Law Commons^™

Love Is Love: The Fundamental Right To Love, Marriage, And Obergefell V. Hodges, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process fundamental rights doctrine is about love. It is, at least, based on a close reading of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case in which the Supreme Court held that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right of individual autonomy and dignity.

Part I of this Article discusses the concept of love. Part II examines Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell and argues that it expresses unconditional love for LGBT people in tone, language, and substance. Part III argues that, in Obergefell, Kennedy’s key reasons for concluding that marriage is …

Black Citizenship, Dehumanization, And The Fourteenth Amendment, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The fight for full Black citizenship has been in large measure a fight against the systematic dehumanization of African Americans. Dehumanization is the process of treating people as less than human, as subhuman. Denying Blacks full and equal citizenship has gone hand in hand with denying their full humanity. To effectively promote equal citizenship for African Americans, therefore, requires an explicit commitment to ending their dehumanization.

In this Essay, Part I discusses the concept of dehumanization and its role in the infliction of harm on a dehumanized class of people. Part II discusses the concept of citizenship, and contend that …

Dehumanization, Immigrants, And Equal Protection, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article is divided into three parts. Part I explores the concept of dehumanization and its central role in the subordination of marginalized groups. Part II discusses the equal protection doctrine of suspect classes by analyzing key decisions by the Court and its reasoning for whether or not to consider a particular group as a suspect class. Part II also argues that the decision in Brown v. Board of Education regards racial segregation in public schools as a form of racial dehumanization and provides the doctrinal basis to consider dehumanization a central factor in determining suspect class status. Part III …

Same-Sex Sex And Immutable Traits: Why Obergefell V. Hodges Clears A Path To Protecting Gay And Lesbian Employees From Workplace Discrimination Under Title Vii, Matthew W. Green Jr.

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article is set forth in five parts. Part II is largely descriptive and focuses on two aspects of Obergefell: (1) the Court's clarification that adult, private, consensual, same-sex sexual intimacy is a fundamental right, protected by the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause and (2) the Court's recognition that leading mental health and medical groups consider sexual orientation to be immutable. Part III examines how courts and the EEOC have treated sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII and contains a normative discussion which argues—consistent with the position of other commentators, some courts, and the EEOC—that sexual orientation …

The Freedom Of Health, Abigail R. Moncrieff

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article first draws out the freedom of health from Supreme Court precedent and demonstrates that, like other substantive constitutional rights, the freedom of health is a negative liberty that must be balanced against legitimate and compelling regulatory projects. The Article then applies that understanding of the freedom to evaluate some proposed and actual health care regulations that have made headline news in the last decade. I consider the constitutionality of the phantom death panels, the HlNl vaccine distribution program, the FDA's restrictions on access to experimental drugs, PPACA's obesity and smoking regulations, and, of course, PPACA's individual mandate. Should …

Regulating White Desire, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article contends that segregationist justifications for miscegenation and segregation laws shows that those laws effectively imposed a legal duty on whites to adhere to cultural norms of endogamy. Dominant social groups enforce rules of endogamy⁠—the cultural practice of encouraging people to marry within their own social group⁠—to protect the dominant status of their individual members and of the social group in general. Thus, laws prohibiting interracial marriages regulated white desire in order to protect the dominant status of whites as a group. The Loving Court, therefore, ultimately was correct in declaring that miscegenation laws denied blacks equal protection.

Part …

Out The Window--Prospects For The Epa And Fmla After Kimel V. Florida Board Of Regents, Brian E. Ray

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This note considers how the heightened scrutiny standard that the Court has used in gender cases under the Fourteenth Amendment will impact the congruence and proportionality test that the Court has applied in a recent series of cases examining congressional power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The purpose of this note is twofold First it closely analyzes Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, the Court's most recent decision concerning Section 5 and argues that the Court's analysis in Kimel indicates that a statute that involves heightened scrutiny has a much greater possibility of meeting the standards the Court …

Reconstructing Section Five Of The Fourteenth Amendment To Assist Impoverished Children, James G. Wilson

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Liberal lawyers encounter grim alternatives caused by the Supreme Court's relentless shift to the right, particularly if they consider stare decisis a major constitutional value. They can attack specific decisions, demonstrating inconsistencies with prior cases, conclusory reasoning and/ or poor policy. They can use history, jurisprudence or even literature to make broad-based critiques of the Court's increasing callousness. They can propose counter-doctrine which is consistent with existing caselaw. The third response may appear quixotic, even naive, given the present Court. Nevertheless, exploration of progressive alternatives illuminates existing doctrine and provides potential openings if the Court ever decides to become more …