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Full-Text Articles in Law
Student Protests And Academic Freedom In An Age Of #Blacklivesmatter, Philip Lee
Student Protests And Academic Freedom In An Age Of #Blacklivesmatter, Philip Lee
Journal Articles
Student activism for racial equity and inclusion is on a historic rise on college and university campuses across the country. Students are reminding us that Black lives matter. They are bringing attention to the ways in which the normal operation of the legal system creates racial and other inequalities. They are critiquing the ways in which their experiences and perspectives are pushed to the margins in classrooms, on campuses, and in society.
In urging for university policies that allow for such activism to be moments of teaching and learning for all involved, I argue in this Article that student academic …
The Supreme Court's Quiet Expansion Of Qualified Immunity, Kit Kinports
The Supreme Court's Quiet Expansion Of Qualified Immunity, Kit Kinports
Journal Articles
This Essay discusses the Supreme Court’s tendency in recent opinions to covertly expand the reach of the qualified immunity defense available to public officials in § 1983 civil rights suits. In particular, the Essay points out that the Court, often in per curiam rulings, has described qualified immunity in increasingly broad terms and has qualified and retreated from its precedents, without offering any explanation or even acknowledging that it is deviating from past practice.
In making this claim, I focus on three specific issues: the manner in which the Court characterizes the standard governing the qualified immunity defense; the question …
Toward A Fundamental Right To Evade Law? Protecting The Rule Of Unequal Racial And Economic Power In Shelby County And State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey
Toward A Fundamental Right To Evade Law? Protecting The Rule Of Unequal Racial And Economic Power In Shelby County And State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey
Journal Articles
To rationalize its ruling on voting rights, Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder develops a constitutional vision of passivity in the face of institutionalized power to violate the law. This essay compares Shelby County to State Farm Mutual Automobile v. Campbell, a 2003 Supreme Court ruling involving a different subject area, state punitive damage awards. In both, the Court asserts newly articulated judicial power to override other branches, not to protect human rights, but rather to expand institutionalized immunity from those rights. On the surface, the Court’s rejection of state sovereignty in State Farm (protecting multistate corporations from high punitive damages) …
Supervisory Liability In Section 1983 Cases, Kit Kinports
Supervisory Liability In Section 1983 Cases, Kit Kinports
Journal Articles
The topic of this presentation is supervisory liability in Section 1983 cases. Assume for present purposes that a plaintiff's constitutional rights have been violated - that some state official has acted in violation of the Constitution. The question to be addressed here is whether that state official's supervisors can be held liable for damages stemming from the constitutional violation.
Did The Slaves Author The Thirteenth Amendment? An Essay In Redemptive History, Guyora Binder
Did The Slaves Author The Thirteenth Amendment? An Essay In Redemptive History, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
American constitutional interpretation is deeply traditionalist, and privileges original intent. The difficulty with thus authorizing the past in interpreting the Thirteenth Amendment is that it purports to abolish custom and tradition as unjust. This essay argues that, given the Amendment’s denunciation of the polity that enacted it as illegitimate, its questionable formal pedigree, and the agency of the slaves in precipitating, defining, and resolving the crisis that enabled it, the slaves have a moral claim to status as its authors. It follows that the original intent guiding interpretation should be that of the slaves themselves.
Mastery, Slavery, And Emancipation, Guyora Binder
Mastery, Slavery, And Emancipation, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
Hegel's dialectic of master and slave in the Phenomenology of Mind portrays a master unable to win genuine recognition from a slave because unwilling to confer it. The dialectic implies that freedom has to be conceived as association based on mutual respect, rather than independence. This article offers a communitarian interpretation of emancipation inspired by Hegel's dialectic of master and slave. It proceeds from an account of slave society which, like Hegel's dialectic, equates slavery with the denial of social recognition. This account argues that the experience of slave society led both the masters and the slaves to conceive of …