Law Commons^™

Correcting A Fatal Lottery: A Proposal To Apply The Civil Discrimination Standards To The Death Penalty, Joseph Thomas

Joseph Thomas

Claims of discrimination are treated differently in the death penalty context. Discrimination in employment, housing, civil rights and jury venire all use a burden-shifting framework with the preponderance of the evidence as the standard. Discrimination that occurs in death penalty proceedings is the exception to the rule -- the framework offers less protections; there is only one phase of argumentation, with a heightened evidentiary standard of “exceptionally clear proof.” With disparate levels of protections against discrimination, the standard and framework for adjudicating claims of discrimination in the death penalty is unconstitutional.

Death is different as a punishment. But does discrimination …

Correcting A Fatal Lottery: A Proposal To Apply The Civil Discrimination Standards To The Death Penalty, Joseph Thomas

Joseph Thomas

Claims of discrimination are treated differently in the death penalty context. Discrimination in employment, housing, civil rights and jury venire all use a burden-shifting framework with the preponderance of the evidence as the standard. Discrimination that occurs in death penalty proceedings is the exception to the rule -- the framework offers less protections; there is only one phase of argumentation, with a heightened evidentiary standard of “exceptionally clear proof.” With disparate levels of protections against discrimination, the standard and framework for adjudicating claims of discrimination in the death penalty is unconstitutional.

Death is different as a punishment. But does discrimination …

Academic Freedom And Professorial Speech In The Post-Garcetti World, Oren R. Griffin

Seattle University Law Review

Academic freedom, a coveted feature of higher education, is the concept that faculty should be free to perform their essential functions as professors and scholars without the threat of retaliation or undue administrative influence. The central mission of an academic institution, teach-ing and research, is well served by academic freedom that allows the faculty to conduct its work in the absence of censorship or coercion. In support of this proposition, courts have long held that academic freedom is a special concern of the First Amendment, granting professors and faculty members cherished protections regarding academic speech. In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the …

Discrimination In Baby Making: The Unconstitutional Treatment Of Prospective Parents Through Surrogacy, Andrea B. Carroll

Indiana Law Journal

Roundtable on Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology 2012

How Parents Are Made: A Response To Discrimination In Baby Making: The Unconstitutional Treatment Of Prospective Parents Through Surrogacy, Kimberly M. Mutcherson

Indiana Law Journal

Roundtable on Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology 2012

Hierarchies Of Discrimination In Baby Making: A Response To Professor Carroll, Radhika Rao

Indiana Law Journal

Roundtable on Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology 2012

Discrimination In Baby Making: The Unconstitutional Treatment Of Prospective Parents Through Surrogacy, Andrea B. Carroll

Journal Articles

The article focuses on limited use of reproductive technologies in defense of discriminating against unmarried intended parents. It emphasizes to eliminate unconstitutional treatment of prospective parents involved in the surrogacy process. It informs that State laws related to surrogacy create discrimination which is based on marital status. It suggests that surrogacy should be included as a permissible reproductive avenue for right to married and unmarried intended parents in the U.S.

Is Brown The New Black?: American Muslims, Inherent Propensity For Violence, And America’S Racial History, Amara S. Chaudhry-Kravitz

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights Litigation From The October 2007 Term, Martin A. Schwartz

Martin A. Schwartz

No abstract provided.

Is The Antidiscrimination Project Being Ended?, Michael J. Zimmer

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

The Application Of Anti-Discrimination Laws To Religious Institutions: The Irresistible Force Meets The Immovable Object, Oliver S. Thomas

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Proposition 8 Is Unconstitutional, But Not Because The Ninth Circuit Said So: The Equal Protection Clause Does Not Support A Legal Distinction Between Denying The Right To Same-Sex Marriage And Not Providing It In The First Place, Nathan Rouse

Seattle University Law Review

In Perry v. Brown, the Ninth Circuit held that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. But in doing so, the court stepped back from the breadth of the district court’s decision. The Ninth Circuit did not address whether same-sex marriage is a fundamental constitutional right. Nor did the Ninth Circuit address whether the Equal Protection Clause categorically prevents states from limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. Instead, the Ninth Circuit reached the narrow conclusion that Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause because it withdrew a preexisting legal right from a marginalized group without any legitimate purpose. The Ninth Circuit should have held …

Workers’ Compensation And The Right To Interstate Travel – Schatz V Interfaith Care Centre, Mel Cousins

Mel Cousins

In Schatz, the Minnesota supreme court considered the interesting question of the right to interstate travel as it affects workers’ compensation. While we know that durational residence requirements for welfare benefits and medical care are likely to be found to be unconstitutional, the US courts have to date not greatly explored where other conditions of social security, workers compensation or welfare schemes may impinge on the right to interstate travel. In order to set the groundwork, Part 1 of this note sets out the Supreme Court’s decisions concerning benefits and the right to travel, focusing on the aspects of most …

Brief For Prof. Leslie C. Griffin As Amica Curiae In Support Of Appellant, Kant V. Lexington Theological Seminary, Leslie C. Griffin

Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Summary Judgment In Employment Discrimination Cases: A Judge’S Perspective, Hon. Denny Chin

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

State Action Problems, Christian Turner

Scholarly Works

The state action doctrine is a mess. Explanations for why federal courts sometimes treat the private actions of private parties as public actions subject to the Constitution, like the Supreme Court did in Shelley v. Kraemer, are either vastly overinclusive or fail to explain our law and values. A better approach is to understand the state action doctrine in institutional terms. I introduce a two-step, institutionally focused state action theory that is a natural consequence of a broader public/private theory of legal systems. In the first step, a court identifies a “state action problem,” meaning a privately made law that …

Mapping A Post-Shelby County Contingency Strategy, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay was written for the Yale Law Journal Online Symposium on the future of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act after Shelby County v. Holder. Professors Guy-Uriel E. Charles and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer argue that voting rights activists ought to be prepared for a future in which section 5 is not part of the landscape. If the Court strikes down section 5, an emerging ecosystem of private entities and organized interest groups of various stripes—what they call institutional intermediaries—may be willing and able to mimic the elements that made section 5 an effective regulatory device. As voting rights …

The Promises Of Freedom: The Contemporary Relevance Of The Thirteenth Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

This article, an expanded version of the author's remarks at the 2013 Honorable Clifford Scott Green Lecture at the Temple University Beasley School of Law, illuminates the history and the context of the Thirteenth Amendment. This article contends that the full scope of the Thirteenth Amendment has yet to be realized and offers reflections on why it remains an underenforced constitutional norm. Finally, this article demonstrates the relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment to addressing contemporary forms of racial inequality and subordination.

The New Textualism, Progressive Constitutionalism, And Abortion Rights: A Reply To Jeffrey Rosen, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Geography Of Racial Stereotyping: Evidence And Implications For Vra Preclearance After Shelby County, Christopher Elmendorf, Douglas Spencer

Christopher S. Elmendorf

The Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) effectively enjoined the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act. The Court deemed the coverage formula, which determines the jurisdictions subject to preclearance, insufficiently grounded in current conditions. This paper proposes a new, legally defensible approach to coverage based on between-state differences in the proportion of voting age citizens who subscribe to negative stereotypes about racial minorities and vote accordingly. The new coverage formula could also account for racially polarized voting and minority population size, but, for constitutional reasons, subjective discrimination by voters is the essential criterion. We demonstrate that the …

Urban Bias, Rural Sexual Minorities, And The Courts, Luke Boso

Luke A. Boso

Urban bias shapes social perceptions about sexual minorities. Predominant cultural narratives geographically situate sexual minorities in urban gay communities, dictate the contours of how to be a modern gay person, and urge sexual minorities to “come out” and assimilate into gay communities and culture. This Article contests the urban presumption commonly applied to all sexual minorities and focuses specifically on how it affects rural sexual minorities, who remain largely invisible in the public discourse about sexuality and equality.

This Article makes two important contributions. First, by exposing urban bias, it contributes to a broader discussion about how law and society …