Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Knocking On Wood: Some Thoughts On The Immunities Of State Officials To Civil Rights Damage Actions, Joseph Kattan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Recent developments suggest that even without congressional action municipalities and other subdivisions of the state not protected by the eleventh amendment may be subject to liability for the actions of their officers. Presently, however, an aggrieved individual's primary remedy is recovery of damages from the offending officers. This right of recovery hinges on whether the officer should have understood the unconstitutional effect of his actions. Although the need for uniformity in the standard of liability, in the burden of proof, and in the scope of official defenses and immunities is acute, neither the courts nor the commentators have articulated a …

Book Reviews, Paul L. Murphy, Richard E. Ellis

Vanderbilt Law Review

Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality By Richard Kluger

Reviewed by Paul L. Murphy

Richard Kluger is a novelist and editor who retired to devote his full time to an extensive study of the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education.' Perceiving the Brown decision as a watershed with respect to America's willingness to confront the consequences of centuries of racial discrimination, Kluger set out to tell the entire story of the Brown decision. Kluger approaches the Brown case not as a study of the law and …

Residential Mortgage Lending: Charting A Course Through The Regulatory Maze, William F. Earthman

Vanderbilt Law Review

One specific issue addressed by this symposium is the practice of "redlining." If what is meant by "redlining" is discrimination in residential mortgage lending, I am certainly opposed to such a practice. If, however, what is meant by "redlining" is the consideration and analysis of the effect of the surrounding neighborhood on the property which secures a particular residential mortgage loan, then there are other problems which must be addressed and focused upon. It has been stated that a lender redlines a specific geographic area located within the larger geographic area normally serviced by that lender when the lender refuses …

Book Review, R. Lawrence Ashe, Jr., Donald R. Stacy

Vanderbilt Law Review

This volume appears at first blush to fall into a freshet of recent writings on the limits of our capacity for effective social engineering. Among these writings are Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, James Q. Wilson's Thinking About Crime, and James S. Coleman's qualifying affidavit in the Boston School case and subsequent articles. Upon full reading, however, Professor Glazer's attack is seen to be directed more at the dubious moral mandate for group statistical preferences than at their evidently doubtful impact on the social problems at which they have been aimed.

Front Pay--Prophylactic Relief Under Title Vii Of The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, Gregg N. Grimsley

Vanderbilt Law Review

This note will attempt to analyze the front pay award as it must exist within the general framework of section 706(g). After first defining the nature of the front pay award, this note will examine the interrelationship between back pay and the rightful place theory that creates the need for prospective relief. Next, the award shall be analyzed in light of both the legislative history of section 706(g)and the National Labor Relations Act, from which section 706(g) is copied. Finally, the cases that have addressed the issue shall be analyzed and the problems that will arise in the computation of …

Book Review, Henry P. Coppolillo

Vanderbilt Law Review

We often are startled when someone presents us with a new awareness of the significance of issues or phenomena at which we have been looking for years but have never really seen. Freda Adler will startle a number of people who read her book Sisters in Crime. She will also anger them. The only thing her book will not do is leave people unmoved. Sisters in Crime provides punch, provocation, revelation, promise, and explanation, as the author uses the central theme of the change in the rate and nature of crimes committed by women to explore women's roles and fortunes …

Negro Demonstrations And The Law: Danville As A Test Case, James W. Ely, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

In at least some measure, the Negro demonstrations of the 1960's were an attempt to create tensions and intimidate the white public into taking actions favored by the black minority, or, that failing, to provoke such a savage reaction from the whites as to arouse national public opinion. Violence and threats of violence were an integral part of this strategy. It is to the credit of Virginia leaders at all levels that they recognized this overt threat and refused to yield to extra-legal tactics. One of the most unhappy legacies of the 1960's was the wide-spread notion that questions of …

Economic, Medical And Legal Aspects Of The Age Discrimination Laws In Employment, Irving Kovarsky, Dr. Joel Kovarsky

Vanderbilt Law Review

There is speculation that many colleges and universities will be hard hit in the near future by the EEOC because of sex discrimination. It can also be anticipated that the institutions of higher learning will soon be faced with many charges of age discrimination . Because of the limited funds available and the attitudes of some administrators, older employees who find it difficult to move to other jobs are given only small wage increases. This failure to match the cost of living of older employees while younger and more mobile members fare better proportionately may well be a sign of …

Book Reviews, Wythe Holt, Kermit L. Hall

Vanderbilt Law Review

The recent death of Earl Warren reminds us, rather sadly, that the great Chief Justice and "his" Court have been subjected to withering and sometimes vicious and unfair criticism from within the academic circle.' The heart of the criticism (most charitably put) has been that the Warren Court hastily, simplistically, and even unnecessarily attempted to elevate egalitarianism into a high,perhaps the highest, social value and standard for constitutional and governmental decision making. We like to think that we believe in a democracy free for all-that is the way we portray ourselves propagandistically to the rest of the world-but the truth …

Credit Discrimination Against Women: Causes And Solutions, Margaret J. Gates

Vanderbilt Law Review

This article deals both with the laws that cause credit discrimination against women and with those that have been and could be formulated to solve the problem. It first explains the nature and importance of the problem, then discusses the apparent legal and economic bases of the discrimination, and finally explores the adequacy of existing and proposed remedies.

Current Civil Rights Problems In The Collective Bargaining Process: The Bethlehem & At&T Experiences, William J. Kilberg

Vanderbilt Law Review

This article explores the development, theory, and design of the government's Contract Compliance Program and the other statutory means of pursuing equal employment opportunity. Part I is a brief explanation of the Contract Compliance Program under Executive Order 11,246. Part II presents a discussion of the legal underpinnings of the affirmative action concept. Part III deals with the decision In the Matter of Bethlehem Steel Corporation, a landmark administrative hearing under procedures established by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, and the American Telephone & Telegraph Company Memorandum of Agreement and Consent Decree,' which has been described as "the largest …

Recent Cases, Vanderbilt Law Review

Vanderbilt Law Review

Civil Rights--Private Education-Racially Discriminatory Admissions Policies Violate Right to Contract Provision of 42 U.S.C. § 1981

Plaintiffs, ' blacks who had been denied admission solely on the basis of their race to two all-white private schools that received no state aid,' sought damages and injunctive relief in federal district court contending that these rejections violated section 1981 of 42 U.S.C. by denying them the same right to contract as enjoyed by white citizens.

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Copyright--Telecommunications--CATV Importation of Distant Television Signals Constitutes Infringement Under Sections One (c) & (d) of the Copyright Act

Plaintiffs,' creators and producers of television programs,brought a …

California V. Larue: The Twenty-First Amendment As A Preferred Power, Robert D. Kamenshine

Vanderbilt Law Review

While the twenty-first amendment rationale of LaRue appears to pose a threat to certain individual rights, that amendment has been recognized by at least one state supreme court as a legitimate vehicle for combating racial discrimination in private clubs'--an area of discrimination generally regarded as beyond the reach of government and probably involving fundamental rights of association and privacy. Because of the dual potential of the state power found in the twenty-first amendment and the questionable desirability of the use of that power, this article evaluates the LaRue decision, explores its unusual twenty-first amendment rationale, considers alternative approaches the Court …

Racial Discrimination And The Right To Vote, Armand Derfner

Vanderbilt Law Review

Lawyers in voting discrimination cases are fond of quoting Justice Frankfurter's dictum that "the [Fifteenth] Amendment nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination."' Unfortunately for historical accuracy and for the health of our society, this statement simply has been false for most of the century since the passage of that amendment. In the past fifteen years, however, a change has begun, and the right to vote without discrimination has gained substance. This Article is an effort to describe today's law of voting discrimination, and how that law developed. Because the present state of this area is so largely …

Post--Brown Private White Schools--An Imperfect Dualism, James E. Smith

Vanderbilt Law Review

Federal courts have endeavored to assure that private discrimination practiced by schools is truly private. In this endeavor, courts have enjoined any significant state involvement as violative of the equal protection clause. The courts have shown no inclination to prohibit the private discrimination itself, however, and it appears unlikely that courts in the near future will take the innovative step of barring discrimination practiced by private white academies.

An End, And Perhaps A Beginning, Tom C. Clark

Vanderbilt Law Review

As one who has devoted his professional lifetime, now in its fifty-first year, to the development of procedures and techniques for the improvement of the administration of justice, I say that there is no substitute for the original research furnished by the Race Relations Law Survey in the race relations field. It has made the most practical contribution to the improvement of race relations of any publication. One might compare this contribution to that of our law clerks here on the Court, who research and report on state and federal decisions previously made on a given topic. However, the Survey …

"To Secure These Rights": The Need For A New Majority Coalition, Hubert H. Humphrey

Vanderbilt Law Review

We have learned in the last two decades important lessons in both the law and the politics of civil rights. I wish to underscore certain of these realities in outlining a civil rights strategy for the decade of the 1970's. We look back at the civil rights battles of the 1950's and 1960's with an air of nostalgia. In those years the legislative goals were relatively well defined: the removal of a host of legal barriers t, civil equality and equal opportunity. More than this, the legal barriers existed primarily in one section of the country so that the lives …

Developments In The Law Of School Desegregation, T. A. Smedley

Vanderbilt Law Review

Eighteen years after the Brown decision declared that racially dual school systems violate constitutional rights of students and therefore must be abolished,' the developments in this area of life and law still primarily involve efforts to find an answer to the practical problem which arose immediately after the Brown ruling: How does one abolish a dual school system? Today, relatively few people openly contend that public schools ought to be operated on a racially segregated basis, but the problem of identifying and implementing acceptable means of achieving desegregation has proved to be virtually unsolvable. Although the federal courts initially displayed …

The Unique Problems Of The Black Businessman, Flournoy A. Coles, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article concentrates on problems of black businessmen rather than those of all minority businessmen for 3 reasons: first, there are more statistics on the business and other aspects of black economic life than on other nonwhite minorities; secondly, the available statistics suggest that black Americans rank lowest on the totem pole of business activity in this country--lower than any other nonwhite minority except perhaps for American Indians; thirdly, many of the solutions suggested for remedying the problems of black business enterprise would apply to the similar problems that other minority groups have encountered.

More Than Law, Anthony J. Celebrezze

Vanderbilt Law Review

In mid-1963, at hearings' on what was to become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I expressed my regret that some 37 years prior to the end of the twentieth century we found it necessary to take up legislation that dealt with basic human rights. Today, nearly a decade later, I express a similar regret that those rights have not yet been realized for every citizen of this nation.

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Injunctions--Contempt Power--Citation Proper Against Nonparty Who Violates Court Order in School Desegregation Case

Whether an injunction or other order binds one not a party to the underlying suit or proceeding so that he may be held in contempt for violation is a question that always has troubled the courts. Some early cases purported to announce a sweeping and apparently absolute rule--that an injunction or other order does not bind nonparties. The principle underlying this rule is that due process forbids a court to adjudicate the legal rights and relationships of a person who has not had the opportunity to be …

Equal Protection, Economic Legislation,And Racial Discrimination, William Silverman

Vanderbilt Law Review

The drive to end racial discrimination now extends beyond blatant racial distinctions to less obvious and less intentional forms of unequal treatment; nonetheless, there still exist laws and governmental programs that are racially neutral on their face but that may have a racially discriminatory impact in practice. Such discrimination can take place when economic and social welfare legislation, lacking a sound economic grounding, attacks symptoms rather than causes and thereby unintentionally compounds the problems facing black people. At the same time, laws that are at the root of unequal treatment seem to go unchallenged. From the point of view of …

Recent Developments, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

The fourteenth amendment provides that "[n]o State shall . ..deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."' The amendment thus explicitly forbids the state to engage in certain conduct, but places no express restriction on the acts of private individuals. Although the Supreme Court has consistently held that state action is a necessary element of a fourteenth amendment violation, the concept of state action was expanded to cover activities arguably private in nature to the extent that by 1970 the Court …

Whither The Concept "Affected With A Public Interest"?, Sterry R. Waterman

Vanderbilt Law Review

We of the law and we who administer the law are challenged today more acutely than ever before. Many serious-minded people question whether the law is or can ever be an instrumentality of social justice.Many of our citizens believe that, irrespective of the precepts of the law,the administration of the law frequently has been used as a device to frustrate the legitimate aspirations of those seeking to participate as equals with other Americans in the benefits of American society. The inclusion of more and more activities as activities "affected with the public interest" is evidence that there are some who …

Recent Developments, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the recent decision of Bradley v. School Board, a Virginia federal court ordered the consolidation of the predominantly black Richmond school district with the surrounding all-white suburban school districts of Henrico and Chesterfield Counties. This decision marks the first time that a court has consolidated two or more autonomous school districts for the purpose of achieving a racial balance in the schools that reflects the racial composition of the consolidated areas as a whole. While Judge Merhige in Bradley punctiliously followed the principles enunciated by the Supreme Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education and its earlier desegregation …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Black citizens of Tate County, Mississippi, brought suit' seeking rescission of the County Board of Education's sale of a public school to a foundation that used the property to establish a private, segregated academy. Respondent, Tate County Board of Education, had determined that the continued operation of the dilapidated school would be uneconomical and had conveyed the property to a private citizen without knowing the purpose for which the school was to be used. The purchaser later conveyed the property to the Tate County Foundation, which established a private, segregated academy. Petitioners contended that the sale violated the equal protection …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Civil Rights--Section 1983--Municipality Subject to Section 1983 Damage Suit if Local Law Recognizes Municipal Liability

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Constitutional Law--Citizenship-Statute that Conditions Retention of United States Citizenship upon Residency Requirement Is Constitutional When Citizenship Is Not Protected by the Fourteenth Amendment Citizenship Clause

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Constitutional Law--Equal Protection --School Financing System that Substantially Relies on Local Property Tax Violates Equal Protection Clause

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Constitutional Law--Freedom of Speech--A Per Se Banon All Editorial Advertisements by a Broadcast Licensee Violates the First Amendment

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Constitutional Law--Jury Trials in Juvenile Court--Juveniles in Delinquency Proceedings Not Constitutionally Guaranteed the Right to a Jury Trial

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Constitutional Law--Search …

Another And Hopefully Final Look At The Property--Personal Liberty Distinction Of Section 1343(3), John Lecornu

Vanderbilt Law Review

Recent years have witnessed increasing confusion and uncertainty over the proper scope of section 1343(3) of Title 28 of the United States Code, the jurisdictional counterpart of section 1983 of Title 42. Both provisions originated in the Civil Rights Act of 1871. Section 1983 creates a cause of action to redress the deprivation, under color of state law, of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution or laws. Section 1343(3) grants to the federal district courts original jurisdiction, irrespective of amount in controversy, over any civil action authorized by law that is commenced by any person: "To redress …

Current Remedies For The Discriminatory Effects Of Seniority Agreements, Irving Kovarsky

Vanderbilt Law Review

This article focuses primarily upon the remedies that can be used to reconcile the preservation of legitimate objects of a seniority system with equal treatment for black workers. To provide a historical perspective demonstrating the need for these remedies, the article initially will describe the availability of relief against discriminatory seniority agreements under federal labor legislation. The article will then examine available remedies under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and under recent interpretations of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In the concluding section, possible ways to utilize existing remedies to combat more effectively the discriminatory …

Representation For The Poor In State Rulemaking, Allan Ashman

Vanderbilt Law Review

After a violent summer of urban unrest and civil disorder, President Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in 1967 to find out what happened in our nation's cities, why it happened, and to suggest ways to prevent it from occurring again. One of the findings of the Commission was that from the vantage point of the poor ghetto resident, local government was distant and unconcerned.For the poor person, particularly the poor black ghetto resident, the possibility for effective change either in his personal life style or in the political system appeared remote.' Reflecting upon this gulf between …