Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Counter-Majoritarian Power And Judges' Political Speech, Michael R. Dimino

ExpressO

Canons of ethics restrict judicial campaigning and prohibit sitting judges from engaging in political activity. Only recently, in Republican Party v. White, 536 U.S. 765 (2002), has the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of these restrictions, concluding that judicial candidates must be allowed some opportunity to discuss legal and political issues in their campaigns. But White left many questions unanswered about the permissible scope of restrictions on judges’ political activity.

This Article suggests that those questions will be answered not by applying principles of free speech, but by analyzing the opportunities the restrictions provide for independent judicial policy-making. Restrictions on …

Roger Williams On Liberty Of Conscience, Edward J. Eberle

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reclaiming The Public Forum: Courts Must Stand Firm Against Governmental Efforts To Displace Dissidence, Christopher B. Ford

ExpressO

Recognizing that the right to free speech for dissidents is increasingly at risk in the United States, this submission catalogs manifold methods the government has employed to constrain free speech and urges that courts not only serve as a bulwark against further erosion of public expression of dissent but endeavor to restore access to the public forum that recently has been lost. The submission surveys the background of the right to free expression and provides details and examples of the government’s increasing tendency to suppress dissident speech by deploying heavily armed police in demonstrations, committing violent acts against peaceful protesters, …

Review Of David E. Bernstein's "You Can't Say That!--The Growing Threat To Civil Liberties From Antidiscrimination Laws", Ivan E. Bodensteiner

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Public Availability Or Practical Obscurity: The Debate Over Public Access To Court Records On The Internet, Arminda Bradford Bepko

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Substantive Due Process As A Source Of Constitutional Protection For Nonpolitical Speech, Gregory P. Magarian

Scholarship@WashULaw

We live in a time when our right to speak out against our government faces threats unimagined since the Vietnam era. As the present war in Iraq and the campaign against international terrorism have dragged on, the federal and state governments as well as nongovernmental institutions have grown increasingly bold in their efforts to suppress political dissent. Law enforcement officers infiltrate and bully peaceful dissident groups; police crack down brutally on mass demonstrations; cities confine protesters at major political events to ironically designated “free speech zones.” These events buttress a contention, familiar from the work of several prominent First Amendment …

Considering Individual Religious Freedoms Under Tribal Constitutional Law, Kristen A. Carpenter

Publications

As American Indian nations revitalize their legal systems, there is renewed interest in "tribal law," that is, the law of each of the Indian nations. Today, there is a particular focus on the subject of "individual rights" under tribal law. In tribal contexts, people are highly interested in the legal institutions and rules that govern their lives, especially as many tribal communities are experiencing a period of great political, social, and economic change. At the national level, the Supreme Court repeatedly expresses concern about whether individuals, especially non-Indians, will be treated fairly in tribal court. For scholars, individual rights under …

O Say, Can You See: Free Expression By The Light Of Fiery Crosses, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article presents a comprehensive, context-based theory which both places cross burning in its proper doctrinal framework and recognizes the history of cross burning as one of Ku Klux Klan-inspired terrorism directed at African Americans. The author prefaces critical commentary on the Supreme Court's decision in Virginia v. Black with analysis of the full landscape of cross burning cases including another issue to which others have paid little attention - the ways in which state courts have negotiated First Amendment challenges to cross burning statutes. Thoroughly examining cross burning from each of these perspectives, the Article argues that cross burning …

Saving Title Vii: Using Intent To Distinguish Harassment From Expression, Robert Austin Ruescher

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Like two reluctant boxers in a ring, the First Amendment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been sparring halfheartedly for years, circling and jabbing each other in courts and law reviews. The bout pits the constitutional right to be free from government censorship against the statutory "right to work in an environment free from discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult." As stated by the Supreme Court in another context, it pits "the First Amendment rights of the speaker" against "the protection the statute provides for the unwilling listener."

Both the First Amendment and Title VII …

You Can't Ask (Or Say) That: The First Amendment And Civil Rights Restrictions On Decisionmaker Speech, Helen L. Norton

Faculty Scholarship

Many antidiscrimination statutes limit speech by employers, landlords, lenders, and other decisionmakers in one or both of two ways: (1) by prohibiting queries soliciting information about an applicant's disability, sexual orientation, marital status, or other protected characteristic; and (2) by proscribing discriminatory advertisements or other expressions of discriminatory preference for applicants based on race, sex, age, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristics.

This Article explores how we might think about these laws for First Amendment purposes. Part I outlines the range of civil rights restrictions on decisionmaker speech, while Part II identifies the antidiscrimination and privacy concerns that drive their …

Equal Justice Under The Law: Why Iolta Programs Do Not Violate The First Amendment, Hillary A. Webber

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ub Viewpoint – The Silence Of The Muslims, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article, written in the wake of the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, questions the failure of Muslims strongly to condemn acts of violence and murder committed by Islamic extremists, and argues that such silence encourages neutral parties to wonder if moderate Muslims may indeed sympathize with "the killers of 'infidels'" - which in turn can lead to fear, bias, and group defamation.

Attacking Brandenburg With History: Does The Long-Term Harm Of Biased Speech Justify A Criminal Statute Suppressing It?, Anuj C. Desai

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paves the Way for Harmful Social Movements, Alexander Tsesis, New York: New York University Press, 2002, 246 pages.

A review of Alexander Tsesis's Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paves the Way for Harmful Social Movements, New York University Press, 2002. At one level, Alexander Tsesis's thesis is simply one in a long line of arguments about the need to regulate racist speech. Yet on another level, it is fundamentally different from much American literature on "hate speech" because Tsesis draws on a broad historical swath, and because he contends that the United States …

Should Klansmen Be Lawyers? Racism As An Ethical Barrier To The Legal Profession, Carla Pratt

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

You Can't Ask (Or Say) That: The First Amendment And Civil Rights Restrictions On Decisionmaker Speech, Helen Norton

Publications

Federal, state, and local civil rights laws regulate private decisionmaking about whom an employer may hire or fire, to whom a landlord may rent an apartment, or to whom a creditor may extend credit. In prohibiting discriminatory conduct, however, these laws also limit the speech of those making these decisions. In this Article, Professor Norton explores how we might think about these civil rights laws in the context of the First Amendment, and their place within the Supreme Court's commercial speech jurisprudence. She concludes that the speech restricted by these laws may be characterized as falling outside the protection of …

Ministerial Exception And Title Vii Claims: Case Law Grid Analysis, Janet S. Belcove-Shalin

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law: Boy Scouts Of America V. Dale: The Scout Oath And Law Survive Government Intrusion, J. Craig Buchan

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Section 1983, The First Amendment, And Public Employee Speech: Shaping The Right To Fit The Remedy (And Vice Versa), Michael L. Wells

Georgia Law Review

Constitutional rights have little value in the absence of effective remedies for their violation, includingsuitsfor damages to redress past constitutional wrongs and for injunctive relief to prevent continuing and future violations. Recognizing this, the Supreme Court has, especially over the past forty years, constructed an elaborate body of remedial doctrine. The Court has often acted on the premise that the remedial law should be more or less the same across the whole range of constitutional rights. The problem with this approach is that, from a remedial perspective, there are differences among the real world contexts in which constitutional violations occur. …

"Closet Case": Boy Scouts Of America V. Dale And The Reinforcement Of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, And Transgender Invisibility, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

This Article argues that the Supreme Courts decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale misapplies and ignores controlling First Amendment precedent and incorrectly dermes "sexual identity" as a clinical or biological imposition that exists apart from expression or speech. This Article provides a doctrinal alternative to Dale that would protect vital interests in both equality and liberty and that would not condition, as does Dale, sexual "equality" upon the silencing of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.

American-Arab -- Getting The Balance Wrong -- Again!, John A. Scanlan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

"Reparative" Therapy: Whether Parental Attempts To Change A Child's Sexual Orientation Can Legally Constitute Child Abuse , Karolyn Ann Hicks

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Holocaust Denial And The First Amendment: The Quest For Truth In A Free Society, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

From the ashes of the Holocaust we have come once again to learn the terrible truth, that the power of Evil cannot be underestimated. Nor can the effect of the spoken and written word. It has been but a half-century since the liberation of Nazi death camps, a little more than a decade since the First International Conference on the Holocaust and Human Rights, and a few short years since the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum first put on display its documentation of horror. Yet today that form of historical revisionism popularly called "Holocaust denial" abounds worldwide in all its …

Ronald Dworkin's The Moral Reading Of The Constitution: A Critique, Raoul Berger

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Race, Religion, And Cultural Identity: Reconciling The Jurisprudence Of Race And Religion, Tseming Yang

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"Do Justice!": Variations Of A Thrice-Told Tale, Michael Herz

Articles

Although recent debates would suggest that narrative scholarship is brand new,4 lawyers, judges, and law professors, like all humankind, have always offered stories for illustration or support or to make a point in an indirect, and often more effective, way. Learned Hand's story about telling Justice Holmes to "do justice" is one widely-used example, offered by many writers in addition to Judge Bork and Professor Chayes. Its popularity is easy to understand. The story has a substantive message, pithily expressed, on a basic jurisprudential issue; it involves two members of the pantheon; and it crams a lot of human interest …

Legislating Against Hate In New York: Bias Crimes And The Lesbian And Gay Community, Martin S. Zwerling

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Roulette V. City Of Seattle: A City Lives With Its Homeless, William M. Berg

Seattle University Law Review

This Note analyzes the Roulette holding with respect to prior decisions on begging and vagrancy. In addition, this Note discusses the sidewalk ordinance with respect to the efforts of other communities to control the detrimental effects of a growing homeless population. This Note concludes that the Roulette holding strikes a constitutionally valid doctrinal and jurisprudential middle ground between abandoning the streets to the homeless and driving them from the community. It is argued that the sidewalk ordinance is normatively valid, in that it sets a reasonable standard of conduct that meets commonly accepted norms of civility, serving to benefit the …

Speaking Of Race, Speaking Of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, And Civil Liberties, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Targeting Conduct: A Constitutional Method Of Penalizing Hate Crimes, Kevin N. Ainsworth

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Forty-three states have enacted hate-crime statutes. These laws generally fall into one of two classes, either hate-speech or penalty-enhancement statutes. The former has sought to control virulent expression by punishing the utterance or display of words or symbols that the user knows will arouse anger in others on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or some other immutable characteristic. The United States Supreme Court examined an ordinance of this type in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul and found that the law infringed on the First Amendment right to free speech. Penalty enhancement statutes vary slightly among states, but …

John D. Appel, Robert S. Rifkind

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.