Law Commons^™

Transgender Inpportunity And Inequality: Evaluating The Crossroads Between Immigration And Transgender Individuals, Alexandra Caggiano

Seattle University Law Review

Despite being married to a U.S. citizen, non-citizen transgender individuals and non-citizen spouses married to transgender U.S. citizens still face deportation today due to current immigration policies. When forced to return to their home countries, transgender individuals are likely to encounter violence from those who perpetuate hate towards transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Instead of protecting these individuals, the United States continues to send people back to their native countries solely because those individuals do not fall within the narrowly constructed definition of marriage some states use that is legally recognized by federal courts. Transgender individuals receive disparate treatment as …

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 …

The Aba, The Section Of Civil Rights And Social Justice, The Constitution, And The Supreme Court, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Still Unconstitutional: Our Nation's Experiment With State-Sponsored Sex Segregation In Education, David S. Cohen, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

Since federal regulations authorized single-sex education in 2006, there has been an explosion of single-sex schools and classes. Although the Supreme Court has not ruled, three federal court decisions have addressed the constitutionality of single-sex classes, and the issue will percolate toward Supreme Court review soon. The arguments are that parents should have choices and “diversity” of educational options, that “brain research” shows that boys and girls are so biologically different to need sex-specific educational environments, that educational outcomes are better, and single-sex learning environments allows boys and girls to break through gender stereotypes. This article dissects these arguments within …

The State As Witness: Windsor, Shelby County, And Judicial Distrust Of The Legislative Record, Bertrall L. Ross

Bertrall L Ross

More than ever, the constitutionality of laws turns on judicial review of an underlying factual record, assembled by lawmakers. Some scholars have suggested that by requiring extensive records, the Supreme Court is treating lawmakers like administrative agencies. The assumption underlying this metaphor is that if the state puts forth enough evidence in the record to support the law, its action will survive constitutional scrutiny. What scholars have overlooked, however, is that the Court is increasingly questioning the credibility of the record itself. Even in cases where

the state produces adequate evidence to support its action, the Court sometimes invalidates the …