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The Scales Of Reproductive Justice: Casey’S Failure To Rebalance Liberty Interests In The Racially Disparate State Of Maternal Medicine, Mallori D. Thompson Feb 2021

The Scales Of Reproductive Justice: Casey’S Failure To Rebalance Liberty Interests In The Racially Disparate State Of Maternal Medicine, Mallori D. Thompson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Despite the maternal medicine crisis in the U.S., especially for Black women, legislatures are challenging constitutional abortion doctrine and forcing women to interact with a system that may cost them their lives. This Article proposes that because of abysmal maternal mortality rates and the arbitrary nature of most abortion restrictions, the right to choose an abortion is embedded in our Fourteenth Amendment right to not be arbitrarily deprived of life by the State. This Article is a call to abortion advocates to begin submitting state maternal mortality data when challenging abortion restrictions. The call for attention to life was central …


Medical Violence, Obstetric Racism, And The Limits Of Informed Consent For Black Women, Colleen Campbell Jan 2021

Medical Violence, Obstetric Racism, And The Limits Of Informed Consent For Black Women, Colleen Campbell

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay critically examines how medicine actively engages in the reproductive subordination of Black women. In obstetrics, particularly, Black women must contend with both gender and race subordination. Early American gynecology treated Black women as expendable clinical material for its institutional needs. This medical violence was animated by biological racism and the legal and economic exigencies of the antebellum era. Medical racism continues to animate Black women’s navigation of and their dehumanization within obstetrics. Today, the racial disparities in cesarean sections illustrate that Black women are simultaneously overmedicalized and medically neglected—an extension of historical medical practices rooted in the logic …


Breastfeeding On A Nickel And A Dime: Why The Affordable Care Act's Nursing Mothers Amendment Won't Help Low-Wage Workers, Nancy Ehrenreich, Jamie Siebrese Oct 2014

Breastfeeding On A Nickel And A Dime: Why The Affordable Care Act's Nursing Mothers Amendment Won't Help Low-Wage Workers, Nancy Ehrenreich, Jamie Siebrese

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (also known as “Obamacare”), Congress passed a new law requiring employers to provide accommodation to working mothers who want to express breast milk while at work. This accommodation requirement is a step forward from the preceding legal regime, under which federal courts consistently found that “lactation discrimination” did not constitute sex discrimination. But this Article predicts that the new law will nevertheless fall short of guaranteeing all women the ability to work while breastfeeding. The generality of the Act’s brief provisions, along with the broad discretion it assigns …


Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils Of Muslim Women's Identity Performance In The Workplace, Sahar F. Aziz Oct 2014

Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils Of Muslim Women's Identity Performance In The Workplace, Sahar F. Aziz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Should employees have the legal right to “be themselves” at work? Most Americans would answer in the negative because work is a privilege, not an entitlement. But what if being oneself entails behaviors, mannerisms, and values integrally linked to the employee’s gender, race, or religion? And what if the basis for the employer’s workplace rules and professionalism standards rely on negative racial, ethnic or gender stereotypes that disparately impact some employees over others? Currently, Title VII fails to take into account such forms of second-generation discrimination, thereby limiting statutory protections to phenotypical or morphological bases. Drawing on social psychology and …


Sexual Violence As Genocide: The Developing Law Of The International Criminal Tribunals And The International Criminal Court, Jonathan M.H. Short Jan 2003

Sexual Violence As Genocide: The Developing Law Of The International Criminal Tribunals And The International Criminal Court, Jonathan M.H. Short

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This note will explore the treatment of the two primary violent sexual acts, rape and forced pregnancy, in modern international criminal law; more specifically in its treatment as genocide. The woman as an individual is the primary sufferer of sexual violence during armed conflict, however sexual violence is a calculated means by which perpetrators seek to destroy an entire ethnic group. Sexual violence is both an attack against the woman and an attack against the ethnic group, and should be prosecuted as such. While crimes against individuals are best prosecuted as crimes against humanity or under domestic law, crimes committed …


Seeking Redress For Gender-Based Bias Crimes- Charting New Ground In Familiar Legal Territory, Julie Goldscheid, Risa E. Kaufman Jan 2001

Seeking Redress For Gender-Based Bias Crimes- Charting New Ground In Familiar Legal Territory, Julie Goldscheid, Risa E. Kaufman

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay will analyze how courts have defined gender-motivation, focusing on the Civil Rights Remedy cases decided before the law was struck down, in an attempt to cull from those cases the standards federal courts have used to assess gender-motivation. The article will first provide an overview of existing and proposed laws that offer some form of redress for gender-motivated crimes. It will then analyze cases decided under the Civil Rights Remedy, focusing on two key issues that have arisen as policymakers struggle with whether and how gender-based bias crimes fit in the rubric of hate crimes legislation. The first …


The Charleston Policy: Substance Or Abuse?, Kimani Paul-Emile Jan 1999

The Charleston Policy: Substance Or Abuse?, Kimani Paul-Emile

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In 1989, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) adopted a policy that, according to subjective criteria, singled out for drug testing, certain women who sought prenatal care and childbirth services would be tested for prohibited substances. Women who tested positive were arrested, incarcerated and prosecuted for crimes ranging from misdemeanor substance possession to felony substance distribution to a minor. In this Article, the Author argues that by intentionally targeting indigent Black women for prosecution, the MUSC Policy continued the United States legacy of their systematic oppression and resulted in the criminalizing of Black Motherhood.


Striking The Rock: Confronting Gender Equality In South Africa, Penelope E. Andrews Jan 1998

Striking The Rock: Confronting Gender Equality In South Africa, Penelope E. Andrews

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article analyzes the status of women's rights in the newly democratic South Africa. It examines rights guaranteed in the Constitution and conflicts between the principle of gender equality and the recognition of indigenous law and institutions. The Article focuses on the South African transition to democracy and the influence that feminist agitation at the international level has had on South African women's attempts at political organization. After dissecting the historical position of customary law in South Africa and questioning its place in the new democratic regime. The author argues that, although South African women have benefited from the global …


The Two-Parent Family In The Liberal State: The Case For Selective Subsidies, Amy L. Wax Jan 1996

The Two-Parent Family In The Liberal State: The Case For Selective Subsidies, Amy L. Wax

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article seeks to explore in a preliminary way some questions that would be raised by the adoption of such a program. The initial issue raised by the proposal is: does the government ever have any legitimate business favoring some family forms over others? The first-pass answer would appear to be "yes." The law recognizes marriage, restricts it to persons of the opposite sex (at least for now), and confers upon married couples comparative rights and privileges-although fewer than have been enjoyed in the past. The more difficult questions are: what exactly is the nature of the government's interest in …


Stepping Into The Projects: Lawmaking, Storytelling, And Practicing The Politics Of Identification, Lisa A. Crooms Jan 1996

Stepping Into The Projects: Lawmaking, Storytelling, And Practicing The Politics Of Identification, Lisa A. Crooms

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In her article, "The Black Community," Its Lawbreakers, and a Politics of Identification, Professor Regina Austin proposes a paradigm to move the Black community beyond a "manifestation of a nostalgic longing for a time when blacks were clearly distinguishable from whites and concern about the welfare of the poor was more natural than our hairdos.” Austin's politics of identification provides the conceptual framework through which the Black community can reconstitute itself in accordance with its own principles, which may or may not be those embraced by the mainstream. This article considers Professor Regina Austin’s politics of identification as practiced by …


Reconsidering Strict Scrutiny Of Affirmative Action, Brent E. Simmons Jan 1996

Reconsidering Strict Scrutiny Of Affirmative Action, Brent E. Simmons

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Under the artificial constraints of strict scrutiny, however, the courts are free to veto the government's choice of more effective, race-conscious means. The Supreme Court's unfortunate and ill-conceived adoption of strict scrutiny as the constitutional standard for reviewing race-conscious affirmative action should be reconsidered for several reasons. This Article examines those reasons.