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Ricci V. Destefano: A Masculinities Theory Analysis, Ann C. Mcginley Jan 2010

Ricci V. Destefano: A Masculinities Theory Analysis, Ann C. Mcginley

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This Article applies masculinity theory to explore the aspects Ricci v. Destefano and its political reverberations. Empirical evidence showed that virtually all written tests have a disparate impact on minorities, that a neighboring city had reached less discriminatory results using a different weighting system, and that other fire departments used assessment centers to judge firefighters' qualifications for promotions. While the black male and all female firefighters were made invisible by the case and the testimony, the fact that Ricci's and Vargas' testimony lionized a particularly traditional form of heterosexual masculinity was also invisible. While the command presence required of a …


Teaching Problem-Solving And Preventive Law Skills Through International Labour And Employment Law, Ruben J. Garcia Jan 2009

Teaching Problem-Solving And Preventive Law Skills Through International Labour And Employment Law, Ruben J. Garcia

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This essay describes how problem-solving and preventive law principles apply in the teaching of international labor and employment law. This is because the subject itself crosses disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Students are taught about the importance of the lawyer's role as a counselor, rather than simply a litigator, which is at the center of the model of the lawyer as a problem solver.


Harassment Of Sex(Y) Workers: Applying Title Vii To Sexualized Industries, Ann C. Mcginley Jan 2006

Harassment Of Sex(Y) Workers: Applying Title Vii To Sexualized Industries, Ann C. Mcginley

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Like the women blackjack dealers at the Hard Rock, cocktail servers, exotic dancers, and prostitutes in legal brothels are vulnerable to sexual harassment by customers. The content of the four jobs reveals the fallacy of the "good girl"/"bad girl" dichotomy, because all four jobs require behavior that falls into both categories if we expand the definition of good and bad girls to include gendered behavior as well as sexual behavior. Once the defense applies to discrimination in sexualized environments, it could logically apply to sexual or racial harassment cases in companies that permit their employees to harbor and act upon …


Bringing Families In: Recommendations Of The Incarceration, Reentry And Family Roundtables, Ann Cammett, Johnna Christian, Nancy Fisherman, Lori Scott-Pickens Jan 2006

Bringing Families In: Recommendations Of The Incarceration, Reentry And Family Roundtables, Ann Cammett, Johnna Christian, Nancy Fisherman, Lori Scott-Pickens

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Building on the findings of the New Jersey Reentry Roundtable and a growing concern around the state about how to improve outcomes for the more than 70,000 individuals expected to return home from prison over the next five years, the roundtable examined the complex role that families – broadly defined – play in the lives of prisoners during incarceration and after their release. This document presents a set of recommendations emerging directly from roundtable sessions and provides a road map for individual and collaborative efforts accepted by a range of key players in New Jersey, including government officials, community and …


Making Work Pay: Promoting Employment And Better Child Support Outcomes For Low-Income And Incarcerated Parents, Ann Cammett Jan 2005

Making Work Pay: Promoting Employment And Better Child Support Outcomes For Low-Income And Incarcerated Parents, Ann Cammett

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The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice prepared this report in response to concerns about child support debt—in particular as it creates a barrier to employment for low-income parents and works at cross-purposes with the goals of the child support program. Drawing on examples from other states, this report identifies a range of policies that inform child support practice in New Jersey and offers administrative, legislative, and programmatic solutions to address child support arrears owed by low-income and incarcerated parents.


In Search Of The Best Procedure For Enforcing Employment Discrimination Laws: A Comparative Analysis, Jean R. Sternlight Jan 2004

In Search Of The Best Procedure For Enforcing Employment Discrimination Laws: A Comparative Analysis, Jean R. Sternlight

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As our world effectively shrinks, many countries are beginning to reach a striking substantive consensus regarding the prohibition of employment discrimination. Yet, and in sharp contrast, nothing approaching consensus has yet emerged regarding the best procedural method with which to resolve individual claims of employment discrimination. Instead, while countries have struggled, individually, to devise processes that meet a variety of needs, none seems to be satisfied with its efforts. Litigation is slow, costly, and impersonal. Informal processes such as conciliation, mediation, arbitration, or administrative processes aim to be faster and cheaper, but may not result in adequate enforcement of discrimination …


Masculinities At Work, Ann C. Mcginley Jan 2004

Masculinities At Work, Ann C. Mcginley

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This article focuses on the study of masculinities, a body of theoretical and empirical work by sociologists, feminist theorists and organization management theorists. This work, much of which employment law scholars have ignored, studies the role of masculinities, which are often invisible, in creating structural barriers to the advancement of many women and some men at work. Masculinities comprise both a structure that reinforces the superiority of men over women and a series of practices, associated with masculine behavior, performed by men or women, that aid men to maintain their superior position over women. In their less visible form, masculinities …


Disparate Impact Theory In Employment Discrimination: What’S Griggs Still Good For? What Not?, Elaine W. Shoben Jan 2004

Disparate Impact Theory In Employment Discrimination: What’S Griggs Still Good For? What Not?, Elaine W. Shoben

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Is disparate impact a dead theory of employment discrimination? Definitely not. The theory itself has a more stable legal status than it did when the Supreme Court embraced it in its 1971 opinion Griggs v. Duke Power Co. But is it thriving in litigation? It appears to be neither thriving nor dead. It has become a relatively less vital tool, compared with theories of intentional discrimination. Despite the heroic effort of Congress to keep the theory from destruction by the Supreme Court through its express codification in 1991, disparate impact litigation is not making a major impact in this …


The Irrational Turn In Employment Discrimination Law: Slouching Toward A Unified Approach To Civil Rights Law, John Valery White Jan 2002

The Irrational Turn In Employment Discrimination Law: Slouching Toward A Unified Approach To Civil Rights Law, John Valery White

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This Article argues that the Supreme Court's recent disparate treatment decisions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represent a trend toward unifying all civil rights law under an approach most closely akin to traditional equity. This trend explains the curious tension between substance and process in the Court's most recent decisions, St. Mary's Honor Center v. Hicks and Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing. It also explains the Court's uncommon confidence in its yet undefined notions of what constitutes discrimination on the basis of the several protected categories recognized in Title VII and related statutes. The trend toward …


Introduction: Employment Discrimination And The Problems Of Proof, John Valery White, Gregory Vincent Jan 2001

Introduction: Employment Discrimination And The Problems Of Proof, John Valery White, Gregory Vincent

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This is an introduction to articles presented at a symposium on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods. Co. sponsored by the Louisiana Law Review. Presenting papers were five of the leading scholars on employment discrimination law: Professor Catherine J. Lanctot of the Villanova University Law School, Professor Michael Selmi of the George Washington Law School, Professor Linda Hamilton Krieger, University of California at Berkely School of Law, Professor Rebecca Hanner White of the University of Georgia Law School, and Professor Michael Zimmer of the Seton Hall University School of Law. Respondents were the authors and …


Affirmative Action Awash In Confusion: Backward-Looking-Future-Oriented Justifications For Race-Conscious Measures, Ann C. Mcginley Jan 1998

Affirmative Action Awash In Confusion: Backward-Looking-Future-Oriented Justifications For Race-Conscious Measures, Ann C. Mcginley

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The Third Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, decided Taxman v. Board of Education of the Township of Piscataway, in August 1996. Eight judges agreed that he Board of Education of Piscataway Township, New Jersey violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by using race, in accordance with its affirmative action policy, to break a tie between two teachers in the Business Department at Piscataway High School when determining which teacher to lay off. A strong dissent by Chief Judge Sloviter was joined by two other Court of Appeals judges. The majority decision is remarkable in its breadth, …


Credulous Courts And The Tortured Trilogy: The Improper Use Of Summary Judgment In Title Vii And Adea Cases, Ann C. Mcginley Jan 1993

Credulous Courts And The Tortured Trilogy: The Improper Use Of Summary Judgment In Title Vii And Adea Cases, Ann C. Mcginley

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Civil rights are under siege. In mid-1989, the United States Supreme Court decided several cases that severely limit the civil rights claims and remedies available to a plaintiff claiming employment discrimination. This Article examines the gradual and continuing erosion of the factfinder's role in federal employment discrimination cases and its replacement by an increasing use of summary judgment through which the courts make pretrial determinations formerly reserved for the factfinder at trial. This trend not only represents a major shift in court procedure and, in the case of age discrimination claims, a transfer of power from juries to judges, but …


Reinventing Reality: The Impermissible Intrusion Of After-Acquired Evidence In Title Vii Litigation, Ann C. Mcginley Jan 1993

Reinventing Reality: The Impermissible Intrusion Of After-Acquired Evidence In Title Vii Litigation, Ann C. Mcginley

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This Article analyzes the use of after-acquired evidence to defeat a discrimination victim's claim against her employer. The use of the Mount Healthy and Price Waterhouse mixed motives analysis in after-acquired evidence cases is misplaced because it is impossible for the permissible motive—resume fraud—to have been a factor in the adverse employment decision. Furthermore, after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, it would be an improper judicial intrusion upon the power of the legislature for courts to apply mixed motives analysis to these cases. Besides the constitutional limitation on the judiciary's power created by the Civil Rights …


Mutable Characteristics And The Definition Of Discrimination Under Title Vii, Peter Brandon Bayer Jan 1987

Mutable Characteristics And The Definition Of Discrimination Under Title Vii, Peter Brandon Bayer

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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits racial, religious, gender, ethnic, and color discrimination in employment. In most instances the courts interpret the statute very broadly. However, a line of cases holds that discrimination predicated on a forbidden criterion coupled with a ‘mutable’—easily altered—characteristic does not constitute a violation of Title VII. This Article attempts to debunk the ‘mutable’ characteristic doctrine by discerning a general definition of discrimination under Title VII and applying that definition to demonstrate that mutability analysis contradicts the letter and spirit of the law.


The Use Of Statistics To Prove Intentional Employment Discrimination, Elaine W. Shoben Jan 1983

The Use Of Statistics To Prove Intentional Employment Discrimination, Elaine W. Shoben

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Two decades after the once fiery debate about the meaning of "discrimination" in employment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the issue has recently been rekindled. In simplest form, the question is whether the type of discrimination statutorily prohibited is only purposeful exclusions, or whether it includes unintended exclusions caused by tests or requirements that disproportionately affect a group defined by race, sex, or ethnicity. The Supreme Court's decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. resolved the question in one major area, thus causing the issue to lie dormant since 1971. Griggs held that liability under …


In Defense Of Disparate Impact Analysis Under Title Vii: A Reply To Dr. Cohn, Elaine W. Shoben Jan 1980

In Defense Of Disparate Impact Analysis Under Title Vii: A Reply To Dr. Cohn, Elaine W. Shoben

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The preceding article by Dr. Richard M. Cohn' concerning the use of statistics in Title VII employment discrimination cases makes three basic points. First, Cohn rejects the methods used to assess disproportionate differences between groups on tests, such as ability tests. He finds fault both with the approach of the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures and with the method based on finding statistical significance that I have advocated. Second, he also rejects the approach courts have adopted for evaluating the relative exclusion of groups defined by race, sex, or national origin in the employer's work force. He argues that …


Differential Pass-Fail Rates In Employment Testing: Statistical Proof Under Title Vii, Elaine W. Shoben Jan 1978

Differential Pass-Fail Rates In Employment Testing: Statistical Proof Under Title Vii, Elaine W. Shoben

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In this Comment, Professor Shoben advocates the use of a statistical technique—a test of the difference between independent proportions—to assess the substantiality of differences in pass rates among various groups on employment tests, in order to facilitate determination of disproportionate impact under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She then compares this method with the procedure adopted in the Federal Executive Agency Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures and suggests several flaws in the latter approach.