Law Commons^™

Family Law In The Age Of Distrust, Carl E. Scheider

Articles

I have been invited to examine the relationship between American culture and American family law at the end of the century. No doubt I was foolish to accept the invitation, since the topic can hardly be sketched, much less discussed, within the compass of even a lengthy article. On the other hand, that happy fault forces me to accept the luxury of writing a speculative essay and of eschewing the footnotes that are the misery (and majesty) of the academic lawyer. But even thus set free I am still enchained. Family law is shaped by more cultural forces than I …

The Cruelest Of The Gender Police: Student-To-Student Sexual Harassment And Anti-Gay Peer Harassment Under Title Ix, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

Title IX, like other sex discrimination laws, addresses discrimination that occurs because of an individual’s sex. Courts interpreting Title IX, like those interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, have struggled to demarcate a line separating discrimination because of sex from discrimination because of sexual orientation. This article constructs an argument for viewing anti-gay discrimination, and in particular anti-gay harassment between students, as a form of sex discrimination under Title IX. The article first explores why school inaction in the face of sexual harassment discriminates on the basis of sex. Although sex discrimination law generally has long …

Enhancing Autonomy For Battered Women: Lessons From Navajo Peacemaking, Donna Coker

Articles

In this Article, Professor Donna Coker employs original empirical research to investigate the use of Navajo Peacemaking in cases involving domestic violence. Her analysis includes an examination of Navajo women's status and the impact of internal colonization. Many advocates for battered women worry that informal adjudication methods such as Peacemaking ignore domestic hierarchies of power and thus facilitate the batterer's ongoing violence against the victim. Those who endorse the use of Navajo Peacemaking and other systems of restorative justice believe that such processes are better equipped to cut through the batterer's denial and victim blaming and are more likely to …

Pharmacists, Physician-Assisted Suicide, And Pain Control, Alan Meisel

Articles

One of the unintended consequences of the decade-old public debate about the legalization of physician-assisted suicide is an increased interest in pain control for terminally ill patients. Pain control and other aspects of palliative care are seen not only as medically desirable but as necessary to assure so as to minimize the pressure to legalize physician-assisted suicide or utilize physician-assisted suicide even if not legal. Most of the public debate has centered on the role of physicians in assisted suicide.

However, there has been very little discussion about the role that health care professionals - - other than physicians -- …

Managed Care, Autonomy, And Decision-Making At The End-Of-Life, Alan Meisel

Articles

Some argue that legalizing physician-assisted suicide poses intolerable risks, especially as we move from a system of fee-for-service health care to managed care. Although we need to be concerned about physician-assisted suicide in the context of managed care, physician-assisted suicide poses risks in a fee-for-service system too. In addition, we need to be concerned about the risks posed not only by physician-assisted suicide but also by the well-accepted practice of forgoing life-sustaining treatment. Instead of focusing on the manner of hastening death or the type of health care system, we need to show more concern for protections to assure that …

The Disability Kaleidoscope, Mary Crossley

Articles

The question of whom our society truly wants to protect from adverse discrimination based on bodily difference is ultimately a question for the body politic. The aim of this article, by contrast, is to use the analytical tools provided by scholars in the field of disability studies to scrutinize how lawmakers to date have understood the concept of impairment as one form of bodily difference. By viewing administrative and judicial treatments of impairment through a disability studies lens, I have sought to give the disability kaleidoscope a turn and thus to provide the reader with an altered view of impairment …

(Er)Race-Ing An Ethic Of Justice, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Documentary Credit Law And Practice In The Global Information Age, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Documentary letters of credit have historically been an important and popular method of payment in international trading transactions. In fact, they have been described as the "life-blood of international commerce." A number of uniform international practices have developed for their use, many of which are codified in international rules such as the UCP 500. However, in the global information age, as the nature of international commerce changes, so too must the operation of such payment mechanisms. With the increase in electronic trading, the "documentary" nature of these credits may require some revision. This paper examines ways in which the law …

The Stories, The Statistics And The Law: Why 'Driving While Black' Matters University Of Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 84, No. 2, 1999, David A. Harris

Articles

Racial profiling of drivers - often called "driving while black" - has taken an increasingly important role in the public debate on issues of race and criminal justice. It is one of the few such issues that has penetrated not only the public discourse, but the legislative process as well. This article takes three different approaches in attempting to explain that racial profiling is important not only for its own sake, but because it is a manifestation - both a symbol and a symptom - of all of the most difficult problems that we face at the intersection of race …

Humanities And The Law: A Kinship Of Performance, James Boyd White

Articles

The following essay is adapted from “A Visiting Scholar Considers The Law and the Humanities”, which appeared in The Key Reporter of Phi Beta Kappa in summer 1998 as a partial report of the author’s year as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. The selection here is a summary of a lecture the author delivered during his travels to eight colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Mirrored Silence: Reflections On Judicial Complicity In Private Violence, Zanita E. Fenton

Articles

Tracy and John had been married for seven years. They were so in love when they met at college. He brought her flowers and wanted to spend all of his free time with her. Everything was perfect. But it seemed to become increasingly tumultuous as soon as they got married, two years later. He didn't just want to spend all of his time with her; he had to know what she was doing every waking moment of the day. He had to approve of her activities and her friends. He called her at work every day. If she wasn't at …

. . . And The Invention Of The Future Tense, John W. Reed

Articles

This is the last session of the last meeting of the International Society of Barristers in the 1900s. Though the Third Millennium technically does not begin until 2001, the turn of the "odometer" from 1999 to 2000 leads us all to think of this as the end of a century and of a millennium. The pivotal date is yet ten nonths away, but the pundits are already issuing their lists, both profound and trivial-the greatest inventions, the best books, the worst natural catastrophes, the trial or tile century (of which there are at least a half dozen), the most influential …

Rejoinder (Response To Article By William G. Bowen And Derek Bok), Terrance Sandalow

Articles

In The Shape of the River, presidents Bowen and Bok pronounce the race-sensitive admission policies adopted by selective undergraduate schools a resounding success. The evidence they adduce in support of that conclusion primarily concerns the performance of African-American students in and after college. But not all African-American students in those institutions were admitted in consequence of minority preference policies. Some, perhaps many, would have been admitted under race-neutral policies. I argued at several points in my review that since these students might be expected to be academically more successful than those admitted because of their race, the evidence on which …