Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Denouncing The Revival Of Pre-Roe V. Wade Abortion Bans In A Post-Dobbs World Through The Void Ab Initio And Presumption Of Validity Doctrines, Nora Greene

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

The United States Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in a leaked draft of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Written by Justice Alito and joined by four of the other conservative justices, the decision describes Roe as “egregiously wrong from the start” and blatantly overrules the landmark holding and its prodigy, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In their state codes, nine states—Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin— have unrepealed criminal abortion bans enacted before Roe. These bans prohibit abortion at any point in pregnancy unless to preserve the life of the pregnant person …

What's Wrong With The Ncaa's New Transgender Athlete Policy?, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the NCAA’s 2022 transgender athlete participation policy, which replaced the 2011 uniform eligibility rule with a sport-by-sport approach deferring to external governing bodies. It assesses the ambiguities created by this deference, particularly in sports where no clear policy exists, as well as the arbitrariness of the default testosterone threshold the NCAA adopted. It analyzes the tension between the NCAA’s stated alignment with Olympic frameworks and the reality that those frameworks were not designed for the collegiate context. It also considers the legal risks posed to NCAA member institutions, including potential liability under Title IX and the Equal …

Antidiscrimination Law Through A Sociolegal Lens, Anna Offit

Faculty Publications

This Symposium invites reflection on whether the Anthropology of Law has “any space left for the content of rules” at a time when the concerns of legal anthropologists have largely shifted to processes, materials, and practices that are “adjacent to law.” Taking the jury system as an illustrative case, this Essay advocates for the relevance and value of the anthropological study of rules, their content, and their effects. Looking in particular at antidiscrimination rules derived from Batson v. Kentucky, decided in 1986, it argues that a sociolegal, ethnographic approach to how lawyers perpetuate discrimination in jury selection offers insight …

Submission To The Province Of Nova Scotia On Its Review Of The Intimate Images And Cyber-Protection Act - Leaf, Suzie Dunn, Rosel Kim

Reports & Public Policy Documents

The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) commends the Nova Scotia government for reviewing its Intimate Images and Cyber-protection Act (the Act) and seeking public input for this review. Nova Scotia has been, and continues to be, a leader in Canada for its role in advancing innovative laws and supports for people targeted by technology-facilitated violence (TFV), digital abuse, and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images (NCDII). As these forms of harmful behaviour evolve and become better understood, it is important to revisit this legislation to assess whether it is providing meaningful and accessible responses to such serious social …

Disparate Discrimination, Leah M. Litman

Michigan Law Review

This Article explains and analyzes a recent trend in the Supreme Court’s cases regarding unintentional discrimination, where the argument is that a law has the effect of producing a disadvantage on members of a particular group. In religious discrimination cases, the Court has held that a law is presumptively unconstitutional if the law results in a comparable secular activity being treated more favorably than religious activity. Yet in racial discrimination cases, the Court has said the mere fact that a law more severely disadvantages racial minorities as a group does not suffice to establish unlawful discrimination.

The two tracks for …

Changemakers: Master Of Studies In Law: 'Radical Imagination, Radical Listening', Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Commodification Of Public Land Records, Reid Kress Weisbord, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

The United States deed recording system alters the “first in time, first in right” doctrine to enable good faith purchasers to record their deeds to protect themselves against prior unrecorded conveyances and to provide constructive notice of their interests to potential subsequent purchasers. Constructive notice, however, works only when land records are available for public inspection, a practice that had long proved uncontroversial. For centuries, deed archives were almost exclusively patronized by land-transacting parties because the difficulty and cost of title examination deterred nearly everyone else.

The modern information economy, however, propelled this staid corner of property law into a …

Do Social Movements Spur Corporate Change? The Rise Of 'Metoo Termination Rights' In Ceo Contracts, James Hicks, Rachel Arnow-Richman, Steven Davidoff Solomon

Scholarship@WashULaw

Do social movements spur corporate change? This Article sheds new empirical and theoretical light on the issue through an original study of executive contracts before and after MeToo. The MeToo movement, beginning in late 2017, exposed a workplace culture seemingly permissive of high-level, sex-based misconduct. Companies typically responded slowly and imposed few consequences on perpetrators, often allowing them to depart with lucrative exit packages. Why did companies reward rather than penalize bad actors, and has the movement disrupted this culture of complicity?

The passage of time since the height of the movement allows us to investigate these issues empirically, using …

In The Name Of Diversity: Why Mandatory Diversity Statements Violate The First Amendment And Reduce Intellectual Diversity In Academia, Daniel M. Ortner

Catholic University Law Review

In the 1950s and 1960s in many parts of the country, a professor could be fired or never hired if he refused to denounce communism or declare loyalty to the United States Constitution. The University of California system took the lead in enforcing these loyalty oaths. These loyalty oaths were challenged all the way up to the United States Supreme Court and were soundly rejected, establishing the centrality of academic freedom and open inquiry on the university campus. So why are loyalty oaths making their resurgence in the form of mandatory diversity statements? Universities have begun requiring faculty members to …

Autonomous Corporate Personhood, Carla L. Reyes

Washington Law Review

Several states have recently changed their business organization law to accommodate autonomous businesses—businesses operated entirely through computer code. A variety of international civil society groups are also actively developing new frameworks— and a model law—for enabling decentralized, autonomous businesses to achieve a corporate or corporate-like status that bestows legal personhood. Meanwhile, various jurisdictions, including the European Union, have considered whether and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI) more broadly should be endowed with personhood to respond to AI’s increasing presence in society. Despite the fairly obvious overlap between the two sets of inquiries, the legal and policy discussions between the …

Redefining The Safe Third Country Exception Of The Immigration And Nationality Act In The Wake Of Trump, Daniel E. Rabbani

Brooklyn Law Review

The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act lays out when an asylum seeker has the right to apply for asylum in the United States. This right is not available, however, when an asylum seeker passes through a designated Safe Third Country. A Safe Third Country is an internationally used concept that, pursuant to an international agreement, requires refugees to seek asylum in the first safe country that they step foot in. As the Safe Third Country exception on the Immigration and Nationality Act stands now, there are no guidelines on how to evaluate whether a country is in fact safe. This …

High Time For A Change: How The Relationship Between Signatory Countries And The United Nations Conventions Governing Narcotic Drugs Must Adapt To Foster A Global Shift In Cannabis Law, Alexander Clementi

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Since the early 1970’s, the inclusion of cannabis and its byproducts in the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs has mandated a strict prohibition on cultivation and use of the substance, which has led to a largely global practice of criminalization and imprisonment of anyone found to be in its possession. Yet recently, mostly in response to growing public health concerns, countries like Uruguay, Portugal, The Netherlands, Canada, and the United States have enacted laws which seek to decriminalize or even legalize cannabis use and possession. Yet, cannabis remains classified as a Schedule IV narcotic under the Single Convention, …

Compulsory Dna Testing In Argentina: The Right To Truth Versus The Right To Privacy, Margaret Foster

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

During the Dirty War—a seven year repression by the Argentinian junta of political dissidents and alleged subversives—an estimated 500 babies were stolen from their mothers while imprisoned and given to leading military officials as "adopted" children. These children had their true identities erased and replaced with a false one covering up their true origins. This Note will explore Argentina's response to the Dirty War. Namely, it will consider the tension between the right to truth—an international right right often associated with enforced disappearances—and the right to privacy. In particular, it will consider cases in which adults resisted DNA testing to …

Black Deaths Matter: The Race-Of-Victim Effect And Capital Punishment, Daniel S. Medwed

Brooklyn Law Review

The racial dimensions of the death penalty are well-documented. Many observers assume this state of affairs derives from bias—often implicit and occasionally explicit—against black defendants in particular. Research points to an even more alarming factor. The race of the victim, not the defendant, steers cases in the direction of death. Regardless of the perpetrator’s race, those who kill whites are more likely to face capital charges, receive a death sentence, and die by execution than those who murder blacks. This short Essay adds a contemporary gloss to the race-of-victim effect literature, placing it in the context of the Black Lives …

The Historical Diagnosis Criterion Should Not Apply: Reasonable Accommodations In Standardized Testing For Individuals With A Later Diagnosis Of Adhd, Denise Elliot

Journal of Law and Policy

There is a growing number of adults being diagnosed with ADHD who were not diagnosed in childhood, misdiagnosed, or primarily exhibited symptoms in adulthood. Notably, most of the later diagnoses of ADHD in adults are individuals pursuing some level of higher education. Some of the reasons posited for this increase in ADHD diagnoses in higher education may be attributed to increased workloads, decreased structural and community supports, misdiagnosis in childhood, masking, and racial and socioeconomic factors that overlook subpopulations like children of color, female-presenting, and gender-nonbinary children with ADHD. Unfortunately, testing agencies that administer college entrance exams, graduate school entrance …

On The Outer Reaches Of The Marketplace Of Ideas: The Weaponization Of Title Vi Against Palestinian College Activists, Gavriella Fried

Journal of Law and Policy

On U.S. college campuses, Palestinian rights activists who are critical of Israel risk legal consequences. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program receiving federal funds. Over the past two decades, at least eighteen Title VI complaints have been filed against U.S. colleges and universities, alleging that Palestinian rights activists’ political expression is a form of anti-Semitism. In December 2019, President Trump promulgated Executive Order 13,899, which formally extended Title VI protections to Jews and directed enforcement agencies to investigate allegations of anti-Semitism using guidance that includes …

The 5th Annual Stonewall Lecture: Featuring Keynote Speaker Taylor Brown, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Choose Your Words Carefully: Reimagining Retaliatory Arrest After Nieves V. Bartlett, Ryan Hor

Fordham Law Review

In the summer of 2020, the United States experienced potentially its largest ever social movement in the protests against racial inequality. Predictably, protestors clashed with law enforcement officers, often leading to arrests. Arrested individuals could bring § 1983 retaliatory arrest claims alleging that the officers deprived them of their First Amendment right to free speech. Such claims underline the tension between two vital interests: free speech and law enforcement effectiveness. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Nieves v. Bartlett, which crafted a new framework for retaliatory arrest claims that consequently diminished a plaintiff’s chance to prevail and recover …

On Time, (In)Equality, And Death, Fred O. Smith Jr.

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, American institutions have inadvertently encountered the bodies of former slaves with increasing frequency. Pledges of respect are common features of these discoveries, accompanied by cultural debates about what “respect” means. Often embedded in these debates is an intuition that there is something special about respecting the dead bodies, burial sites, and images of victims of mass, systemic horrors. This Article employs legal doctrine, philosophical insights, and American history to both interrogate and anchor this intuition.

Law can inform these debates because we regularly turn to legal settings to resolve disputes about the dead. Yet the passage of …

Social Norms In Fourth Amendment Law, Matthew Tokson, Ari Ezra Waldman

Michigan Law Review

Courts often look to existing social norms to resolve difficult questions in Fourth Amendment law. In theory, these norms can provide an objective basis for courts’ constitutional decisions, grounding Fourth Amendment law in familiar societal attitudes and beliefs. In reality, however, social norms can shift rapidly, are constantly being contested, and frequently reflect outmoded and discriminatory concepts. This Article draws on contemporary sociological literatures on norms and technology to reveal how courts’ reliance on norms leads to several identifiable errors in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

Courts assessing social norms generally adopt what we call the closure principle, or the idea that …

Overcoming Obstacles To Reentry Panel, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Rose Lecture, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

An Uncomfortable Truth: Indigenous Communities And Law In New England: Roger Williams University Law Review Symposium 10/22/2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

A Human Rights Crisis Under Our Roof, Aglae Eufracio

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Maternity Rights: A Comparative View Of Mexico And The United States, Roberto Rosas

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Women play a large role in the workplace and require additional protection during pregnancy, childbirth, and while raising children. This article compares how Mexico and the United States have approached the issue of maternity rights and benefits. First, Mexico provides eighty-four days of paid leave to mothers, while the United States provides unpaid leave for up to twelve weeks. Second, Mexico allows two thirty-minute breaks a day for breastfeeding, while the United States allows a reasonable amount of time per day to breastfeed. Third, Mexico provides childcare to most federal employees, while the United States provides daycares to a small …

The Meaning, History, And Importance Of The Elections Clause, Eliza Sweren-Becker, Michael Waldman

Washington Law Review

Historically, the Supreme Court has offered scant attention to or analysis of the Elections Clause, resulting in similarly limited scholarship on the Clause’s original meaning and public understanding over time. The Clause directs states to make regulations for the time, place, and manner of congressional elections, and grants Congress superseding authority to make or alter those rules.

But the 2020 elections forced the Elections Clause into the spotlight, with Republican litigants relying on the Clause to ask the Supreme Court to limit which state actors can regulate federal elections. This new focus comes on the heels of the Clause serving …

How The Gun Control Act Disarms Black Firearm Owners, Maya Itah

Washington Law Review

Through 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), the Gun Control Act (GCA) outlaws the possession of a firearm “in furtherance of” a drug trafficking crime. The statute’s language is broad, and federal courts have interpreted it expansively. By giving prosecutors wide discretion in charging individuals with § 924(c) violations, the language enables the disproportionate incarceration of Black firearm owners.

This Comment addresses this issue in three parts. Part I discusses the ways early gun control laws overtly disarmed Black firearm owners. Additionally, Part I provides context for the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which coincided with the backlash to …

The Euclid Proviso, Ezra Rosser

Washington Law Review

This Article argues that the Euclid Proviso, which allows regional concerns to trump local zoning when required by the general welfare, should play a larger role in zoning’s second century. Traditional zoning operates to severely limit the construction of additional housing. This locks in the advantages of homeowners but at tremendous cost, primarily in the form of unaffordable housing, to those who would like to join the community. State preemption of local zoning defies traditional categorization; it is at once both radically destabilizing and market responsive. But, given the ways in which zoning is a foundational part of the racial …

Revocation And Retribution, Jacob Schuman

Washington Law Review

Revocation of community supervision is a defining feature of American criminal law. Nearly 4.5 million people in the United States are on parole, probation, or supervised release, and 1/3 eventually have their supervision revoked, sending 350,000 to prison each year. Academics, activists, and attorneys warn that “mass supervision” has become a powerful engine of mass incarceration.

This is the first Article to study theories of punishment in revocation of community supervision, focusing on the federal system of supervised release. Federal courts apply a primarily retributive theory of revocation, aiming to sanction defendants for their “breach of trust.” However, the structure, …