Law Commons^™

Miller V. Johnson: Drawing The Line On Racial Gerrymandering, Darin R. Doak

Northern Illinois University Law Review

By rejecting the Georgia State Legislature's attempt to redraw its political districts to ensure election of black representatives, the Supreme Court in Miller v. Johnson exposed a fallacy that served as the foundation for eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century barriers to minority franchise rights: the idea that minority groups act and vote similarly. Treading lightly through the political thicket of redistricting, the Miller Court eliminated this threat by prohibiting political districts drawn with substantial reliance upon race. This article discusses the merits of the Miller decision and its place in the evolution of minority voting rights. The article also suggests that …

Beyond Admissions: Racial Equality In Law Schools, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

Beginning with a discussion of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, this article discusses the meaning of “integration.” In McLaurin, the University of Oklahoma was forced to abandon its segregation policy and not separate black students from their white classmates in all settings (not just the classroom). The McLaurin decision raised the fundamental questions: "What is integration?" and "How is integration related to racial equality?" Significantly, the McLaurin Court clarifies that equality is premised on integration and that integration means more than just having a presence in an institution. …

Protecting Rights And Promoting Democracy: Judicial Review Under Section 1 Of The Charter, Martha Jackman

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The author argues that, under section 1 of the Charter, the courts must weigh carefully the democratic potential of rights guarantees against the democratic quality of government decisions which undermine those rights. The article points to the Egan and Eldridge cases as examples of decisions in which the willingness to uphold rights violations under section 1, in the name of deference to the legislature, actually undermines democratic values. The article examines the RIR-MacDonald decision as a starting point for a section 1 analysis which identifies the characteristics of government decisionmaking that must be present if rights violations are to be …

The Color-Blind Court , Jeffery Rosen

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The End Of Innocence Or Politics After The Fall Of The Essential Subject , Robert S. Chang

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Getting Beyond Racial Preferences: The Class-Based Compromise , Richard D. Kahlenberg

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mediation And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

This Article will analyze the potential uses of mediation in ADA disputes, focusing primarily on employment issues. Part II of the Article provides a description and analysis of the mediation process. Part III provides an overview of the ADA. Part IV examines the dispute resolution provisions of the ADA and both the current and proposed uses of alternative dispute resolution. Finally, Part V analyzes the use of mediation in ADA cases and recommends appropriate uses of mediation that will effectuate the purpose of the statute.

The Limits Of Legal Discourse: Learning From The Civil Rights Movement In The Quest For Gay And Lesbian Civil Rights, Odeana R. Neal

All Faculty Scholarship

The African-American struggle for civil rights has been a long one, one that began with the importation of the first black person into the country as a slave, and continues today. Through radical political struggle coupled with legal precedent, de jure segregation became a part of the past of the United States. Meticulous legal strategizing by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund culminated with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared unconstitutional the governmental practice of segregating on the basis of race. Careful legislative lobbying—as well as the threats posed by radical black political groups who …

Federal Recent Developments

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Tales Of White Folk: Doctrine, Narrative, And The Reconstruction Of Racial Reality, Robert L. Hayman, Nancy A. Levit

Nancy Levit

Black America, some people said, was dying. And they wondered what they would hear in the souls of white folk when white America heard the news.

Part of the story was told in June 1995, by the Supreme Court. The session of the Court had not been convened explicitly or exclusively to determine the fate of black America. Still, it was clearly on the agenda, with no less than three major race-related disputes on the High Court's docket.

And what the Court had to say on such matters did matter. As the highest tribunal in the land, it possessed the …

Rights, Remembrance And The Reconciliation Of Difference, David Engel, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

Rights in American society present a paradox-critics increasingly assert that proliferation of rights is undermining Americans' sense of community, yet scholars continue to document Americans' reluctance to assert formal legal rights. We explore the meaning of rights in American society by describing the intersection between the evolving civil rights of a previously excluded minority, culminating in the, and the personal histories of two individuals who might potentially invoke or benefit from such rights. Tracing the life stories of "Sara Lane" and 'Jill Golding" from childhood through adolescence to adulthood and employment, we relate the everyday relevance or irrelevance of law …

Thomas Jefferson, Equality, And The Creation Of A Civil Society, Gordon S. Wood

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Residential Zoning Regulations And The Perpetuation Of Apartheid, Janai S. Nelson

Faculty Publications

In January of 1996, the South African Parliament ratified the long-awaited Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Bill, which has engendered heated controversy since its inception. For many, the success of the Land Reform Bill portends the economic and political future of South Africa and is a gauge of apartheid's vital signs. Without land, most South Africans would remain in the same impoverished and disenfranchised conditions that they were in under the apartheid regime. With land, however, South Africans have an improved chance to achieve economic equality. Land reform and land use have become particularly crucial issues in light of President Mandela's …

The Impact Of The Proposed California Civil Rights Initiative, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Indian Religious Freedom: Recognized/Denied, David E. Wilkins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Clinton's sacred site executive order applies to all "federal lands" and to all "recognized" Indian tribes. A "sacred site" is defined as "any specific, discrete, narrowly delineated location of Federal land that is identified by an Indian tribe, or Indian individual... as sacred by virtue of its established religious significance to, or ceremonial use by, an Indian religion; provided that the tribe or appropriately authoritative representative of an Indian religion has informed the agency of the existence of such a site."

The issue that seemed most troublesome from William Downes' legal perspective, besides the alleged Establishment clause violation, was that …

Legal Inversions: Lesbians, Gay Men, And The Politics Of Law, Peter Kwan

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

What Does A White Woman Look Like? Racing And Erasing In Law, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

In significant ways, legal texts produce a narrative of national identity. They weave stories about who we are, what we are committed to, and what we expect of one another, individually and collectively. The concept of justiciability can be understood as a set of rules determining what stories courts are allowed to tell about who we are and who we can be. In this sense, Ronald Dworkin's account of judging as writing ongoing chapters in a chain novel provides a compelling conception of law as both describing where we have been and directing where we are going. If the salience …

Foreword: Federalism And Anti-Federalism As Civil Rights Tools, Charles F. Abernathy

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The focus on Civil Rights and the Supreme Court 1994 Term in this issue of the Howard Law Journal has one relatively consistent underlying theme-the role of federalist and anti-federalist arguments in the formulation of civil rights policy. As you might expect, there is not much dispute among the authors about the proper goals of civil rights law, for virtually every author in this issue is in one sense or another a traditionalist on policy... What separates the authors is their instrumentalist arguments; that is, how they would accomplish their goals...Some are traditional federalists, supporting the federal role for civil …

Introduction, The Sesquicentennial Of The 1848 Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention: American Women's Unfinished Quest For Legal, Economic, Political, And Social Equality, Carolyn S. Bratt

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

On July 19, 1998, America celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention. Almost three hundred women and men including Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frederick Douglass met on that July date in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, for a two-day discussion of the "social, civil and religious rights of woman." At the conclusion of the meeting, sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed their names to a Declaration of Sentiments and this country's organized women's rights movement began. The Declaration of Sentiments was the earliest, systematic, public articulation in the United States of the ideas that fuel …

Race, Gender, “Redlining,” And The Discriminatory Access To Loans, Credit, And Insurance: An Historical And Empirical Analysis Of Consumers Who Sued Lenders And Insurers In Federal And State Courts, 1950-1995, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

Courts have failed to consistently remedy insurers’ and lenders’ discrimination against low-income individuals, women, and minorities. State and federal courts have tried to resolve disputes involving redlining, unequal access to capital, and insurance discrimination. Because of courts’ failures, Congress passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 (“ECOA”) and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (“CRA”) to protect minorities and low income individuals. But the ECOA and CRA have not achieved their stated goals of eradicating either insurance or mortgage redlining.

In most states, the responsibility of enforcing federal fair-lending laws and eradicating all sorts of financial redlining is given …

Constitutional Architecture: The First Amendment And The Single Family House, John F. Nivala

John F. Nivala

No abstract provided.