Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Out Of Focus: The Misapplication Of Traditional Equitable Principles In The Nontraditional Arena Of School Desegregation, Joseph H. Bates

Vanderbilt Law Review

Karl Marx wrote that all historical facts occur twice--the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.' In the desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas, the genres were reversed. In 1957 the opportunistic Governor Orvall Faubus reduced to farce the Little Rock Board of Education's initial attempt to comply with the United States Supreme Court's decree in Brown v. Board of Education when he ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prohibit nine black students from entering Little Rock High School. In 1983, after more than two decades of continuous court supervision and intermittent litigation, the tragedy began when the Little …

Introduction: Civil Rights In The Workplace Of The 1990s, Sandi R. Murphy

Vanderbilt Law Review

Throughout history courts and legislatures alternatively have enlarged and diminished civil rights protections." Today, employment discrimination claims are the most commonly litigated civil rights cases. A succession of cases decided by a new conservative majority of Justices during the 1988 Supreme Court Term has altered radically the delicate balance of civil rights in the workplace. The then prevailing economic, political, and legal environment seemed to be impervious to any advances in employment discrimination protections.

Since that Term, courts and legislatures at the state and federal levels have promulgated a confusing combination of advances and re- treats in employment discrimination law. …

The Defeat Of The Civil Rights Act Of 1990: Wading Through The Rhetoric In Search Of Compromise, Cynthia L. Alexander

Vanderbilt Law Review

On October 22, 1990 President Bush vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1990.2 The Senate failed by one vote to override the veto.' The Act embodied the congressional response to a series of 1989 United States Supreme Court cases decided by a new conservative majority of Justices. Finding that these decisions drastically limit civil rights protections, Congress accordingly introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1990 to restore those protections. Congress then spent almost a year refining the controversial bill to make it palatable to the President and the business community. Despite congressional efforts, the President op- posed several aspects of …

Women's Rights Litigation In The 1980s: More Of The Same?, Tracey E. George, Lee Epstein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the September 1983 issue of Judicature,Karen O'Connor and Lee Epstein published the results of their examination of the fate of gender-based cases in the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1970s. Overall, they found that the justices were quite receptive to such claims, supporting the women's rights position in about 58 percent of the 63 disputes resolved between the 1969 and 1980 terms.

The Rhetoric Of Equality, Neal Devins

Vanderbilt Law Review

The affirmative action debate appears intractable. On one side, those employing the "rhetoric of innocence" use contemporaneous findings of actual discrimination as the gauge that defines victim status. This rhetoric proclaims affirmative action plans that define eligibility by group status, rather than by individualized proof of victim status, both harmful to innocent whites and beneficial to undeserving minorities. In sharp contrast, those employing the "rhetoric of guilt"' contend that "unconscious racism' makes it impossible for whites to treat minorities as equals. Under this view, "[b]ecause racial discrimination is part of the cultural structure, each person of color is subject to …

Brewer's Plea: Critical Thoughts On Common Cause, Richard Delgado

Vanderbilt Law Review

As most legal readers know, members of the Critical Race Studies (CRS) school" and mainstream civil rights scholars have been carrying on a rather spectacular and highly public debate. First, Randall Kennedy, a mainstream scholar, took the newcomers to task in his Racial Critiques article, charging us with making unfounded accusations and grandiose claims,' with finding racial exclusion where none exists, and with various other sins of omission and commission. The controversy moved next to the pages of the popular press. Then, in the June 1990 issue of Harvard Law Review, three members of CRS and a white sympathizer were …

Equal Protection And Affirmative Action In Broadcast Licensing, Michael Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As the Supreme Court's 1989 Term reached its conclusion, observers expected the Court to follow "City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co." and invalidate two Federal Communications Commission (FCC) minority preference policies aimed at promoting broadcast diversity. Instead, in one of the major surprises of the Term, the Court upheld both FCC racial preference programs in Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission. Finding no equal protection violation, the Court ruled that "benign" race-conscious programs designed by Congress to "serve important governmental objectives" are constitutional if they are "substantially related to [the] achievement of those objectives."

Quantum Leap: A Black Woman Uses Legal Education To Obtain Her Honorary White Pass, Beverly I. Moran

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The nature of privilege is that it is hidden from those who possess it even more than it is hidden from those who lack privilege. Privilege's invisibility to its owner makes privilege difficult to both identify and fight.

Academic Freedom And The University Title Vii Suit After University Of Pennsylvania V. Eeoc And Brown V. Trustees Of Boston University, Clisby L.H. Barrow

Vanderbilt Law Review

Tenure' is the crowning laurel of academia. The process of reviewing a candidate for tenure at the university level generally begins with an evaluation and recommendation by a group of the candidate's peers. Candidates who are denied tenure may seek judicial review of the decision and discovery of peer review materials. Not surprisingly, universities encourage courts to defer to tenure decisions and to deny plaintiffs access to confidential peer review documents.Traditionally, in fact, courts have given great deference to university tenure decisions. Judicial deference has pervaded every phase of review from discovery to trial and remedy. As deference to university …

Rico Threatens Civil Liberties, Antonio J. Califa

Vanderbilt Law Review

The history of conspiracy, according to Justice Robert Jackson, exemplifies the "'tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic.' "" This same phenomenon is present today in the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970 (RICO). RICO has moved beyond logic and intent into areas far removed from racketeering. Originally intended to combat organized crime, RICO is used increasingly in ideological disputes. For example, it has been used against abortion clinic protesters and anti-pornography groups.

This Article argues that using RICO in ideological disputes is inappropriate and harmful because it results in the chilling …

Innocence And Affirmative Action, Thomas Ross

Vanderbilt Law Review

When we create arguments, when we act as rhetoricians, we reveal ourselves by the words and ideas we choose to employ. Verbal structures that are used widely and persistently are especially worth examination. Arguments made with repeated, almost formulaic, sets of words suggest a second argument flowing beneath the apparent argument. Beneath the apparently abstract language and the syllogistic form of these arguments, we may discover the deeper currents that explain, at least in part, why we seem so attached to these verbal structures.

Argument about affirmative action in the context of racial discrimination is particularly wrenching and divisive, especially …

The Ripple Effects Of Slaughter-House: A Critique Of A Negative Rights View Of The Constitution, Michael J. Gerhardt

Vanderbilt Law Review

Upon seeing Niagara Falls for the first time, Oscar Wilde reportedly remarked that it "would be more impressive if it flowed the other way." I have a similar reaction to a series of narrow Supreme Court interpretations of the fourteenth amendment, beginning with the Slaughter-House Cases, decided in 1872, and extending to the 1989 decisions in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services and DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services. In Slaughter-House the Court interpreted the privileges or immunities clause of the fourteenth amendment as merely protecting interests other federal laws already protected, while recently the Court interpreted the due …

Title Vii Remedies: Reinstatement And The Innocent Incumbent Employee, Larry M. Parsons

Vanderbilt Law Review

Congress enacted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 19641 twenty-five years ago. Through Title VII Congress sought to remove artificial barriers that limited employment opportunities for minorities. The statute is not limited, however, to prohibiting race discrimination. Title VII directly confronts the problem of discrimination in the workplace by prohibiting employment decisions based on the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of the employee or applicant. The Act prohibits an employer from favoring one group of employees over another due to irrelevant characteristics and classifications.

Title VII litigation occupies a significant portion of the federal docket. The …

Twenty-Five Years Later: Where Do We Stand On Equal Employment Opportunity Law Enforcement?, David L. Rose

Vanderbilt Law Review

As we near the twenty-fifth anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an assessment of equal employment opportunity law is both natural and appropriate. Prior to 1964, the federal government had imposed equal employment opportunity obligations on itself as well as its contractors and subcontractors. And Title VII of the Act,which mandated such obligations, did not become effective until July 2,1965. Yet the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the first comprehensive legislation to address the problems of discrimination in American society, became the cornerstone of modern civil rights law, including equal employment opportunity law.The …

The Reagan Administration's Civil Rights Policy: The Challenge For The Future, William B. Reynolds

Vanderbilt Law Review

The almost twenty years that followed Brown showed real progress toward a color-blind society. That progress, however, lost momentum in the 1970s as many civil rights leaders advanced well-intended, but poorly conceived, policies with the all-too-familiar consequence of dividing people along color lines. In that decade, the bright future of race relations began to dim as discriminatory techniques--mislabelled as"benign" or "affirmative"-reemerged to work their destruction on the hopes of a public anxious to find harmonious, goodwilled solutions to the problems of the past.Today, the struggle continues for a national heritage blind to skin color or ethnic background. The challenge for …

The Quiet Revolution In Minority Voting Rights, Laughlin Mcdonald

Vanderbilt Law Review

The modern voting rights movement began with passage of the Voting Rights Act of 19651 and was essentially black and southern. To-day that movement, propelled by a series of congressional amendments to the Act, favorable court decisions, and the concerted efforts of minority and civil rights communities, is multiracial and national in character. It is also having an increasingly profound impact on American politics.

Although the 1965 Act had provisions that applied nationwide,Congress intentionally targeted seven states of the old Confederacy-Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and portions of North Carolina-for the application of unique and stringent measures described …

The State Of The Union: Civil Rights, Paul G. Wolfteich

Vanderbilt Law Review

"The times," wrote Bob Dylan in 1963, "they are a-changin'." One hundred years after formal emancipation, blacks in 1963 were beginning to see the end of laws that prevented their full participation in American society. The United States Supreme Court had struck down the separate but equal doctrine, Congress had passed the first civil rights legislation in seventy-five years, and the executive branch was enforcing the law. Anthony Lewis wrote in the mid-1960s that "[n]o one could doubt that the conscience of America has been seized by the injustice of unequal treatment because of a man's skin." A women's liberation …

Race And Economic Opportunity, Robert L. Woodson

Vanderbilt Law Review

The true character of a nation can be judged in part by the way it treats its weakest or most vulnerable members. In the past decades, no-where has this test been more evident than in the quest for civil rights by black Americans. Civil rights has also become the leading indicator of the moral health of the Nation.

With the passage of civil rights laws, one-third of black Americans-those prepared by family status, education, or economic circumstance-walked through the doors of opportunity once they were opened. For unprepared blacks, removing racial barriers did not enable them to join the mainstream …

The Courts' Response To The Reagan Civil Rights Agenda, Drew S. Days, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Reagan Administration came to Washington, D.C. committed to reintroducing traditional theories of civil rights enforcement. The thesis of this Essay is that the Administration's efforts concerning the enforcement of civil rights were not successful. Of course, only time will tell whether civil rights jurisprudence will be altered because of forces set in motion by the Administration and changes in the makeup of the judiciary.Using the United States v. Carotene Products Co.' decision as the point of departure for a consideration of twentieth-century civil rights doctrine, it is apparent that the original goal of the Supreme Court's civil rights policy …

The Fair Housing Amendments Act Of 1988: The Second Generation Of Fair Housing, James A. Kushner

Vanderbilt Law Review

A generation has passed since the legislative victories of the 1960s extending civil rights protection: twenty-five years since the passage of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964,1 twenty-four years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and twenty-one years since the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As we enter the second generation of civil rights enforcement under new Presidential leadership it is important to assess the state of civil rights, to examine the experience of first generation enforcement and the promises of the second generation.

The state of civil rights in the area of housing …

Welcome To The Funhouse: The Incredible Maze Of Modern Divorce Taxation, Beverly I. Moran

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Using legislative histories the article shows how the incidence of taxation began to fall more heavily on women in the context of divorce as women's social and political status rose during World War II and that this trend continued through several sets of divorce tax reform.

The Continuing Violation Theory And Systemic Discrimination: In Search Of A Judicial Standard For Timely Filing, Thelma A. Crivens

Vanderbilt Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 19641 is one of the most effective federal anti-discrimination statutes in employment discrimination law. Enforcement of this statute has eliminated discriminatory acts directed at individual victims as well as discriminatory policies and practices directed at groups that traditionally have been victims of discrimination. The effectiveness of Title VII in eliminating employment policies that restrict opportunities for a group or class of employees (referred to as systemic discrimination) has been particularly important because of the economic, psychological, and social consequences that this discrimination has on members of the group as a whole. Also, …

"Evans V. Jeff D." : Putting Private Attorneys General On Waiver, Randy M. Stedman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Prior to the Supreme Court's 1986 decision in Evans v. Jeff D.,fervent debate centered on the practice of simultaneously negotiating settlement on the merits and the award of attorney's fees in civil rights cases. Reasonable attorney's fees for prevailing plaintiffs in civil rights cases are provided at the discretion of the court under section 1988 of the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976' (the Fees Act).Sparked largely by the Third Circuit's rejection of the practice of simultaneous negotiations in Prandini v. National Tea Co., wide commentary on the practice soon followed the Fees Act's passage.

Critics of simultaneous …

Standards Of Proof In Section 274b Of The Immigration Reform And Control Act Of 1986, Carlos A. Gonzalez

Vanderbilt Law Review

On November 6, 1986, President Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), proclaiming it to be the most difficult legislative undertaking in the previous three Congresses. The Act's controversial centerpiece provides for sanctions against employers who knowingly hire, recruit, or refer for a fee undocumented aliens. While these sanctions were heralded as the most comprehensive reform in immigration law in over thirty years, opposition to them in Congress and among civil rights organizations was strong. These groups feared that employers seeking to avoid sanctions would discriminate in employment against Hispanics, Asians, and other ethnically or racially …

The Unique, Novel, And Unsound Adversary Ethic, Thomas L. Shaffer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The dominant ethic in the American legal profession in 1988 is the adversary ethic. The adversary ethic, in the words of the late Justice Abe Fortas, claims that "[l]awyers are agents, not principals; and they should neither criticize nor tolerate criticism based upon the character of the client whom they represent or the cause that they prosecute or defend. They cannot and should not accept responsibility for the client's practices." This ethic is the principal-and often the only-reference point in professional discussions. Although it is embedded in our professional codes, our cases, and our law offices, this Article argues that …

A Qualified Academic Freedom Privilege In Employment Litigation: Protecting Higher Education Or Shielding Discrimination?, Ayna J. Partain

Vanderbilt Law Review

Courts have long honored the fundamental principle that the right to full and fair litigation assumes the unobstructed availability of evidence.' When the divulgence of information in court threatens interests or relationships of sufficient social importance,however, courts have recognized a compelling justification for sacrificing the free flow of evidence and have created rules of privilege. Since 1972, when Congress extended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 19641 to academic institutions, colleges and universities increasingly have faced broad discovery requests for confidential personnel files by plaintiffs alleging that discriminatory factors such as sex, race, or age played an impermissible …

Civil Rights Attorney's Fees: Hensley's Path To Confusion, Tim K. Garrett

Vanderbilt Law Review

Congress enacted the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Act (Fees Act)" to promote more vigorous enforcement of the civil rights laws by attracting competent legal counsel to represent civil rights plaintiffs. To achieve this goal the Fees Act allows courts to award attorney's fees to prevailing plaintiffs in civil rights cases.' The statute, however, entails an inherent tension: the Fees Act's primary aim of compensating prevailing plaintiffs' attorneys "'for all time reasonably expended on a matter' ,, conflicts with the desire to prevent windfalls to attorneys. This conflict is especially keen when a civil rights plaintiff only partially prevails," because the …

Human Rights In Africa: Observations On The Implications Of Economic Priority, Minasse Haile

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Serious internal obstacles also block adequate realization of civil and political rights in Africa. The colonial legacy, rising popular expectations for a better life, subversion from abroad and the absence of strong national cohesion will engender political instability in African political systems that give free rein to the exercise of civil and political rights. Moreover, even if one assumes a democratic political system would be viable politically, that system may succumb to demands for increased consumption rather than promote adequate investment in infrastructure. In either event, democratic political systems will tend to be unstable, with the result that economic development …

Quick Termination Of Insubstantial Civil Rights Claims: Qualified Immunity And Procedural Fairness, Edmund L. Carey, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Harlow Court both altered the substantive law of qualified immunity and established a procedural goal for implementing the defense. This Note will focus primarily on the procedural aspects of the decision. In the three years that have elapsed since Harlow, lower courts have struggled to carry out the Supreme Court's directive to resolve the qualified immunity issue, if possible, on summary judgment. As a consequence, three distinct but First, what are the outer bounds of the ban on factual inquiry into an official's subjective state of mind? Second, which party, plaintiff or defendant, should bear the burden of proof …

The Bona Fide Occupational Qualification Exception--Clarifying The Meaning Of"Occupational Qualification", Jane W. May

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) prohibits employment decisions that discriminate against people aged forty to seventy because of their age. An exception to the ADEA permits otherwise unlawful age discrimination when age is a "bonafide occupational qualification [BFOQ] reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business.'' To invoke this exception successfully, an employer must produce evidence from which a court can conclude that age is a valid BFOQ. Currently,some confusion exists as to whether an employer's evidence must establish that age is relevant to the performance of the employee's specific duties or whether this evidence need …