Law Commons^™

Emergence Of Equality As A Constitutional Value: The First Century, William M. Wiecek

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Equality as a constitutional value was unprecedented when it made its appearance in 1868 in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reflected antebellum abolitionist ideals adopted hesitantly by Northern Republicans during Reconstruction, but these were incompatible with the expectations of most white Americans of the era, as well as with all previous American experiences. In this sense, equality was a revolutionary constitutional value. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended the Equal Protection Clause and its embedded ideal of interracial equality to reverse the racist dicta of the Dred Scott opinion, to validate the Civil Rights Act …

Esclavitud Perpetua: Construyendo Una Perspectiva De Raza En El Derecho Constitucional Colombiano, Jorge Gonzalez-Jacome

Jorge Gonzalez-Jacome

The racial element in our society has been generally invisible to many of us. While slavery has been abolished, the process of making black people invisible has been effective. Two recent judgements of the Colombian Constitutional Court have made us think of the race problem as something meaningful in our society. Many difficulties arise in these judgements, and this article presents a critique to some of the legal arguments and consequences of them. It also sustains that the Court has still a long way to go in order to make the racial problem a visible one in our present state …

Mark(Et)Ing Nondiscrimination: Privatizing Enda With A Certification Mark, Ian Ayres, Jennifer Gerarda Brown

Michigan Law Review

People in the United States strongly support the simple idea that employers should not discriminate against gays and lesbians. In a 2003 Gallup poll, eighty-eight percent of respondents said that "homosexuals should . . . have equal rights in terms of job opportunities." Even prominent social conservatives- such as George W. Bush-give lip service to the idea that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong. But gay rights advocates have achieved only modest legal reform on this issue. Seventeen states have prohibited employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. A seemingly modest bill, the Employment Non Discrimination Act …

Never Get Out'a The Boat: Stenberg V. Carhart And The Future Of American Law, Michael Scaperlanda, John Breen

ExpressO

In this essay, the haunting scenes from the film Apocalypse Now serve as the backdrop for an examination of Stenberg v. Carhart and the meaning that this case holds for the future of American law and culture.

The movie tells the story of Captain Benjamin Willard, a special forces officer in Vietnam who travels up-river on a patrol boat in search of a renegade American colonel whom Willard has been ordered to “terminate.” The major thematic concerns of the film are morality, violence, candor, and the tenuous nature of civilization. Indeed, life on board the boat, such as it is, …

Race Against The Machine: An Argument For The Standardization Of Voting Technology, Jason Belmont Conn

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Second-Class Citizens: Jews, Freedom Of Speech, And Intolerance On Canadian University Campuses, Stefan Braun

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Ada's Application To Foreign-Flagged Cruise Ships: The Supreme Court's Precedent In Spector V. Norwegian Cruise Line Transcends The United States' Borders, Jaclyn Sheehan

ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law

Last year 10.6 million people flipped through the brochures of cruise line vacations' while dreaming of navigating the Caribbean aboard a luxury cruise ship and enjoying the white sandy beaches of exotic islands.

Women And Law: A Comparative Analysis Of The United States And Indian Supreme Courts’ Equality Jurisprudence, Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Connecting Care And Challenge: Tapping Our Human Potential - Inclusive Education: A Review Of Programming And Services In New Brunswick, A. Wayne Mackay

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Due to the short time frame for this Review, this cannot be considered an exhaustive report. There is however quite a massive volume of information and sources introduced here touching on the particulars required by the Terms of Reference.

In section I we present legal considerations that have an impact on education in various ways, all of which are related to inclusion and the application of equality rights in Canada. Those considerations include accommodation of students with disabilities, the student-teacher relationship, discipline, safe-schools, and a framework for analysis: the new 3 R’s in education: Rights, Responsibilities and Relationships. Included are …

The Three Faces Of Equality: Constitutional Requirements In Taxation, William B. Barker

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Paula A. Monopoli

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Violence Against Women: An Obstacle To Equality, Sheila Dauer

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

A History Of Hollow Promises: How Choice Juisprudence Fails To Achieve Educational Equality, Anita F. Hill

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article combines analysis of case law at state and federal levels as well as federal educational policy in an effort to formulate a framework for addressing educational inequalities, of which the achievement gap is only one result. As individual rights concepts control the discourse of equal educational opportunity, community injury continues to be ignored. Because educational policy aimed at ending educational inequities is governed by equal protection analysis and guided by court decisions, limitations in legal opinions drive such policies. The lack of attention to community harm in law and educational policy limits the ability of education legal reforms …

The Equality Paradise: Paradoxes Of The Law's Power To Advance Equality, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper, written for Texas Wesleyan Law School's Gloucester Conference, ¿Too Pure an Air: Law and the Quest for Freedom, Justice, and Equality,¿ is a brief exploration of a broader project. Every civil rights movement must struggle with how to allocate scarce resources to accomplish the broadest change possible. This paper compares the legal and political strategies of the Black rights movement and the women's rights movement in the United States, comparing both the strategy choices and the results. These two movement followed essentially the same strategies. Where they have attained success and where each has failed demonstrates the limits …

Getting Back To Basics: Some Thoughts On Dignity, Materialism, And A Culture Of Racial Equality, Christopher A. Bracey

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Dignity is the most compelling value in racial reform. Racial inequality is expressed as an ongoing attempt to deny minorities dignity. Dignity requires that to truly have freedom and equality, each of us has equal ability to exercise our fundamental freedoms. In order to ensure that this is possible, persons must possess the material wherewithal to exercise that freedom. The government, in order to combat racial inequality, must ensure that persons have the capability to live a “safe, well-nourished, productive, educated, social, and politically and culturally participatory life of normal length.” This approach requires structural changes in the obligations of …

Constitutional Tipping Points: Civil Rights, Social Change, And Fact-Based Adjudication, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers an account of how courts respond to social change, with a specific focus on the process by which courts "tip" from one understanding of a social group and its constitutional claims to another. Adjudication of equal protection and due process claims, in particular, requires courts to make normative judgments regarding the effect of traits such as race, sex, sexual orientation, or mental retardation on group members' status and capacity. Yet, Professor Goldberg argues, courts commonly approach decisionmaking by focusing only on the 'facts" about a social group, an approach that she terms 'fact-based adjudication." Professor Goldberg critiques …

The Cul De Sac Of Race Preference Discourse, Christopher A. Bracey

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Affirmative action policy remains a contentious issue in public debate despite public endorsement by America’s leading institutions and validation by the United States Supreme Court. But the decades old disagreement is mired in an unproductive rhetorical stalemate marked by entrenched ideology rather than healthy dialogue. Instead of evolving, racial dialogue about the relevance of race in university admissions and hiring decisions is trapped in a cycle of resentment.

In this article, I argue that the stagnation of race preference discourse arises because the basic rhetorical themes advanced by opponents have evolved little over 150 years since the racial reform efforts …