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International Courts As Agents Of Legal Change: Evidence From Lgbt Rights In Europe, Laurence R. Helfer, Erik Voeten
International Courts As Agents Of Legal Change: Evidence From Lgbt Rights In Europe, Laurence R. Helfer, Erik Voeten
Faculty Scholarship
Do international court judgments influence the behavior of actors other than the parties to a dispute? Are international courts agents of policy change or do their judgments merely reflect evolving social and political trends? The authors develop a theory that specifies the conditions under which international courts can use their interpretive discretion to have system-wide effects. The authors examine the theory in the context of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues by creating a new dataset that matches these rulings with laws in all Council of Europe (CoE) member states. The …
Don't Ask Us To Explain Ourselves, Don't Tell Us What To Do: The Boy Scouts' Exclusion Of Gay Members And The Necessity Of Independent Judicial Review, Taylor Flynn
Faculty Scholarship
In Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the U.S. Supreme Court held by a five to four majority that the Boy Scouts of America is entitled to ban gay persons from membership despite New Jersey's prohibition against sexual orientation discrimination. The Dale majority sharply departed from the Court's long line of expressive association cases, in which it has rejected the claims of private clubs that application of civil rights laws to their membership policies violates their associational rights. This Author argues that by "reading" the plaintiff in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale as a cipher for gay sex, and …