Law Commons^™

Paying For The Sins Of Their Clients The Eeocs Position That Staffing Firms Can Be Liable When Their Clients Terminate An Assigned Employee For A Discriminatory Reason, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Family Responsibilities Discrimination: Don't Get Caught Off Guard, Joan C. Williams, Consuela A. Pinto

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reading The Pink Locker Room On Football Culture And Title Ix, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the public controversy that erupted after local media reported on a comment the Author made about the University of Iowa's decision to renovate the football stadium's visiting team locker room entirely in pink. The Author submitted a statement in response to the University Steering Committee on NCAA Certification's request for feedback on a draft report and suggested that the "joke" behind the pink decor traded in sexist and homophobic values. As such, the Author concluded that it belonged in the comprehensive analysis of gender equity that the committee was preparing. The Author immediately received hundreds of hateful …

From Right To Wrong: A Critique Of The 2000 Uniform Parentage Act, Mary P. Byrn

Faculty Scholarship

In 1973, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (the Conference) proposed a Uniform Parentage Act (UPA) that radically changed how parentage was determined in the United States. Prior to 1973, the parentage laws of most states failed to identify two legal parents for thousands of children merely because their parents were not married. These "illegitimate" children were considered a "child of no one" under the law and were denied the significant emotional, financial, and legal benefits of having two legal parents. By the early 1970s, however, the conference recognized that such treatment of children was becoming scientifically, …

Why The Supreme Court Lied About Plessy, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the citation in Plessy of a dozen cases that the Court said held racial segregation statutes in transport to be constitutional. It argues that none of those twelve cases upheld a segregation statute, but were largely decisions upholding decisions by the carrier under the common law. Justice Brown knew that the cases did not uphold segregation statutes, but he went ahead and used them to bury opposition under the weight of precedent. He knew that he was unlikely to be challenged, and he believed that the common law and the Constitution involved the same principles. The conflation …

Tied Up In Knotts? Gps Technology And The Fourth Amendment, Renée Mcdonald Hutchins

Faculty Scholarship

Judicial and scholarly assessment of emerging technology seems poised to drive the Fourth Amendment down one of three paths. The first would simply relegate the amendment to a footnote in history books by limiting its reach to harms that the framers specifically envisioned. A modified version of this first approach would dispense with expansive constitutional notions of privacy and replace them with legislative fixes. A third path offers the amendment continued vitality but requires the U.S. Supreme Court to overhaul its Fourth Amendment analysis. Fortunately, a fourth alternative is available to cabin emerging technologies within the existing doctrinal framework. Analysis …

How A Marriage Discrimination Amendment Would Disrespect Democracy In Minnesota, Anthony S. Winer

Faculty Scholarship

The proposed marriage discrimination amendment to the Minnesota Constitution is profoundly anti-democratic. It is extremely wide-ranging in its scope, it obliterates the opportunity of the LGBT community to legislatively advance its interests in the area, it falsely assumes characteristics of the state judiciary that do not in fact exist, and it is drafted with language that is particularly hostile to LGBT concerns and democracy in general. It was a triumph for reason and democracy that this amendment was defeated in 2006. It should never be introduced again. In the unfortunate event that it is introduced again, it should be resoundingly …

Law Firms As Defendants: Family Responsibilities Discrimination In Legal Workplaces, Joan C. Williams, Stephanie Bornstein, Diana Reddy, Betsy A. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Time In The Legal Profession, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

New Frameworks For Racial Equality In The Criminal Law, Jeffery Fagan, Mukul Bakhshi

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium, " Pursuing Racial Fairness in the Administration of Justice: Twenty Years After McClesky v. Kemp," was conceived and inspired by Theodore Shaw, Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Ted Shaw and his staff worked with Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey Fagan to recruit an outstanding group of scholars and activists who met on March 2-3, 2007 to hear and comment on the articles appearing in this Symposium. In addition to the authors whose work appears in this issue, many others made important contributions to the Symposium through their commentaries and presentations. These …

The Architecture Of Inclusion: Interdisciplinary Insights On Pursuing Institutional Citizenship, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Structural inequality has captured the attention of academics, policymakers, and activists. This structural reorientation is occurring at a time of judicial retrenchment and political backlash against affirmative action. These developments have placed in sharp relief the mismatch between structural diagnoses and the dominant legal frameworks for addressing inequality. Scholars, policymakers, and activists are faced with the pressing question of what to do now. They share a need for new frameworks and strategies, growing out of a better understanding of institutional and cultural change.

I am honored that the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender has used the publication of The …

A Reader's Companion To Against Prediction: A Reply To Ariela Gross, Yoram Margalioth, And Yoav Sapir On Economic Modeling, Selective Incapacitation, Governmentality, And Race, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

From parole prediction instruments and violent sexual predator scores to racial profiling on the highways, instruments to predict future dangerousness, drug-courier profiles, and IRS computer algorithms to detect tax evaders, the rise of actuarial methods in the field of crime and punishment presents a number of challenging issues at the intersection of economic theory, sociology, history, race studies, criminology, social theory, and law. The three review essays of "Against Prediction" by Ariela Gross, Yoram Margalioth, and Yoav Sapir, raise these challenges in their very best light. Ranging from the heights of poststructuralist and critical race theory to the intricate details …

Latino Inter-Ethnic Employment Discrimination And The Diversity Defense, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

With the growing racial and ethnic diversity of the U.S. population and workforce, scholars have begun to address the ways in which coalition building across groups not only will continue to be necessary but also will become even more complex. Recent scholarship has focused on analyzing how best to promote effective coalition building. Thus far, scholars have not examined what that growing racial and ethnic diversity will mean in the context of individual racial and ethnic discrimination claims. What will antidiscrimination litigation look like when all the parties involved are non-White but nonetheless plaintiffs allege that a racial hierarchy exists …

Equal Access To Post-Secondary Education: The Sisyphean Impact Of Flagging Test Scores Of Persons With Disabilities, Helia Garrido Hull

Faculty Scholarship

In view of the social stigma associated with disabilities, and the inherent costs of providing accommodations to disabled students, the opportunity for bias within the admissions selection process is clear. As a result, the practice of flagging standardized tests has come under increasing scrutiny. The practice of distinguishing test takers having a disability from those who do not runs counter to the social policy of inclusion, and prevents disabled individuals from enjoying the benefits of equal citizenship. Part II of this paper provides a brief overview of the prejudice disabled individuals have endured throughout history, and discusses some early movements …

Truth Matters: A Call For The American Bar Association To Acknowledge Its Past And Make Reparations To African Descendants, Adjoa A. Aiyetoro

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sexy Dressing Revisited: Does Target Dress Play A Part In Sexual Harassment Cases?, Theresa M. Beiner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Preclearance, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines recent charges of political motivation against the Department of Justice and its enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. These accusations appear well-deserved, on the strength of the Department's recent handling of the Texas redistricting submission and Georgia's voting identification requirement. This Essay reaches two conclusions. First, it is clear that Congress wished to secure its understanding of the Act into the future through its preclearance requirement. Many critics of the voting rights bill worried about the degree of discretion that the legislation accorded the Attorney General. Supporters worried as well, for this degree of discretion might lead …

Toward A New Civil Rights Framework, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawyers And Community Economic Development, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

The Articles in this symposium and the experiences they report show that, for lawyers, Community Economic Development (CED) has become a more expansive and more complex subject than it was when we discovered it two decades or so ago.

The Articles and the experiences are particularly revealing about what I would guess have been the two central preoccupations of lawyers in the field. The first, of course, is what we mean by community, and more specifically, how a community can become – or be regarded as – a legal and political actor. The second concerns lawyer accountability. Progressive lawyers have …

Rights As A Functional Guide For Service Provision In Homeless Advocacy Creating Healthy Communities: Ending Homelessness, Nestor M. Davidson

Faculty Scholarship

Rights-based approaches to advocacy on behalf of homeless persons have long sought to vindicate important dignitary, liberty, and equality interests, as well as establish to entitlements to housing, mental health, substance abuse, and other services. This advocacy has had some success in shaping the systems that define the interaction between homeless persons and the state. Rights paradigms, however, can be undermined by the day-to-day reality of the lives of homeless individuals and families that are often shaped by profound need less for protection from the state than for meaningful support, and entitlement advocacy remains circumscribed by the reality of severely …

Police Interrogation During Traffic Stops: More Questions Than Answers, Tracey Maclin

Faculty Scholarship

This short paper focuses on whether the Fourth Amendment permits police, during a routine traffic stop, to arbitrarily question motorists about subjects unrelated to the purpose of the traffic stop. The paper was prompted by a recent Ninth Circuit ruling, United States v. Mendez, 476 F.3d 1077 (9th Cir. 2007), which was authored by Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

Prior to Mendez, the Ninth Circuit had taken the position that the Fourth Amendment barred police from questioning motorists about subjects unrelated to the purpose of a traffic stop, unless there was independent suspicion for such questioning. This rule was based on the …

Drug Testing Of Students: A Legal And Public Health Perspective, Floralynn Einesman

Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to address the efficacy of school drug-testing programs. After providing some general background information on the abuse of substances, the article sets forth the Supreme Court decisions on student drug testing. Part III then discusses the extension of the jurisprudence in the state courts to show how the Supreme Court law is being expanded by the states, and is likely to be further expanded in the future. The next section, Part IV, turns to drug screening from a public health perspective, analyzing whether or not drug screening is a valid public health screen. Finally, Part V examines …

Shape Stops Story, Elizabeth F. Emens

Faculty Scholarship

Storytelling and resistance are powerful tools of both lawyering and individual identity, as I argue in this brief essay published in Narrative as part of a dialogue on disability, narrative, and law with Rosemarie Garland-Thompson and Ellen Barton. Garland-Thompson's work shows us the life-affirming potential of storytelling, its role in shaping disability identity, and its role in communicating that identity to the outside world. By contrast, Barton powerfully shows how those same life-affirming narratives can force a certain kind of storytelling, can create a mandate to tell one story and not another. In short, Barton reminds us of the need …

Disparity Rules, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

In 1992, Congress required states receiving federal juvenile justice funds to reduce racial disparities in the confinement rates of minority juveniles. This provision, now known as the disproportionate minority contact standard (DMC), is potentially more far-reaching than traditional disparate impact standards: It requires the reduction of racial disparities regardless of whether those disparities were motivated by intentional discrimination orjustified by "legitimate" agency interests. Instead, the statute encourages states to address how their practices exacerbate racial disadvantage.

This Article casts the DMC standard as a partial response to the failure of constitutional and statutory standards to discourage actions that produce racial …