Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

The Americans With Disabilities Act: Analysis And Implications Of A Second-Generation Civil Rights Statute, Robert L. Burgdorf Jr.

Journal Articles

Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote that our nation's civil rights laws were a "sparse and insufficient collection of statutes ... barely a naked framework."' On their faces, many federal civil rights statutes constitute little more than broad directives that "Thou shalt not discriminate." Broadly worded statements outlawing discrimination were the optimal approach to statutory draftsmanship in light of the controversial nature of the civil rights laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s. The drafters of these statutes needed to craft language that would be palatable to a majority of the members of Congress while still having a meaningful impact …

Affirmative Action, Douglas Scherer, John Dunne

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Thurgood Marshall And The Administrative State, Jonathan Weinberg

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Jim Crow, Indian Style: The Disenfranchisement Of Native Americans, Jeanette Wolfley

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Lieu Of Preclusion: Reconciling Administrative Decisionmaking And Federal Civil Rights Claims, Marjorie A. Silver

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

National Collegiate Athletic Ass'n V. Tarkanian: Viewing State Action Through The Analytical Looking Glass, Stephen R. Vancamp

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unrightable Wrongs: The Rehnquist Court, Civil Rights, And An Elegy For Dreams, D. Marvin Jones

Articles

No abstract provided.

Bringing A Title Vii Action: Which Test Regarding Standing To Sue Is The Most Applicable?, Valerie L. Jacobson

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note examines who is a proper plaintiff under Title VII and explains the need for a clearer definition of "employee" and "employed." Part II presents a historical development of the standards used to define employment relationships in Title VII. Part III discusses the general requirements for standing and sets forth the tests currently used to determine standing for a Title VII action. Part IV analyzes how the tests can produce different outcomes and why some tests more adequately serve the Act's goals. The Note concludes that Congress should amend the definition of "employee" or at least define what constitutes …

After We're Gone: A Commentary, Michael A. Middleton

Faculty Publications

Professor Bell has placed before us a basic question that must be dealt with by all who wish to resolve the difficulties inherent in governing a free society. That question is one with which the framers of our Constitution grappled and that baffles us still. How does a society effectively govern itself and at the same time guarantee equal liberty for all? More specifically, in the racial context presented by The Chronicle of the Space Traders, when may government act for the benefit of society in a manner that is detrimental to some of its citizens because of their race?

Symmetries Of Access In Civil Rights Litigation: Politics, Pragmatism And Will, Gene R. Shreve

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Determining A Standard For Housing Discrimination Under Title Viii, Richard C. Cahn

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Patterson And Civil Rights: What Rough Beast Slouches Towards Bethlehem To Be Born?, Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

Contrary to its assertions, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Patterson decision marks a stark departure from the federal courts' former practice of according Congressional civil rights enactments a broad reading to effectuate their remedial purposes. Indeed, Patterson offers an exceedingly narrow interpretation of this nation's oldest civil rights law, the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

In addition to its effect on the scope and application of § 1981, Patterson must be read in conjunction with several other decisions issued during the same term that limit—indeed retreat from—the application of civil rights laws designed to restore both lost opportunities and …

Civil Rights In Employment: The New Generation, Linda H. Edwards

Scholarly Works

In July 1989, Title VII was twenty-five years old. It is generally assumed that the first twenty-five years have seen significant changes in the economic opportunities available to America’s minorities and women. But with the rise to power of the Reagan appointees, the Supreme Court is clearly fashioning a new approach to issues of civil rights in employment. This article analyzes the new Court’s emerging themes and proposes a congressional response.

In Lieu Of Preclusion: Reconciling Administrative Decisionmaking And Federal Civil Rights Claims, Marjorie A. Silver

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Proving Discrimination After Price Waterhouse And Wards Cove, Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

INTRODUCTION Anyone involved in litigation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 19641 or similar state statutes may wonder what is entailed in proving or disproving discrimination after the United States Supreme Court's October 1988 Term. In fact, in the pending Civil Rights Act of 1990, Congress is considering reversing some of what the Supreme Court did during that Term. One of the issues that the Supreme Court addressed during the 1988 Term involved allocating burdens of proof in two major types of Title VII claims, dis- parate-treatment and disparate-impact. Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, dealt with a disparate-treatment …

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 …

An Abused Child's Right To Life, Liberty, And Property In The Home: Constitutional Approval Of State Inaction, Michael J. Florio

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Mastery, Slavery, And Emancipation, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Hegel's dialectic of master and slave in the Phenomenology of Mind portrays a master unable to win genuine recognition from a slave because unwilling to confer it. The dialectic implies that freedom has to be conceived as association based on mutual respect, rather than independence. This article offers a communitarian interpretation of emancipation inspired by Hegel's dialectic of master and slave. It proceeds from an account of slave society which, like Hegel's dialectic, equates slavery with the denial of social recognition. This account argues that the experience of slave society led both the masters and the slaves to conceive of …

After The Fall: The Employer's Duty To Accommodate Employee Religious Practices Under Title Vii After Ansonia Board Of Education V. Philbrook, Peter Zablotsky

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Evening The Odds: The Case For Attorneys' Fee Awards For Administrative Resolution Of Title Vi And Title Vii Disputes, Marjorie A. Silver

Scholarly Works

In this Article Professor Silver addresses the shifting of attorneys' fees in administratively resolved claims under Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Professor Silver begins by establishing Congress' commitment to provide informal methods for resolving disputes under these statutes and its intent to use fee-shifting provisions as a means of inducing effective access to counsel. She then discusses the United States Supreme Court's decision in North Carolina Department of Transportation v. Crest Street Community Council, Inc. and contrasts its reasoning with two earlier Court decisions dealing with administrative proceedings and attorneys' fees. Professor Silver argues …

Watson V. Ft. Worth Bank And Trust: The Changing Face Of Disparate Impact, Linda H. Edwards

Scholarly Works

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 constitutes this country’s first serious commitment to eradicating the enormous economic disadvantages caused by hundreds of years of racial and gender-related prejudice. But there is also cause for concern. While members of once excluded groups have entered the mid-level workforce, most have not progressed to top-level positions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the elimination of barriers to mid-level employment has spotlighted the unique barriers to equal employment in top-level jobs. Title VII’s capacity to deal effectively with these barriers will be its major challenge for the next quarter-century. Its success will depend, in …

Rule 11 And Civil Rights Litigation, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

The recent amendment of rule 11 may well have engendered more controversy than any other revision since the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were first promulgated one-half century ago. The new version essentially requires that judges impose sanctions on lawyers and parties who fail to conduct reasonable inquiries before filing court papers. The amendment's adoption was prompted by increasing concern about abuse of the litigation process and about the "litigation explosion" -the perception that unprecedented numbers of civil cases were being filed and that too many lacked merit. Proponents have hailed the revised rule as the savior of the civil …

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, …