Law Commons^™

Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing.

To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …

Exploring The Impact Of The Marriage Amendments: Can Public Employers Offer Domestic Partner Benefits To Their Gay And Lesbian Employees?, Tiffany C. Graham

Working Paper Series

The article focuses on an issue that is shaping up to be the new front in the same-sex marriage wars: whether applying the terms of the more broadly-constructed amendments to public employers will bar them from offering domestic partner benefits to their gay and lesbian employees. The first part of the article offers an overview of domestic partner benefits plans and discusses the manner in which they are currently being threatened by the more broadly-constructed marriage amendments. The second part takes a close look at the litigation in National Pride at Work v. Michigan. This case represents the first time …