Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission And Structural Reform Of The American Workplace, Margo Schlanger, Pauline T. Kim

Law & Economics Working Papers

In 2011, the United States Supreme Court struck down a class action suit alleging that Wal-Mart stores discriminated against female employees in pay and promotion decisions, making it more difficult to obtain certification of private employment discrimination class actions. As a result, the role of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in seeking structural reform of the workplace, always of substantial influence, has gained in comparative importance. Yet there is remarkably little written about the EEOC’s large-scale injunctive cases. This Article addresses this major gap in scholarship.

Using both qualitative case studies and a new quantitative data-set, we test existing theories …

Evidence-Based Sentencing And The Scientific Rationalization Of Discrimination, Sonja B. Starr

Law & Economics Working Papers

This paper critiques, on legal and empirical grounds, the growing trend of basing criminal sentences on actuarial recidivism risk prediction instruments that include demographic and socioeconomic variables. I argue that this practice violates the Equal Protection Clause and is bad policy: an explicit embrace of otherwise-condemned discrimination, sanitized by scientific language. To demonstrate that this practice should be subject to heightened constitutional scrutiny, I comprehensively review the relevant case law, much of which has been ignored by existing literature. To demonstrate that it cannot survive that scrutiny and is undesirable policy, I review the empirical evidence underlying the instruments. I …

The Inevitable Irrelevance Of Affirmative Action, Leslie Y. Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article proceeds in three parts. In Part I of this article, I provide a narrative of affirmative action jurisprudence in higher education, with a particular focus on the meaning of viewpoint diversity in higher education. This section tracks the definitional shift in preference policies from their original design as remedial and compensatory programs for those suffering the effects of educational discrimination to interest convergence programs, which assure equal benefits irrespective of race. In Part II, I explore the circumstances giving rise to Fisher, including an overview of the lower court decisions. This section presents a discussion of the likely …

Outing The Majority: Gay Rights, Public Debate, And Polarization After Doe V. Reed, Marc Allen

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Reed that Washington citizens who signed a petition to eliminate legal rights for LGBT couples did not have a right to keep their names secret. A year later, in ProtectMarriage.com v. Bowen, a district court in California partially relied on Reed to reject a similar request from groups who lobbied for California Proposition 8-a constitutional amendment that overturned the California Supreme Court's landmark 2008 gay marriage decision. These holdings are important to election law, feminist, and first amendment scholars for a number of reasons. First, they flip the traditional …

The Scarlet Letter: The Supreme Court And The Language Of Abortion Stigma, Paula Abrams

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Why does the Supreme Court refer to the woman who is seeking an abortion as "mother"? Surely the definition has not escaped the attention of a Court that frequently relies on the dictionary to define important terms or principles. And why does the Court choose to describe the fetus as a child? What message does this language send about abortion and the woman who seeks an abortion? The Court's abortion decisions embody an ongoing debate on the legitimacy of constitutional protection of the right to choose. This debate unfolds most obviously as a discourse on constitutional interpretation; disagreements within the …

Community Education And Access To Justice In A Time Of Scarcity: Notes From The West Grove Trolley Garage Case, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

"He Is The Darkey With The Glasses On": Race Trials Revisited, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Implausible Injuries: Wal-Mart V. Dukes And The Future Of Class Actions And Employment Discrimination Cases, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

In 2001, a class action suit was brought against Wal-Mart, where plaintiffs sought to certify a class of every woman who did work for the giant retailer or had worked for it since 1998, seeking relief related to promotion and pay policies. Plaintiffs alleged that they were all discriminated against on the basis of sex. The Supreme Court agreed with Wal-Mart, finding that the class did not meet requirements for class actions set by Rule 23. This article explores the reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s split decision that the class did not meet the commonality standard, which relied significantly on …

It's Not Just Name Calling, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

I’m afraid that universities, which like to perceive themselves as places of culture in a chaotic world, are not quite that wonderful. Of course, some are better than others; not all of them are hotbeds of radical turmoil, but a disturbing number have come to be focal points of loud and strident opposition to the state of Israel.

Although the volume of overt antisemitic acts may have in fact declined over the past few years, there has been a significant increase in anti-Zionist rhetoric and activity on campuses around the country and around the world. The two concepts are not …

The Virtue Of Obscurity, Colin Starger

All Faculty Scholarship

The critics have panned Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in United States v. Windsor. Supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage have together bemoaned what may be called Kennedy’s “doctrinal obscurity” in Windsor. Doctrinal obscurity describes the opinion’s failure to justify striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) using any discernable accepted test for substantive due process or equal protection. Specifically, Kennedy does not ask whether DOMA burdens a right “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” nor does he identify sexual orientation as a suspect or semi-suspect classification, nor does he subject DOMA to explicit rational …

Mapping A Post-Shelby County Contingency Strategy, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay was written for the Yale Law Journal Online Symposium on the future of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act after Shelby County v. Holder. Professors Guy-Uriel E. Charles and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer argue that voting rights activists ought to be prepared for a future in which section 5 is not part of the landscape. If the Court strikes down section 5, an emerging ecosystem of private entities and organized interest groups of various stripes—what they call institutional intermediaries—may be willing and able to mimic the elements that made section 5 an effective regulatory device. As voting rights …

The Significance Of Skin Color In Asian And Asian-American Communities: Initial Reflections, Trina Jones

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Sentence Of Hiv, Carrie Griffin Basas

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Dignité/Dignidade: Organizing Against Threats To Dignity In Societies After Slavery, Rebecca J. Scott

Book Chapters

This chapter is not an attempt to join the fractious debate over philosophical first principles or juridical first usages of the term 'dignity'. Instead, it explores the tight connection between the institution of slavery and the giving of specific meanings to the concept of dignity, in particular times and particular places. To explore the dynamics of the intertwined process of creating and drawing upon meaning for the terms 'dignity' and 'slavery', I examine two historical movements that emerged after formal abolition.

Deconstructing Antisocial Personality Disorder And Psychopathy: Guidelines-Based Approach To Prejudicial Psychiatric Labels, Kathleen Wayland, Sean O'Brien

Faculty Works

Prejudicial psychiatric labels such as antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy have an inherently prejudicial effect on courts and juries, particularly in cases involving the death penalty. This article explains how and why these labels are inherently aggravating, and also discusses the mental health literature indicating that they are subjective, unreliable and non-scientific. The authors conclude that no competent defense lawyer would pursue a mitigation case based on such a damaging and scientifically questionable psychiatric label. Further, a proper life history investigation conducted in accordance with the ABA Guidelines on the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases …

Affirmative Action, Justice Kennedy, And The Virtues Of The Middle Ground, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

When the Supreme Court hears arguments this fall about the constitutionality of affirmative action policies at the University of Texas, attention will be focused once again on Justice Anthony Kennedy. With the rest of the Court split between a bloc of four reliably liberal jurists and an equally solid cadre of four conservatives, the spotlight regularly falls on Kennedy, the swing voter that each side in every closely divided and ideologically charged case desperately hopes to attract. Critics condemn Kennedy for having an unprincipled, capricious, and self-aggrandizing style of decision-making. Though he is often decisive in the sense of casting …

The End Of Men?: Gender Flux In The Face Of Precarious Masculinity, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Sacred And The Secular: South Africa's Constitutional Court Rules On Same-Sex Marriages, Albie Sachs

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Employment And Economic Advancement Of African-Americans In The Twentieth Century, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Ryland Sherman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this article we examine the progress of African–Americans in the American labour market over the course of the twentieth century. We trace their progress as African-Americans moved from low-skill low-wage jobs in southern agriculture to a panoply of jobs including high-skill, high-wage jobs in industries and occupations across the country.We also document the migrations and improvements in educational achievement that have made this progress possible. We examine the progress yet to be made and especially the problems of lack of education and incarceration suffered by African–American males. Finally, we examine the importance of anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action in …

The Future Of Family, Max D. Siegel

Student Articles and Papers

The State organizes society into families, implicating and often ignoring various liberty and equality interests while fortifying a “traditional” family structure comprised of one man, one woman, and their mutually and exclusively conceived offspring. This structure has historically benefited the heterosexual elite within the United States, but modern advancements for sexual minorities suggest a new standard for State recognition of family. Queer liberation will erase the traditional family by rewriting its legal and social dimensions, resulting in laws and policies that track more closely with familial bonds outside a heteronormative, man-woman binary. This Article explores the ramifications of enhanced queer …

Lessons From A Plague, Max D. Siegel

Student Articles and Papers

This Article argues that we ought to examine this country’s early AIDS crisis for lessons on addressing HIV in the twenty-first century and to improve the ongoing social movement of sexual minorities in the United States. In the 1980s and early 1990s, AIDS focused sexual minorities’ advocacy efforts as both liberationists working to deregulate sexuality and integrationists seeking entrance to heterosexual privilege recognized that their agendas needed to account for this new crisis. Over time, a liberationist response to AIDS emerged and dominated the social movement because sexual minorities needed to publicly defend their differences in order to stay alive. …

“It’S A Kākou Thing”: The Dadt Repeal And A New Vocabulary Of Anti-Subordination, 3 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 905 (2013), Kim D. Chanbonpin

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

The repeal of DADT represents the triumph of non-discrimination rhetoric, while the MLDC's report stands for a renewed effort to expand the military's affirmative action policies for the benefit of people of color and women: two historically subordinated groups in the U.S. military. The repeal of DADT may have purchased equality for LGB service members, but at a premium. The strategic decision to rally around the non-discrimination model, I argue in this Article, will reinforce the continued subordination of LGB service members. As an alternative, I propose the application of kakou principles to military policies and programs for integrating LGB …

A Private Underworld: The Naked Body In Law And Society, Lawrence M. Friedman, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In general, the literature on privacy stresses, quite naturally, our right to keep things private, or to make our own decisions. The individual, the citizen, is the center of gravity. There is a great deal of material on the limits of privacy, on threats to privacy, and the like. In this Article, the authors want to discuss what one might call mandatory privacy: those aspects of life that we are required to keep secret, hidden, or private, the things that we must keep private, whether we want to or not. This is a subject that has been mostly, though not …

Collapsing Suspect Class With Suspect Classification: Why Strict Scrutiny Is Too Strict And Maybe Not Strict Enough, Sonu Bedi

Georgia Law Review

While scholarly work often analyzes the nature and scope
of the Court's tiers of scrutiny approach to enforcing
equality, this Article examines the underlying theory of
equal protection. This Article mounts a challenge to the
theory of higher scrutiny, and, in particular,strict scrutiny.
It seeks to analyze two questions: (1) What principles trigger
heightened scrutiny? and (2) Why does the Court need to
subject laws that discriminate on the basis of race to strict
scrutiny? The first question concerns the underlying theory
of equal protection doctrine: the "what" of higher scrutiny.
Scholarly work that seeks to answer this question rightly …

Genetic Privacy & The Fourth Amendment: Unregulated Surreptitious Dna Harvesting, Albert E. Scherr

Georgia Law Review

Genetic privacy and police practices have come to the
fore in the criminal justice system. Case law and stories
in the media document that police are surreptitiously
harvesting the out-of-body DNA of putative suspects.
Some sources even indicate that surreptitious data
banking may also be in its infancy. Surreptitious
harvesting of out-of-body DNA by the police is currently
unregulated by the Fourth Amendment. The few courts
that have addressed the issue find that the police are free
to harvest DNA abandoned by a putative suspect in a
public place. Little in the nascent surreptitious harvesting
case law suggests that surreptitious …

Muscogee Constitutional Jurisprudence: Vhakv Em Pvtakv (The Carpet Under The Law), Sarah Deer, Cecilia Knapp

Faculty Scholarship

In 1974, a group of Mvskoke citizens from Oklahoma sued the federal government in federal court. Hanging in the balance was the future of Mvskoke self-determination. The plaintiffs insisted that their 1867 Constitution remained in full effect, and that they still governed themselves pursuant to it. The United States argued that the constitution had been nullified by federal law passed in the early 1900s.

To find in favor of the plaintiffs, the court would have to rule that the United States had been ignoring the most basic civil rights of Mvskoke citizens and flouting the law for over seventy years. …

The Dignity Of Equality Legislation, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

In Congressional Power to Effect Sex Equality, Patricia Seith argues that legal and social science commentary on the ratification failure of the Equal Rights Amendment ("ERA") does not properly account for the legislative gains achieved by the Economic Equity Act ("Equity Act"). In drawing attention to the Equity Act, Seith's account challenges common explanations of the source of women's equality gains, particularly the narratives offered by legal commentators who typically focus on the role of the Constitution and the courts. As Seith points out, the conventional account in legal history focuses on the effectuation of a "de facto ERA," …

A Bibliography Of Title Ix Of The Education Amendments Of 1972, Christine Iaconeta Dulac

Faculty Publications

It has been thirty-five years since the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972. Title IX provides that no person shall be excluded from participation in any educational program or activity that receives federal funding. This legislation is credited with bolstering the participation rates of girls and women in athletics. Although athletics are not explicitly addressed in the statutory language, Title IX requires schools to offer male and female students equal opportunities to play sports, to give male and female athletes their fair share of athletic scholarship money, and to treat male and female athletes equally in …

Over The Borderline-A Review Of Margaret Price's Mad At School: Rhetorics Of Mental Disability And Academic Life, Gregory M. Duhl

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is about “madness” in higher education. In Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life, Professor Margaret Price analyzes the rhetoric and discourse surrounding mental disabilities in academia. In this Article, I place Price’s work in a legal context, discussing why the Americans with Disabilities Act fails those with mental illness and why reform is needed to protect them. My own narrative as a law professor with Borderline Personality Disorder frames my critique. Narratives of mental illness are important because they help connect those who are often stigmatized and isolated due to mental illness and provide …

Voter Id: Who Has Them? Who Shows Them?, Charles Stewart Iii

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.