to bridge the gap between a desired social status and current law, a growing number of parents seek to regulate the status, rights, and obligations of …

Determining Legal Parenthood By Agreement As A Possible Solution To The Challenges Of The New Era, Yehezkel Margalit

Hezi Margalit

Over the past decades, we witnessed changes in the matrimonial and parenting institutions. Medical innovations have further created ethical-legal dilemmas. It is, therefore, essential to create a theory and framework that will determine ways to deal with the resulting dilemma in a fully developed manner. This paper surveys the current, conflicting shifts in family structure and the definition of legal parenthood. In it, I deal with the importance and various aspects of defining legal parenthood. I will also focus on the singularity of this dilemma as it is increasingly apparent in the various fertility treatments. I present the sociological-legal roots …

Occupy Wall Street And The U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division: A Hypothetical Examination Of The Slippery Slope Of Military Intervention During Civil Disturbance, Mckay Smith

McKay Smith

Throughout 2011, the world was an incredibly angry place. The global economy was in disarray. The streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria had erupted in unprecedented violence. While Americans watched events spiral out of control abroad, a new movement was taking shape domestically. The Occupy movement is a self-described, nonpartisan protest movement targeting economic injustice and social inequality. At its core, however, many domestic protestors also vocally deride the current state of U.S. politics. This article analyzes the Army’s authority to collect information in support of domestic operations, particularly operations aimed at quelling civil disturbance. Historically, the use of …

Subtraction By Addition?: The Thirteenth And Fourteenth Amendments, Mark A. Graber

Mark Graber

The celebration of the Thirteenth Amendment in many Essays prepared for this Symposium may be premature. That the Thirteenth Amendment arguably protects a different and, perhaps, wider array of rights than the Fourteenth Amendment may be less important than the less controversial claim that the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified after the Thirteenth Amendment. If the Fourteenth Amendment covers similar ground as the Thirteenth Amendment, but protects a narrower set of rights than the Thirteenth Amendment, then the proper inference may be that the Fourteenth Amendment repealed or modified crucial rights originally protected by the Thirteenth Amendment. The broad interpretation of …

Critical Race Histories: In And Out, Darren Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

No abstract provided.

Keeping Kids In Schools: Restorative Justice, Punitive Discipline, And The School To Prison Pipeline, Thalia Gonzalez

Thalia Gonzalez

No abstract provided.

Battleground In The Classroom - Disabled Students And Section 1983 Claims, J. Richard Caldwell Jr., Darryl Lee Gavin, Lauren Fackender Carmody

J. Richard Caldwell Jr.

Battleground in the Classroom – Disabled Students and Section 1983 Claims Synopsis Over the last 30 years, there has been a surge of lawsuits filed against teachers and school personnel alleging violations of students' rights under 42 U.S.C. section 1983. While courts have cautioned that section 1983 is not a substitute for state tort law, cases have arisen in a variety of school contexts. Among these have been several cases involving students under disabilities of one kind or another. In general, most courts hold that to be actionable under section 1983, the alleged conduct must "shock the conscience" of the …

Imposition, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic

Richard Delgado

No abstract provided.

Exclusionary Zoning Enforcement, Passé Or Alive And Kicking?, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

This article reviews several recent state cases challenging zoning actions as exclusionary. It identifies patterns in the cases and finds that under certain circumstances courts will limit local governments’ exclusionary actions.

To Be Or Not To Be (A Parent)? – Not Precisely The Question; The Frozen Embryo Dispute, Yehezkel Margalit

Hezi Margalit

Modern medicine offers a variety of fertility treatments, with the result that in the United States alone, there are more than 400,000 frozen embryos and another 10,000 are frozen every year. Since the rate of divorce in the United States increases exponentially, one can easily imagine how many frozen embryos could become open to litigation. Indeed, the media, the law and the people concerned with the ethical aspects have devoted much attention to this issue. This is because litigation forces the reassessment of many complex issues starting with the appropriate balance between an individual’s legal right to be and not …

The Meaning Of The Seventeenth Amendment And A Century Of State Defiance, Steven E. Art, Zachary D. Clopton

Steven E Art

Nearly a century ago, the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution worked a substantial change in American government, dictating that the people should elect their Senators by popular vote. Despite its significance, there has been little written about what the Amendment means or how it works. This Article provides for the first time a comprehensive interpretation of the Seventeenth Amendment based on a detailed textual analysis and a variety of other sources: historical and textual antecedents; relevant Supreme Court decisions; the complete debates in Congress; and the social and political factors that led to this new constitutional provision. Among other …

University Of Baltimore Symposium Report: Debut Of “The Matthew Fogg Symposia On The Vitality Of Stare Decisis In America”, Zena D. Crenshaw-Logal

Zena Denise Crenshaw-Logal

On the first of each two day symposium of the Fogg symposia, lawyers representing NGOs in the civil rights, judicial reform, and whistleblower advocacy fields are to share relevant work of featured legal scholars in lay terms; relate the underlying principles to real life cases; and propose appropriate reform efforts. Four (4) of the scholars spend the next day relating their featured articles to views on the vitality of stare decisis. Specifically, the combined panels of public interest attorneys and law professors consider whether compliance with the doctrine is reasonably assured in America given the: 1. considerable discretion vested in …

Exclusionary Zoning Enforcement: Passe Or Alive And Kicking?, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

This newsletter article analyzes four recent exclusionary zoning cases in which courts ruled against the government. Based upon the analysis, it offers recommendations to local governments on avoiding exclusionary zoning liability.

Grumpy Old Men: A Correlation Between Irritation And Intolerance For Marriage Equality, Aaron J. Shuler

Aaron J Shuler

The Gay Equality Movement has made expeditious strides in the last few decades. Most progress in accepting attitudes toward homosexuals has been made in groups that are traditionally associated with liberal views toward minority groups: the young, the educated, and, to a lesser extent, women. This paper seeks to use membership in those groups as control variables to determine whether another less understood independent variable bears on tolerance. Specifically, this paper uses data from the American National Election Survey from 2008-09 and Alan Gerber’s work on the “Big Five” personality traits to determine whether irritated or less agreeable citizens are …

Judicial Retention Elections, The Rule Of Law, And The Rhetorical Weaknesses Of Consequentialism, Todd E. Pettys

Todd E. Pettys

From Alaska to Florida, the 2010 election season brought the nation an unprecedented number of organized campaigns aimed at denying retention to judges who had ruled in ways that some voters found objectionable. Judges in those and other retention-election states can no longer rest comfortably on the assumption that voters will routinely exempt them from meaningful scrutiny. Anxious judges, state bar officials, and others have responded with a set of deontological and consequentialist arguments aimed at persuading voters not to use retention elections as an opportunity to oust judges who have issued controversial rulings. The deontological arguments posit that ousting …

Accommodating Vulnerability, Annette Ruth Appell

annette appell

Unlike other social categories, such as race, gender, sexual identity, and disability, the category of childhood has received little critical examination in the legal academy. Like other socio-legal categories with natural referents, however, childhood masks the contingency and normativity of behavior, expectations, power, and regulation, rendering the social order natural and inevitable. Childhood also scripts behavior and produces subordination and privilege in a manner unique to the adult–child dichotomy, but which also intersects with class, gender, race, sexuality, sexual identity, and ability. As such, the category bears examination not only for what it reveals about ourselves—adults, but also how to …

Slavery Revisited In Penal Plantation Labor, Andrea Armstrong

Andrea Armstrong

Please see the full document attached.

Democracy And Criminal Discovery Reform After Connick And Garcetti, Janet Moore

Janet Moore

A leading cause of wrongful conviction and wasteful litigation in criminal cases is the nondisclosure of information beneficial to the defense by prosecutors and law enforcement as required by Brady v. Maryland. In Connick v. Thompson and Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court weakened Brady’s enforceability by limiting the deterrent force of 42 U.S.C § 1983 liability. Connick highlights Garcetti’s implications as a criminal discovery case, which scholars have not fully analyzed. While Connick restricted § 1983 liability when prosecutors confess to suppressing exculpatory evidence, Garcetti restricted liability when prosecutors are disciplined for bringing Brady evidence to light.

Connick and …

Disabled Students' Rights Of Access To Charter Schools Under The Idea, Section 504 And The Ada, Robert A. Garda Jr.

Robert A. Garda

Charter schools are under increasing attack for denying admission to disabled students. But traditional schools also turn away disabled students, often preventing them from attending schools in their neighborhood or within their district. This Article discusses when a school is permitted under federal disability law to deny admission to a disabled student. After nearly four decades of special education jurisprudence and regulatory guidance, the circumstances under which a student with a disability may be denied admission to a particular school are still remarkably unclear. This Article first discusses the "zero-reject" principle underlying the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and concludes …

The Constitutional Jurisprudence Of Justice Kennedy On Speech, Randall Kelso, Charles Kelso

Randall Kelso

Justice Kennedy’s basic principles in free speech cases are supporting political freedom, supporting individual autonomy, and protecting freedom to teach, learn and innovate. Given these principles, his opinions in free speech cases protect free speech from government regulation unless the government can provide strong reasons for any restrictive action and show that the means it has chosen to carry out its purposes are closely tailored to its goals. At a minimum, judicial review is by strict scrutiny for content-based regulations, and intermediate review for content neutral time, place, and manner regulations. In some cases, Justice Kennedy has indicated a preference …

‘A House Divided’: A Response To Professor Abbe Smith’S "In Praise Of The Guilty Project: A Criminal Defense Lawyer’S Growing Anxiety About Innocence Projects", William T. Carrington

William T Carrington

Article Abstract

‘A House Divided’:

A Response to Professor Abbe Smith’s In Praise of the Guilty Project: A Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Growing Anxiety about Innocence Projects

W. Tucker Carrington

Clinical Professor, University of Mississippi School of Law

Director, Mississippi Innocence Project

With the rapid rise in number, and success, of innocence projects across the country, has come criticism of their purported missions and their ultimate benefit to the criminal justice system, particularly as they affect issues of indigent criminal defense. In one of the most thoughtful and provocative articles written in the area to date (In Praise of the Guilty …

"Destinations:" A Comparison Of Sex Trafficking In India And The United States, Sarah Montana Hart

Sarah Montana Hart

This paper finds similarities in the sex trafficking industries in the United States and India, and offers some suggestions for the international community moving forward.