Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Introduction: Reconnecting Labor And Civil Rights Advocacy, Susan P. Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Labor and civil rights movements in the United States share the aspiration of empowering workers to attain economic and social justice in the workplace. From their inception, both movements have articulated goals that link individual dignity and group empowerment, economic access and fair treatment, legal entitlements and political mobilization. They proceed on the premise that the workplace is a site where vital economic interests and possibilities for self-development come together. Put otherwise, both forms of advocacy strive for a regime that links these concerns to do justice to the workplace as a site for the expression of democratic citizenship.

Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court increasingly has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a mandate for the state to treat citizens as if they were equal-as a limitation on the state's ability to draw distinctions on the basis of characteristics such as race and, to a lesser extent, gender. In the context of race, the Court has struck down not only race-specific policies designed to harm the historically oppressed, but race conscious policies designed to foster racial equality. Although in theory the Court has left open the possibility that benign uses of race may be constitutional under some set of facts, in …

The Past, Present And Future Of Title Vi Of The Civil Rights Act As A Tool Of Environmental Justice, Michael B. Gerrard, Nicholas Johnson, Peggy Shepard, Melva J. Hayden, Sheila Foster, Elizabeth Georges

Faculty Scholarship

Mr. Michael Gerrard: I am going to try to do something a little unconventional. After hearing some remarks from Professor Johnson, I will try to start a dialogue. I have been requested to ask very tough questions of our panelists, so I will do that in the hope of drawing all of you in the audience into the dialogue. First, we will hear some remarks from Professor Nicholas Johnson of Fordham University School of Law.

The Supreme Court, Sexual Citizenship And The Idea Of Progress, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

Is American Progressive Constitutionalism dead ... yet? I propose to seek the beginnings of an answer to this question in the pages of a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court. I do feel obliged to say this, not because I am committed to a court-centered adjudicative conception of American constitutionalism; to the contrary. But rather, because the decision on which I want to focus seems to me to offer a rich resource for critical reflection on the idea of self-government whose connections to Progressive Constitutionalism give us our topic this afternoon.

Revaluing Restitution: From The Talmud To Postsocialism, Michael A. Heller, Christopher Serkin

Faculty Scholarship

Whatever happened to the study of restitution? Once a core private law subject along with property, torts, and contracts, restitution has receded from American legal scholarship. Few law professors teach the material, fewer still write in the area, and no one even agrees what the field comprises anymore. Hanoch threatens to reverse the tide and make restitution interesting again. The book takes commonplace words such as "value" and "gain" and shows how they embody a society's underlying normative principles. Variations across cultures in the law of unjust enrichment reflect differences in national understandings of sharing, property, and even personhood. As …

Toward A Formative Project Of Securing Freedom And Equality, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium offers an occasion to pursue two important tasks: (1) identifying normative and constitutional foundations for an affimnative governmental responsibility to engage in a "formative project" that would foster persons' capacities for democratic and personal self-government;' and (2) exploring the mix of normative and empirical inquiries necessary to shape the proper goals and parameters of such a project. These tasks are relevant to my larger project of attempting to develop a synthetic, or feminist and liberal, normative account of rights, responsibilities, and governmental promotion of good, self-governing lives.2 That account argues for governmental responsibility to foster the preconditions for …

Leveling The Playing Field: Reforming The Office For Civil Rights To Achieve Better Title Ix Enforcement, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article the Author discusses improving Title IX compliance in athletic programs by reforming the Office for Civil Rights ("OCR"), the agency within the Department of Education responsible for Title IX enforcement. The Author addresses several problem areas within OCR's procedures, including OCR's approach toward student grievances, its standards for assessing alleged Title IX violations, and its inadequate monitoring and enforcement of institutions in violation of Title IX.

Part I introduces the history of Title IX. Part II describes the legislation and regulations that mandate gender equity in educational institutions. Part III summarizes the case law that has affected …

Coming Out: Decision-Making In State And Federal Sodomy Cases, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

In 1791, American states were enacting laws against sodomy at the same time they ratified the Bill of Rights, the first ten constitutional amendments meant to safeguard fundamental rights of individuals in a free society. In a March 1789 letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson asserted that a bill of rights was necessary to give the judiciary the power to protect such individual rights. Ironically, that which the judiciary gives, it may also take away, since "[t]he legislator is a writer. And the judge a reader."

This Article deconstructs recent sodomy cases in order to challenge judicial adoption or reinscription …

Deliberative Democracy, Overlapping Consensus, And Same-Sex Marriage, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

A pressing concern in political and constitutional theory is how to construct a model of justification in law and politics that offers methods for securing agreement and social cooperation in the face of moral pluralism. A common goal of this work is to elaborate the requirements of deliberative democracy, that is, a model of democratic self-government that "asks citizens and officials to justify public policy by giving reasons that can be accepted by those who are bound by it."' Two fundamental questions are: (1) are there any limits to the grounds to which citizens may appeal or the reasons that …

The Mccleskey Puzzle: Remedying Prosecutorial Discrimination Against Black Victims In Capital Sentencing, Ashutosh Bhagwat, Evan Tsen Lee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreword Symposium: Fourth Annual Mid-Atlantic People Ofcolor Legal Scholarship Conference: Law And Literature: Examining The Limited Legal Imagination In The Traditional Legal Canon, Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

The Fourth Annual Mid-Atlantic People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference, which took place at Rutgers Law School in Camden on February 12-14, 1998, poignantly captured the theme around which the conference was organized. The theme of the conference was "Law and Literature: Examining the Limited Legal Imagination in the Traditional Legal Canon." True to the theme of the conference, many presenters sought to expand our collective imagination through poetry, fiction, and narrative. The presentations were intellectually stimulating and provocative. Indeed, there was a literary quality to some of the presentations. Perhaps most importantly, the conference itself, in the tradition of …

The Hubris Of The Master Chefs Of Diversity Stew, Michael K. Jordan

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the dangers of pursuing diversity, be it in the workplace, in a student body, or in a society, in a manner that puts a high level of control in the hands of a few experts using a specifc "recipe". These masters of diversity may pose serious threats to some basic principles that most Americans hold to be essential componenets of what it means to be free, self-determining individuals.

Foreword Symposium: Fourth Annual Mid-Atlantic People Ofcolor Legal Scholarship Conference: Law And Literature: Examining The Limited Legal Imagination In The Traditional Legal Canon, Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

The Fourth Annual Mid-Atlantic People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference, which took place at Rutgers Law School in Camden on February 12-14, 1998, poignantly captured the theme around which the conference was organized. The theme of the conference was "Law and Literature: Examining the Limited Legal Imagination in the Traditional Legal Canon." True to the theme of the conference, many presenters sought to expand our collective imagination through poetry, fiction, and narrative. The presentations were intellectually stimulating and provocative. Indeed, there was a literary quality to some of the presentations. Perhaps most importantly, the conference itself, in the tradition of …

Regarding Rights: An Essay Honoring The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Introduction: Locating Culture, Identity, And Human Rights Symposium In Celebration Of The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

The half-century since the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights' has been famously heralded as the "Age of Rights" and the concept of human rights described as "the only political-moral idea that has gained universal acceptance." During the same period, however, both terms defining the subject-human and rights-have become increasingly contested. Informed by the emergence of identity-based political movements, critics have attacked the category human has as bearing the baggage of Western Enlightenment assumptions about personhood and community, inherently racist, sexist, and classist. Theorists across the political spectrum have criticized the concept of rights as indeterminate, destructive of …

Political Power Of Nuisance Law: Labor Picketing And The Courts In Modern England, 1871-Present, The , Rachel Vorspan

Faculty Scholarship

This inquiry, a comprehensive historical study of the impact of nuisance law on labor picketing in England, comprises six sections. Part I introduces general principles of labor law and nuisance law in the nineteenth century, particularly the legislative scheme of "collective laissezfaire" that emerged after 1871 and remained relatively intact until 1980. Part II examines the use of nuisance doctrines against picketers in the first phase of confrontational picketing from 1889 to 1906, when the appearance of militant unions representing unskilled workers stimulated inventive judicial responses in both private and public nuisance. Part III investigates the much heralded judicial and …

Expanding The Circle Of Membership By Reconstructing The Alien: Lessons From Social Psychology And The Promise Enforcement Cases, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

Recent legal scholarship suggests that the Supreme Court's decisions on immigrants' rights favor conceptions of membership over personhood. Federal courts are often reluctant to recognize the personal rights claims of noncitizens because they are not members of the United States. Professor Michael Scaperlanda argues that because the courts have left the protection of noncitizens' rights in the hands of Congress and, therefore, its constituents, U.S. citizens must engage in a serious dialogue regarding membership in this polity while considering the importance of constitutional principles of personhood. This Article takes up Scaperlanda's challenge. Borrowing from recent research in social psychology, this …

Playing Race Cards: Constructing A Proactive Defense Of Affirmative Action, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

On behalf of the African American Policy Forum ("AAPF"), I am pleased to participate in this symposium as a co-sponsor and contributor. The AAPF, who together with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and the Women's Roundtable constitute the Women's Media Initiative, believes that events such as these are critical in efforts to map strategies for intervening in public debates surrounding affirmative action and a host of related issues such as welfare reform, racial profiling, the prison industrial complex, and the concentration of wealth, just to name a few. As one of many organizations that have taken up the defense …

Gender Sex Agency And Discrimination: A Reply To Professor Abrams, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexual harassment is the fastest-growing area of employment discrimination. In fact, the annual number of sexual harassment complaints filed with the EEOC has more than doubled in the last six years. No one, or at least no one who has given this problem her serious attention, can deny that workplace sexual harassment is a grave problem and that it significantly impedes women's entrance into many sectors of the wage labor market.

Notwithstanding these impressive numbers, sexual harassment legal doctrine remains remarkably undertheorized – particularly by the Supreme Court. For these and other reasons, …

Putting Sex To Work, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

When I was living in New Haven a number of years ago, a miracle happened that drew people by the thousands to witness evidence of the Divine. A crucifix had been found to appear in the body of an oak tree in the middle of Worchester Square. I went – after all, how often do you get to see that kind of thing? Not surprisingly, at first I couldn't see anything but the usual trunk and limbs of a tree. Yet a believer took the time to show me what was really there, something that my untrained eye could not …

The Process Of Terry-Lawmaking, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

The organizers of this Conference obviously gave a lot of thought to its structure. We started off with a session that showed the Supreme Court at its best, working under the gentle leadership of Chief Justice Warren, and guided by the sage counsel of Justice Brennan, to balance the demands of the Fourth Amendment with the exigencies of street encounters. Now we come to a session in which the Supreme Court comes off well, not merely in one, but in both papers. For Steve Saltzburg, Terry itself may not have been perfect, but, over time, the Court has made it …

Toleration, Autonomy, And Governmental Promotion Of Good Lives: Beyond "Empty" Toleration To Toleration As Respect, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers discontent with liberal toleration as being both too empty, because it fails to secure respect and appreciation among citizens who tolerate each other, and too robust, because it precludes government from engaging in a formative project of helping citizens to live good, self-governing lives. To meet these criticisms, the Article advances a model of toleration as respect, as distinguished from a model of empty toleration, drawing on three rationales for toleration: the anti-compulsion rationale, the jurisdictional rationale, and the diversity rationale. It defends toleration as respect against some common criticisms-emanating from feminist, civic republican, and liberal perfectionist …

Contested Terrains Of Compensation: Equality, Affirmative Action And Diversity In The United States, Taunya L. Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Unlocking The Closet Door: Protecting Children From Involuntary Civil Commitment Because Of Their Sexual Orientation, Miye Goishi

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Interests And Rights Of The Interracial Family In A Multiracial Racial Classification, The Proceedings Of The Third Annual Mid-Atlantic People Of Color Legal Scholarship Conference February 13-15, 1997: Part 2, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

The public dissemination of census data invites battles over how human beings will be known. One census battle that has been at the forefront of the public debate is the demand for a "multiracial" category. The multiracial classification, as proposed, would be one of the race categories a respondent could choose in lieu of those currently listed by the Office of Management of Budget (OMB): American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, White, or Other. The stated aim of the new racial classification is to obtain a more specific census count of the number of mixed-race persons …

Equal Protection Held Hostage: Ransoming The Constitutionality Of The Hostage Taking Act, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

This Article contends that, following the Supreme Court's lead in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña and City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Centers, Inc., the continuing maltreatment of noncitizens in this country requires that federal alienage classifications be reviewed with the same strict, or at least heightened rational basis, scrutiny applied to state legislation.

Part II of this Article describes the 1979 Hostage Taking Convention and sets forth some of its provisions in an effort to better understand the impetus for the HTA. Part III examines the legislative history of the HTA and briefly describes the Yunis case as …

The Buck Does Not Stop Here: Supervisory Liability In Section 1983 Cases, Kit Kinports

Faculty Scholarship

The appropriate standard for supervisory liability in Section 1983 cases has been a source of considerable disagreement among federal courts of appeals. In the absence of established Supreme Court authority on the subject, courts have rejected vicarious and negligence liability in favor of a higher culpability requirement, but they have not agreed on precisely what form this higher standard should take. In this article, the Author addresses the need for a uniform standard consistent with the statute's twin goals of compensating the victims of constitutional violations and deterring constitutional infractions.

The author notes at the outset that lower courts have …

Intersectionality And Positionality: Situating Women Of Color In The Affirmative Action Dialogue, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the position of women of color in the affirmative action dialogue. Affirmative action has come under attack locally, statewide, and federally. During this same period, critical race feminists have brought into sharp relief how women of color are marginalized or erased in discourses over sex and gender, as well as over race and ethnicity. Despite these protests and warnings, the current debate over affirmative action continues this history of invisibility, perpetuating America's spoken and unspoken conceptions about where women of color belong. For example, most discussion of affirmative action focuses on race, more specifically on African-Americans. Some …

The Lesbian Wife: Same-Sex Marriage As An Expression Of Radical And Plural Democracy, Barbara Cox

Faculty Scholarship

This Paper considers three ideas. The first is recognizing that a "reactionary and exclusionary democracy" exists in this country today. The second is considering the argument by some gay and lesbian activists that including gay men and lesbians under the rubric of state-sanctioned marriage will actually prevent a "radical and plural democracy" from occurring by removing the "outlaw" nature of the queer community and leading to the wholesale movement of gays and lesbians from the "anti-subordination project" into the mainstream middle-class. The third argues that, despite this concern, the gay and lesbian community can help move the country toward a …

Coalescing Communities, Discourses And Practices: Synergies In The Anti-Subordination Project, Barbara Cox

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Congruence Principle Applied: Rethinking Equal Protection Review Of Federal Alienage Classifications After Adanrand Constructors, Inc. V. Peña, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

This article suggests that the Supreme Court's 1995 decision in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña constitutes a starting point for a renewed dialogue on the intersection of race, noncitizens' rights, and immigration law.

Part I of this Article examines the historical foundations of the plenary power doctrine up to the current dichotomy between judicial review of state and federal alienage classifications under equal protection. Part II reviews the Adarand decision, arguing that Justice O'Connor's congruence principle provides the bulwark for a revision of judicial review of federal legislation, especially in light of the historical and continuing perception of Asian- and …