Law Commons^™

Freedom Of Expression, Academic Freedom, And Equality: Seven Institutional Responsibilities, Emma Cunliffe

All Faculty Publications

This paper considers the institutional responsibilities that arise from the separate but related values of freedom of expression, academic freedom, and equality rights at Canadian public universities.

It introduces some applicable Canadian legal principles and considers whether freedom of expression can properly be limited. It also addresses the importance of institutional support for those who face threats or unfair criticism as a result of activities performed in the course of their university role.

The paper argues that universities should actively foster a robust and inclusive institutional culture that advances substantive equality while ensuring that policies and procedures do not place …

Educational Equality For Children With Disabilities: The 2016 Term Cases, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Book Chapters

One of the most longstanding debates in educational policy pits the goal of equality against the goal of adequacy: Should we aim to guarantee that all children receive an equal education? Or simply that they all receive an adequate education? The debate is vexing in part because there are many ways to specify “equality” and “adequacy.” Are we talking about equality of inputs (which inputs?), equality of opportunity (to achieve what?), or equality of results (which results?)? Douglas Rae and his colleagues famously argued that there are no fewer than 108 structurally distinct conceptions of equality. And how do we …

Law Library Blog (November 2017): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Further Reflections On Antitrust And Wealth Inequality, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Since I have already published a lengthy academic article on antitrust and wealth inequality, I have the freedom of using this piece to present the key arguments unvarnished by dense citations or technical details (readers interested in those things should consult my earlier article) and to respond to some of the criticisms of my article that have since been levied. My thesis, before and now, is this: claims that antitrust enforcement advances income or wealth progressivity are overstated and rest on simplistic and unrealistic understandings of how antitrust actually operates. While some enforcement actions may generate progressive results, others will …

Embracing Our First Responder Role As Academics - With Inspiration From Langston Hughes, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

In the midst of the post-2016 political crisis, our role as academics is that of First Responders. In physical crises, like a fire, First Responders play an important role. They intentionally put themselves in harm’s way to fulfill an overarching purpose of helping others, even at their own risk. They strategically prepare, train, and work for years to prepare for this role in the midst of crisis. As academics who care about equality, we are First Responders.

Newsroom: Governor Raimondo On Rwu Law 09-19-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: The Violence In Charlottesville 08-14-2017, Michael J. Yelnosky

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Distributive Justice And Donative Intent, Alexander Boni-Saenz

All Faculty Scholarship

The inheritance system is beset by formalism. Probate courts reject wills on technicalities and refuse to correct obvious drafting mistakes by testators. These doctrines lead to donative errors, or outcomes that are not in line with the decedent’s donative intent. While scholars and reformers have critiqued the intent-defeating effects of formalism in the past, none have examined the resulting distribution of donative errors and connected it to broader social and economic inequalities. Drawing on egalitarian theories of distributive justice, this Article develops a novel critique of formalism in the inheritance law context. The central normative claim is that formalistic wills …

Equality And Nondiscrimination Through The Eyes Of An International Religious Organization: The Organization Of Islamic Cooperation's (Oic) Response To Women's Rights, Robert C. Blitt

Scholarly Works

This article is the first of a two part series that draws on women’s rights and sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) to explore how the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) represents, interprets and seeks to impact the right to equality and protection against discrimination as enshrined under international human rights law. The study is a novel one in as much as the OIC is neither a state nor a religious group per se. Rather, the OIC stands out as the only contemporary intergovernmental organization unifying its member states around the commonality of a single religion. In this capacity, the …

Female Autonomy: An Analysis Of Privacy And Equality Doctrine For Reproductive Rights, Elizabeth Levi

Political Science Honors Projects

What is the constitutional basis for women’s equality? Recently, scholars have suggested that as the right to privacy has floundered against the political undoing of women's access to abortion, equal protection arguments have grown stronger. This thesis investigates the feminist utility and limits of the equality and privacy arguments. Taking liberal feminism and feminist legal theory as analytical lenses, I offer interpretations of gender discrimination, reproductive rights, and marriage equality case law. By this framework, I argue that while an equality argument is less inherently oppressive towards women than the privacy doctrine, equality doctrine has been constructed thus far to …

Rwu First Amendment Blog: Jared A. Goldstein's Blog: Trump's Order Violates Bedrock Principles Of Roger Williams And Ri 01-30-2017, Jared A. Goldstein

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Order Violates Roger Williams' Principles 01-30-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Deborah Gonzalez's Post: Why I Marched... 1-25-2017, Deborah Gonzalez

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Reproductive Selection Bias, Lauren R. Roth

Scholarly Works

Decades after the advent of assisted reproductive technology (ART) that allows prospective parents to deselect embryos with grave genetic illnesses – a procedure called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) – it remains a tool largely of upper class whites. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, I argue that the time has come to focus on access in this area of reproductive rights. The next logical step is to rebut the presumption that reproductive liberty is only a negative right that prevents government interference with decisions about whether and how to procreate or not …

Vulnerability And Inevitable Inequality, Martha Albertson Fineman

Faculty Articles

The abstract legal subject of liberal Western democracies fails to reflect the fundamental reality of the human condition, which is vulnerability. While it is universal and constant, vulnerability is manifested differently in individuals, often resulting in significant differences in position and circumstance. In spite of such differences, political theory positions equality as the foundation for law and policy, and privileges autonomy, independence and self-sufficiency. This article traces the origins and development of a critical legal theory that brings human vulnerability to the fore in assessing individual and state responsibility and redefining the parameters of social justice. The theory arose in …

In The Shadow Of A Myth: Bargaining For Same-Sex Divorce, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

This Article explores a relatively new phenomenon in family law: same-sex divorce. The Article’s central claim is that parties to the first wave of same-sex divorces are not effectively bargaining against the backdrop of legal dissolution rules that would govern in the absence of an agreement. In other words, to use Robert Mnookin and Lewis Kornhauser’s terminology, they are not “bargaining in the shadow of the law.” Instead, the Article argues, many same-sex couples today bargain in the shadow of a myth that same-sex couples are egalitarian—that there are no vulnerable parties or power differentials in same-sex divorce.

The Article …

Find Out What It Means To Me: The Politics Of Respect And Dignity In Sexual Orientation Anti-Discrimination, Jeremiah A. Ho

All Faculty Scholarship

This accompanying article considers the state of LGBTQ equality after the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. Specifically, by examining this upsurge of social visibility for same-sex couples as both acceptance of sexual minorities and cultural assimilation, the article finds that the marriage cases at the Supreme Court — Obergefell and U.S. v. Windsor — shifted the framing of gay rights from the politics of respect that appeared more than a decade ago in Lawrence v. Texas toward a politics of respectability. The article traces this regression in Justice Kennedy’s own definition of dignity from Lawrence, where …

The Door Has A Tendency To Swing Shut: The Saga Of Aboriginal Peoples' Equality Claims, Naiomi Metallic

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper tracks the history of Aboriginal peoples' equality complaints against the state. From the time Aboriginal people started to bring discrimination complaints before the courts, there have been significant obstacles that have operated to effectively — and sometimes even explicitly — prevent Aboriginal peoples from advancing pressing discrimination complaints against governments. Although there have been changes made in the law over time to attempt to eliminate such barriers, what we see is a pattern where new obstacles crop up to replace the old ones. Over and over, Aboriginal peoples see the door to equality open up only to have …

Equality And The Defence Of Provocation: Irreconcilable Differences, Isabel Grant, Debra Parkes

All Faculty Publications

Recent amendments to the defence of provocation have limited access to the defence to those who are provoked by conduct that, if prosecuted, would have been an indictable offence punishable by at least five years imprisonment. The paper argues that these amendments are both over- and under-inclusive and fail to confront the central problem surrounding provocation which is that it privileges loss-of-control rage often in the context of male violence against women or in response to same-sex advances. The paper supports the abolition of the defence of provocation but only if mandatory minimum sentences for murder are abolished providing trial …

Inequality Rediscovered, Jedediah Purdy, David Singh Grewal

Faculty Scholarship

Widespread recognition that economic inequality has been growing for forty years in most of the developed world, and in fact has tended to grow across most of the history of modern economies, shows that the period 1945-1973, when inequality of wealth and income shrank, was a marked anomaly in historical experience. At the time, however, the anomalous period of equality seemed to vindicate a long history of optimism about economic life: that growth would overcome meaningful scarcity and usher in an egalitarian and humanistic period that could almost qualify as post-economic. This has not been the experience of the last …

The Membership Decisions Of Religious Organisations: Equality, Religious Liberty And Freedom Of Association, G Walsh

Law Papers and Journal Articles

The merit of a provision that regulates the membership decisions of religious organisations is typically assessed according to the right to equality and religious liberty. Although such rights are of central importance in assessing such a provision, it is necessary to also consider other relevant considerations in order to reach an informed conclusion on the appropriateness of the provision. Freedom of association is a right that is often neglected in this context. This article argues that any assessment of the merits of a provision that impacts on the membership decisions of religious organisations should have a strong focus on freedom …

Empowering Individual Plaintiffs, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

The individual plaintiff plays a critical—yet, underappreciated—role in our legal system. Only lawsuits that are brought by individual plaintiffs allow the law to achieve the twin goals of efficiency and fairness. The ability of individual plaintiffs to seek justice against those who wronged them deters wrongdoing, ex ante, and in those cases in which a wrong has been committed nevertheless, it guarantees the payment of compensation, ex post. No other form of litigation, including class actions and criminal prosecutions, or even compensation funds, can accomplish the same result. Yet, as we show in this Essay, in many key sectors of …

R. V. Safarzadeh-Markhali: Elements And Implications Of The Supreme Court's New Rigorous Approach To Construction Of Statutory Purpose, Marcus Moore

All Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Safarzadeh-Markhali holds great significance, beyond Criminal Law, in the area of Statutory Interpretation: in Markhali, the Court decisively endorses a new rigorous approach to construing legislative purpose. Previously, while legislation itself was long-interpreted utilizing rigorous approaches, legislative purpose was typically construed ad hoc while providing only summary justification. Markhali’s new framework is distinct from prior approaches in at least four ways: (1) It expressly acknowledges the critical importance of purpose construction in many cases; (2) It is conscious of how a less-than-rigorous approach risks being self-defeating of larger legal analyses in which the …

Glocalizing Women's Health And Safety: Migration, Work, And Labor, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Worldwide, women's equality remains elusive in the social, political, civil, economic and cultural spheres. Such reality presents a challenge in the movement of persons across state borders because, globally, the world is experiencing a feminization of migration. In turn, the feminization of migration effects threats to the health and safety of migrant women, whose well-being is in peril at all stages of the migration journey – from the country of origin, to the transit states, to the receiving state – from smugglers and official actors alike. Because the globalization discourses exclude the movement of persons and focus on the movement …

Straight Out Of Compton: Developmental Equality And A Critique Of The Compton School Litigation, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

In Part I, I set out my developmental equality model in three sections. First, I briefly explore the ecological perspective on child development, a broadly accepted developmental model, and its relation to best interests. Second, I consider the limitations of a ‘neutral’ ecological perspective, using as my example data about the life course of African American boys from birth to age 18. Finally, I suggest how to shift the lens to one of developmental equality, using the theoretical models of Cynthia Garcia Coll and Margaret Beale Spencer. While linked to the experience of children of color in the United States, …

John Moore Jr.: Moore V City Of East Cleveland And Children's Constitutional Arguments, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

At the heart of Moore v City of East Cleveland is 7 year old John Moore Jr. How would we tell the story of Moore from his perspective, and how might the case have been constructed if his rights and constitutional harms were asserted? The ordinary act of registering John for school was the apparent trigger for efforts to exclude him from school, by mandating his removal from his grandmother’s house, after an earlier effort to deny his entry into school had failed. In this essay I first tell the story of the case from John’s perspective and then construct …

Equality Adds Quality: On Upgrading Higher Education And Research In The Field Of Law, Susanne Baer

Articles

Much has been attempted, and many pro1ects are still underway aimed at achieving equality in higher education and research. Today, the key argument to demand and support the integration of gender in academia is that equality is indeed about the quality on which academic work is supposed to be based. Although more or less national political, social and cultural contexts matter as much as academic environments, regarding higher education and research, the integration of gender into the field of law seems particularly interesting. Faculties of law enjoy a certain standing and status, are closely connected to power and politics, and …

Trust: A Model For Disclosure In Patent Law, Ari Ezra Waldman

Articles & Chapters

How to draw the line between public and private is a foundational, first-principles question of privacy law, but the answer has implications for intellectual property, as well. This project is the first in a series of papers about first-person disclosures of information in the privacy and intellectual property law contexts, and it defines the boundary between public and non-public information through the lens of social science — namely, principles of trust.

Patent law’s “public use” bar confronts the question of whether legal protection should extend to information previously disclosed to a small group of people. I present evidence that shows …

Review Of What's Wrong With Copying? By Abraham Drassinower, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

There are several radical aspects of Abraham Drassinower’s book WHAT’S WRONG WITH COPYING? One is that he shoves to the side the question of copyright incentives and the economic theory of intellectual property law, both long-standing starting points for copyright theory and doctrine. Drassinower makes no intellectual apologies for this sidelining and justifies it by the second radical aspect of his book: he claims to be exploring copyright law on its own terms, not on terms from outside copyright (economics or behavioral incentives) but from internal to copyright law as written and developed since the Statute of Anne.1 This he …