Law Commons^™

Civil Partnership: Your Questions Answered - A Comprehensive Analysis Of The Civil Partnership Bill, Fergus Ryan

Reports

The Civil Partnership Bill 2009 arguably represents the most momentous change in Irish Family Law in a generation. The Bill proposes a substantial new legal status for registered same-sex partners, as well as important changes to the law as it relates to cohabitants. This report addresses the provisions of the Bill as initiated, analysing the potential impact of the Bill in clear and accessible language. The Report also highlights potential difficulties with the Bill, and suggests possible enhancements to the Bill as initiated.

Slides: Water Leasing In The Lower Arkansas Valley: The "Super Ditch Company", Peter Nichols

Western Water Law, Policy and Management: Ripples, Currents, and New Channels for Inquiry (Martz Summer Conference, June 3-5)

Presenter: Peter NIchols, Trout, Raley, Montano, Witwer & Freeman, Denver, CO

28 slides

The Substantive Principle Of Equal Treatment, Patrick S. Shin

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This paper attempts to identify a principle of equal treatment that gives specific structure to our widely shared judgments about the circumstances in which we have moral reason to object to the differential adverse treatment of others. I formulate what I call a “substantive” principle of equal treatment (to be distinguished from principles of formal equality) that describes a moral constraint on the reasons we can have for picking out individuals for differentially adverse action. I argue that this constraint is violated when an action, in view of its rationale, expresses lesser respect for the moral status of an individual …

The Supreme Court As The Major Barrier To Racial Equality, Ivan E. Bodensteiner

Law Faculty Publications

This Article suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court, through its decisions in cases alleging race discrimination, stands as a major barrier to racial equality in the United States. There are several aspects of its decisions that lead to this result. Between 1868 and 1954, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, while it had been interpreted to strike down a few blatant forms of de jure discrimination, allowed government to separate the races based on the “separate but equal” fiction. Beginning in 1954, Brown and a series of subsequent decisions attacked this fiction, and for a period of nearly …

Do We Care Enough About Racial Inequality? Reflections On The River Runs Dry, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

In response to Kimberly West-Faulcon, The River Runs Dry: When Title VI Trumps State Anti–Affirmative Action Laws, 157 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1075 (2009)

Constitutional Borrowing, Robert L. Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Borrowing from one domain to promote ideas in another domain is a staple of constitutional decisionmaking. Precedents, arguments, concepts, tropes, and heuristics all can be carried across doctrinal boundaries for purposes of persuasion. Yet the practice itself remains underanalyzed. This Article seeks to bring greater theoretical attention to the matter. It defines what constitutional borrowing is and what it is not, presents a typology that describes its common forms, undertakes a principled defense of borrowing, and identifies some of the risks involved. The authors' examples draw particular attention to places where legal mechanisms and ideas migrate between fields of law …

In The Back Alleys Of Health Care: Abortion, Equality And Community In Canada, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The decriminalization of abortion in Canada ensured neither its availability nor accessibility as an integrated and publicly funded health service. While Canadian women are increasingly referred to or seek abortion services from single-purpose clinics, their exclusion from public health insurance often render these services inaccessible. This article considers denied funding for clinic abortion services from the perspective of the Canadian constitutional guarantee of sex equality. The article focuses on the 2004 Court of Queen's Bench's judgment in Jane Doe I v. Manitoba, which framed denied public funding for clinic abortion services as a violation of women's equality rights under the …

Who's Afraid Of Polygamy? Exploring The Boundaries Of Family, Equality And Custom In South Africa, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

South Africa's post-apartheid constitution has been widely admired and constantly referenced by international scholars, and especially international human rights scholars, for its comprehensive embrace of gender equality. But the commitment to gender equality has been tested by other liberatory discourses, including African nationalism and cultural and religious autonomy. This Article examines the evolution of South African legislation and constitutional jurisprudence in the face of competing imperatives, for example, between equality, legal pluralism, customary law/religious law, and the recognition of polygamy. In particular, it focuses on the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, a statute that purports to regulate customary marriages, including …

Reproductive Rights As Health Care Rights, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

U.S. legal scholarship concerning reproductive rights has largely revolved around the poles of decisional autonomy, privacy, and equality, with a concomitant a tendency to de-emphasize the medical aspect of abortion rights. The medical approach has been particularly disfavored by feminist scholars, largely due to concerns about undermining the equality rationale for reproductive rights and placing too much power in the hands of physicians. In addition, American constitutional law has tended to treat reproductive-rights cases differently from other cases raising challenges to government restrictions on individuals’ rights to access certain forms of medical treatment, granting heightened judicial scrutiny to the former …

Dilemmas Of Cultural Legality: A Comment On Roger Cotterrell's 'The Struggle For Law' And A Criticism Of The House Of Lords' Opinions In Begum, John Mikhail

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In “The Struggle for Law: Some Dilemmas of Cultural Legality,” Professor Roger Cotterrell argues that the law’s most distinctive aspiration is to promote a respectful exchange of ideas among different parts of a multicultural society. He illustrates his thesis with the House of Lords’ decision in Begum, describing it as “a relatively successful contribution to the process by which battlefields of rights are turned into areas of routine structuring” and finding much to admire in the messages communicated by the Lords in this case. I am more troubled by the Lords’ opinions in Begum and less convinced than Cotterrell seems …

Implementing The Social And Economic Promise Of The Constitution: The Role Of South African Legal Education, Susan R. Jones, Peggy Maisel

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The South African Constitution recognizes socio-economic rights as a necessary foundation for the enjoyment of civil and political rights. The South African Constitution, one of the most progressive in the world, contains many important protections such as the rights to equality, housing, and education. The Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Law (BEE) was designated to address the economic inequities of apartheid. South Africa’s commitment to economic justice is also evidenced by the fact that it is a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The challenge is translating these rights into opportunities for social and economic …

Prohibited Discrimination In International Law, Dinah L. Shelton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay assesses how the prohibition of discrimination is understood in contemporary international human rights law. The essay aims to determine whether human rights bodies apply coherent theories when deciding which distinctions are permitted and which are invidious. The essay begins by surveying the provisions of human rights instruments such as the U.N. Charter that call for non-discrimination and equality. Next, the essay examines the jurisprudence of international tribunals and monitoring bodies, including judgments, advisory opinions, general comments, and observations on state periodic reports. The conclusion draws from this body of law a general approach to discrimination in international human …