Law Commons^™

Religious Accommodations And – And Among – Civil Rights: Separation, Toleration, And Accommodation, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

This paper expands on a presentation at a recent conference, held at Harvard Law School, on the topic of “Religious Accommodations in the Age of Civil Rights.” In it, I emphasize that the right to religious freedom is a basic civil right, the increased appreciation of which is said to characterize our “age.” Accordingly, I push back against scholars’ and commentators’ increasing tendency to regard and present religious accommodations and exemptions as obstacles to the civil-rights enterprise and ask instead if our religious-accommodation practices are all that they should be. Are accommodations and exemptions being extended prudently but generously, in …

Just, Smart: Civil Rights Protections And Market-Sensitive Vacant Property Strategies, James J. Kelly Jr.

Journal Articles

This essay, prepared for and published by the Center for Community Progress, a national, non-profit intermediary dedicated to developing effective, sustainable solutions to turn vacant, abandoned and problem properties into vibrant places, examines the legal and normative implications of local governments' use of neighborhood real estate market data to strategically focus vacant property remediation tools. I and other writers, such as Frank Alexander, Alan Mallach and Joseph Schilling, have argued for the importance of understanding the economic feasibility of market-based rehabilitation of derelict, vacant houses in making decisions as to how and when to use a variety of code enforcement, …

Disparate Impact, School Closures, And Parental Choice, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

We live in an era of parental choice. Today, forty-two states and the District of Columbia authorize charter schools, and twenty states and the District of Columbia permit students to use public funds to attend a private school. During the 2012-2013 school year, nearly 2 million children attended charter schools, and nearly 250,000 children received publicly funded scholarship to attend a private school. The expanding menu of publicly funded educational options is one (but by no means the only) factor contributing to the current, intensely controversial, waves of urban public school closures. In school-closure debates, proponents of traditional public schools …

The Civil Rights Legacy Of Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Jennifer Mason Mcaward

Journal Articles

This Speech will discuss Fr. Hesburgh's advocacy on these core civil rights issues-education, employment, housing, and voting rights-and how his work changed the face of this country. The story of Fr. Hesburgh's civil rights advocacy is a key to understanding how he emerged-in the words of Vice President Biden-as "one of the most powerful unelected officials this nation has ever seen."

Mcculloch And The Thirteenth Amendment, Jennifer Mason Mcaward

Journal Articles

Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment gives Congress the “power to enforce” the ban on slavery and involuntary servitude “by appropriate legislation.” The conventional view of Section 2 regards this language as an allusion to McCulloch v. Maryland’s explication of Congress’s executory powers, and holds that Congress has substantial, and largely unreviewable, power to determine both the ends and the means of Section 2 legislation. This Essay argues that the conventional view departs from the original meaning of Section 2. It demonstrates that McCulloch preserved a role for judicial review with respect to both the ends and means of federal …

Clarence X?: The Black Nationalist Behind Justice Thomas's Constitutionalism, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

The opinions of Justice Thomas reflect a jurisprudence that is uniquely his own. His well-known commitment to textualism and originalism combines with a weak commitment to stare decisis on constitutional questions. This often puts Thomas at odds with Justice Scalia and other Justices who are far more willing to defer to precedents with which they disagree. The most distinctive aspect of Thomas's jurisprudence, however, involves cases of particular concern to black Americans. In these cases, his originalism and textualism are powerfully supplemented by another -ism—namely, "black nationalism."

Throughout his tenure, Justice Thomas has repeatedly explored the implications of controversial rulings …

Civil Rights And Legal Order: The Work Of A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Donald P. Kommers, Eugenia S. Schwartz

Journal Articles

On October 11-12, 1978, Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.' delivered the Notre Dame Law School's Seventh Annual Civil Rights Lecture under the general title, "From Thomas Jefferson to Bakke: Race and the American Legal Process." It seems to us appropriate, therefore, on the occasion of the Higginbotham lecture, to consider his work as both historian and judge. Specifically, this article will serve the threefold purpose of (1) reviewing Matter of Color, (2) illustrating the author's use of history in two judicial opinions dealing with the rights of black Americans, and (3) reflecting upon the implications of Higginbotham's work in legal …

Civil Rights And Civil Liberties, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

More than most lawsuits, school desegregation cases touch basic economic interests and deep-seated psychic sensitivities of entire communities. In this context, legal notions of the "intent" of governmental bodies and the "effect" of their actions on massive, intricate social processes seem eerily abstract. Though limited and necessarily artificial, these legal concepts are nonetheless the jurisprudential links by which courts must legitimize their efforts to define "rights" worthy of recognition in desegregating schools in large urban areas.

This article focuses primarily on this term's decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit involving desegregation of the Milwaukee …

Federal Public-Accommodations Law: A Dissent, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

Discrimination in public accommodations presents the most appealing case for compulsory civil-rights legislation. In practical terms, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has eliminated much of the existing segregation in public accommodations, and, with continued enforcement, the job should be soon completed even in the most hostile areas of the South. The public-accommodations problem, therefore, is no longer a live issue. It is useful, however, to touch upon it, for those who would restrain federal power are often challenged by the taunt, "What would you do about public accommodations? Would you leave it up to the states? How would you …

A Supplementary State Civil Rights Act, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

Under the following statute, civil rights groups, with the approval of the state civil rights commission, may enter into agreements with employers, labor organizations, school authorities, or other public or private agencies, for a direct attack on de facto segregation through a deliberate mixing of races in a desired proportion. Professor Rodes characterizes his draft as "a suggestion for controlled concessions to the principle of direct mixing of the races" in such a manner as to be "philosophically consistent with an ultimate commitment to a society in which racial considerations play no part."

The Legality Of De Facto Segregation, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

There are three basic fields with which a discussion of racial segregation must deal: education, employment and housing. Opinions will vary as to which, if any, is paramount, but none will deny that they are interrelated. In all three areas, the engines of legal proscription have been brought to bear to eliminate affirmative, legally-sanctioned segregation. But there remains the stubborn fact that the removal of legal discrimination has not been attended by either a resultant improvement in the living conditions of minority groups or a substantial integration of the races. The lack of causal connection between the elimination of legal …

Sit-Ins: Proceed With Caution, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

In the current racial contentions, the sit-in demonstration has proved to be an effective and disturbing weapon against segregation by privately-owned business establishments. It is effective because the imposition of economic loss, through monopolizing the seats in a restaurant to the exclusion of potential customers, can break down a proprietor's pattern of segregation more relentlessly than persuasion. It is disturbing because the sit-in poses a direct challenge to accustomed understanding of private property rights.