Law Commons^™

Solving Batson, Tania Tetlow

Tania Tetlow

The Supreme Court faced an important ideological choice when it banned the racial use of peremptory challenges in Batson v. Kentucky. It could either ground the rule in equality rights designed to protect potential jurors from stereotyping, or it could base the rule on the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to an “impartial jury” drawn from a fair cross-section of the community. By choosing Equal Protection analysis, the Court turned away from the defendant and the fair functioning of the criminal justice system and instead focused on protecting potential jurors. The Court thus built fatal error into the Batson rule, a …

In Search Of Federal Remedies For Lgbtq Students Who Are Victims Of Assault And Harassment In School., Jerry R. Foxhoven Mr.

Jerry R. Foxhoven Mr.

This article describes details of the harassment that was inflicted upon the individual LGBTQ students involved in many of the federal reported cases, as well as the lack of response by, and sometimes even the participation of, school personnel in the harassment. The article then goes on to examine the various legal theories that were employed by the victim-students, including constitutional theories (Due Process, Equal Protection, and First Amendment claims) as well as statutory remedies (Title IX and the Equal Access Act).

This article is written in a format that is not only interesting (by providing the details of the …

Equality Qua Equality: A Comparative Critique Of The Tiers Of U.S. Equal Protection Doctrine, Lorenzo Di Silvio

Lorenzo Di Silvio

On February 23, 2011, the Obama Administration announced that it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Of great significance in this announcement was the Administration’s position that classifications on the basis of sexual orientation warrant heightened judicial scrutiny. Notwithstanding this announcement, the level of review applied to sexual-orientation classifications—and the manner in which a court determines whether a particular type of classification deserves more searching review—is an open question, the answer to which typically dictates the outcome of challenges to government classifications. Apart from this outcome determinativeness, affording heightened scrutiny to some classifications but …