Law Commons^™

An Exegesis Of The Meaning Of Dobbs: Despotism, Servitude, & Forced Birth, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

The Dobbs decision has been leaked. Gathered outside of New York City's St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, pro-choice protesters chant: "Not the church, not the state, the people must decide their fate."

A white man wearing a New York Fire Department sweatshirt and standing on the front steps responds: "l am the people, l am the people, l am the people, the people have decided, the court has decided, you lose . . . . You have no choice. Not your body, not your choice, your body is mine and you're having my baby."

Despicable but not unexpected,³ this man's comments …

Aequitas: Seeking Equilibrium In Title Ix, Raymond Trent Cromartie

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Over the past two decades, the scope of Title IX has expanded drastically and now includes the investigation and adjudication of sexual misconduct cases through campus tribunals. Beginning in 2011, the Obama Administration, through a “Dear Colleague Letter” and subsequent guidance, initiated this process by establishing guidelines that required schools to develop and implement policies and procedures for the handling of sexual misconduct cases. Following the publication of the Obama-era guidance, schools scrambled to ensure compliance with the federal guidance, which led to a myriad of applications by universities. Unfortunately, the fallout from the 2011 guidance was widespread litigation initiated …

7th Annual Stonewall Lecture Series - The Battle For Pride: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow 2023, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Commencement 2023: Rwu Graduates Urged To 'Work Hard And Dream Big Dreams' 5-19-2023, Jill Pais, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Racial Myopia In [Family] Law, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Racial Myopia in [Family] Law presents a critique of Family Law for the One-Hundred-Year Life, an Article that claims that age myopia within family law fails older adults and prevents them from creating legal bonds with other adults outside the traditional marital model. This Response posits that racial myopia is a common yet complex phenomenon in almost every area of law, and it presents most often by centering whiteness as the default standard while failing to account for race and its impact on the law. Race—as well as the scholarship that incorporates race into normative family structure and identity—must be …

2023 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Essay/Art Contest, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

6th Annual Stonewall Lecture 2-2-2023, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Pink Tax And Other Tropes, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Law reform advocates should be strategic in deploying tax tropes. Through an examination of five common tax phrases—the “nanny tax,” “death tax,” “soda tax,” “Black tax,” and “pink tax”—this Article demonstrates that tax rhetoric is more likely to influence law when used to describe specific economic injustices resulting from actual government duties, as opposed to figurative inequalities. In comparison, slogans describing figurative taxes are less likely to influence law and human behavior, even if they have descriptive force in both popular and academic literature as a short-hand for group-based disparities. This Article catalogues and evaluates what makes for effective tax …

Law Library Blog (January 2023): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Two Approaches To Equality, With Implications For Grutter, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

The question “what is equality?”, applied to the distribution of resources across races, suggests the following answer: when there appears to be no need for a policy that focuses on improving the welfare of one race relative to another. There is another way to approach the same question: equality is when traditionally-recognized paths to advancement do not give preference to or disadvantage an individual because of his race. Notice the difference here is between end-state and process-based notions of equality, a distinction Nozick emphasized in his examination of justice in distribution. Nozick rejected end-state theories of justice in distribution. I …

Abandoning Animus, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay presents a preliminary set of arguments against the legal concept of animus grounded in actual practice. After considering the major reasons advanced in support of the animus approach as well as the main objections, I argue that the end of animus may come once we confront the limits of judicial capacity. First, judges have not been willing or able to resort to the animus rationale to call out bigotry where the evidence of hostility is robust. These failures suggest that projects founded upon judicial review to reduce hateful motivations may be overly optimistic. Second, on the occasions the …

Questions Of Intellectual Property And Fundamental Values In The Digital Age, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Today's intellectual property debates, in both law and the larger society, are a bellwether of changing justice needs in the twenty-first century. As the digital age democratizes technological opportunities, it brings intellectual property law into mainstream everyday culture. This generates debates about the relationship between the constitutional interest in "the progress of science and useful arts" and other fundamental values, such as equality, privacy, and distributive justice. These values, which were not explicitly part of intellectual property regimes in prior eras, are especially challenged in today's internet world.

The article (which was presented as the annual Nies Lecture in April …

Title Ix And The Challenges Of Educating For Equality, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Educating for equality to foster practicing equality must be a vital task for the next fifty years of Title IX. It is also a task that fits into the mission and expertise of schools as educational institutions. I use “educating for equality” as shorthand for the role of schools in preparing children, adolescents, and college students to participate in and build a world in which—to echo Title IX’s “37 words that changed everything”¹—“No person in the United States, shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to …

Title Ix’S Unrealized Potential To Prevent Sexual Violence, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

The mandate of Title IX is equality in educational opportunities. If educational institutions could prevent sexual assaults from occurring, they would more fully ensure that students are not limited in their ability to benefit from the school’s educational programs. However, Title IX administration on college campuses still focuses far more on post-assault infrastructure than on assault prevention.

Yet with the ever-increasing particularity of the assault response requirements emanating from the Department of Education (“DOE”)2 and courts, Title IX jurisprudence has strayed too far from this basic purpose: to ensure that students in federally funding schools are not denied or limited …

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden, Gregory W. Bowman, Brooklyn Crockton

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Meet The Rbg Essay Contest Winners! 03-22-2022, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

All The Presidents' Dreamers: Immigration Reform That Biden And Trump Can Agree On (And Why That Reform May Be Elusive), Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

While a sizeable gulf exists between the Trump and Biden administrations’ approaches to immigration, there is one policy area where these presidents would see eye-to-eye: a legal pathway for “Dreamers,” longtime undocumented residents who initially came to the U.S. as children. Notwithstanding this exceptional example of bipartisanship, how the nation now moves forward to create such a pathway is a conundrum. The political divide that has stalled a two-decades-long search for a congressional solution has its roots in America’s longstanding ambivalence about whether and how to provide basic opportunities to the least of its denizens. This Essay traces the current …

Expanding The Women Peace And Security Agenda To Protect Women's Education In Afghanistan And Other Geographies Of Conflict, Rangita De Silva De Alwis

All Faculty Scholarship

While acknowledging the importance of the new Security Council Resolution 2601 adopted in October 2021, the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education reinforces the urgency for the adoption of a standalone Women Peace and Security (WPS) resolution that recognizes the disproportionate impact of conflict on girls’ education in places such as Afghanistan. This new WPS resolution must address girls’ and women’s education as key to sustaining peace and security. The WPS agenda is critical to a peace and security agenda and recognizes and advances women’s participation in peace and security. I argue that as they stand, the ten WPS Security Council …

Ms. Attribution: How Authorship Credit Contributes To The Gender Gap, Jordana Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Misattribution plagues the practice of law in the United States. Seasoned practitioners and legislators alike will often claim full credit for joint work and, in some cases, for the entirety of a junior associate’s writing. The powerful over-credit themselves on legislation, opinions, and other legal works to the detriment of junior staff and associates. The ingrained and expected practice of leveraging junior attorneys as ghost-writers is, to many, unethical. But it presents a distinct concern that others have yet to interrogate: misattribution disparately impacts underrepresented members of the legal profession.

This Article fills that space by offering a quantitative analysis …

Anti-Subordination Torts, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Preliminary Damages, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

Historically, the law helped impecunious plaintiffs overcome their inherent disadvantage in civil litigation. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case: modern law has largely abandoned the mission of assisting the least well off. In this Essay, we propose a new remedy that can dramatically improve the fortunes of poor plaintiffs and thereby change the errant path of the law: preliminary damages. The unavailability of preliminary damages has dire implications for poor plaintiffs, especially those wronged by affluent individuals and corporations. Resource constrained plaintiffs cannot afford prolonged litigation on account of their limited financial means. Consequently, they are forced to either …

Citizenship Disparities, Emily Ryo, Reed Humphrey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Changemakers: Master Of Studies In Law: 'Radical Imagination, Radical Listening', Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The 5th Annual Stonewall Lecture: Featuring Keynote Speaker Taylor Brown, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Announcing The 2nd Annual Rbg Contest For K-12 Students 10-27-2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

'Who' Or 'What' Is The Rule Of Law?, Steven L. Winter

Law Faculty Research Publications

The standard account of the relation between democracy and the rule of law focuses on law’s liberty-enhancing role in constraining official action. This is a faint echo of the complex, constitutive relation between the two. The Greeks used one word – isonomia – to describe both. If democracy is the system in which people have an equal say in determining the rules that govern social life, then the rule of law is simultaneously before, after, concurrent and synonymous with democracy: It contributes to the formation of citizens with the capacity for self-governance, serves as the instrument through which democratic decisions …

Law School News: Lynette Labinger: Doctor Of Laws, Honoris Causa 05-16-2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Discrimination Under A Description, Patrick S. Shin

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

In debates about the permissibility of certain kinds of differential treatment, our judgments often seem to depend on how the conduct in question is described. For example, legal prohibitions on same-sex marriage seem clearly impermissible insofar as they can be described as a form of sex discrimination, less clearly so, at least under federal law, if described simply as sexual orientation discrimination, and arguably not discriminatory at all insofar as they constitute a universally-imposed disability on marrying within one’s own sex. It seems, in other words, that the prohibition of same-sex marriage constitutes legally impermissible discrimination under some descriptions but …

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Meet The Rbg Essay Contest Winners! 03/03/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.