Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Thurgood Marshall: Courageous Advocate, Compassionate Judge, Susan Low Bloch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thurgood Marshall's life has spanned virtually the entire twentieth century, allowing him to witness its worst and its best. When he was born in 1908, segregation was legal and pervasive, and racial hatred extreme; in the year of his birth alone, eighty-nine black men were lynched. A grandson of slaves on both sides of his family, Marshall knew, from an early age, both the ugliness and the tenacity of racism. Determined to fight it, Marshall disregarded the difficulties and the dangers, and spent his life battling discrimination, earning the nickname "Mr. Civil Rights." His efforts, coupled with those of others …

Roe V. Wade And The Dred Scott Decision: Justice Scalia's Peculiar Analogy In Planned Parenthood V. Casey, Jamin B. Raskin

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Rouge Et Noir Reread: A Popular Constitutional History Of The Angelo Herndon Case, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

In 1932, Eugene Angelo Braxton Hemdon, a young Afro-American member of the Communist Party, U.S.A., was arrested in Atlanta and charged with an attempt to incite insurrection against that state's lawful authority. Some five years later, in Herndon v. Lowry, Herndon filed a writ of habeas corpus asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of the Georgia statute under which he had been convicted. Two weeks before his twenty-fourth birthday, the Court, voting 5-4, declared the use of the Georgia political-crimes statute against him unconstitutional on the grounds that it deprived Herndon of his rights to freedom …

The Role Of Institutional Factors In Protecting Individual Liberties, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Questions about the efficacy of the Bill of Rights cry out for serious comparative legal scholarship. Robert Ellickson and Frank Easterbrook suggest that one might approach these questions by looking at different state constitutions. One might also look more seriously at the different constitutional regimes around the world, and try to draw some judgments about what impact, if any, different types of constitutional arrangements have on individual rights. We have heard expressions of skepticism about this approach, but there has been very little serious comparative scholarship by constitutional law scholars in this country. The scholarly tradition in America has been …

Justice Brennan's Gender Jurisprudence, Rebecca Korzec

All Faculty Scholarship

During his thirty-four year tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice William Joseph Brennan, Jr. demonstrated unparalleled sensitivity to the protection of individual rights. Justice Brennan's landmark opinions included Baker v. Carr, Goldberg v. Kelly, and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. before Brennan, Supreme Court jurisprudence exalted judicial passivity by employing techniques for avoiding constitutional issues, such as abstention, comity, exhaustion of remedies and the political question doctrine.

Against this background, Brennan became an active judicial voice in a series of innovative landmark cases, including decisions requiring federal officials to pay damages for violation of citizens' constitutional rights; authorizing federal …

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

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action Doctrine And The Conflicting Messages Of Croson, Doug D. Scherer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Minority Set-Aside Programs After City Of Richmond, Judy Kerczewski Kranjc

Cleveland State Law Review

One type of controversial affirmative action plan is the minority set-aside program. This Note will focus on the future of these plans in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision, City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. First, an examination of the background of affirmative action leading up to set-asides is in order. Second, this Note will analyze City of Richmond and the constitutional and social issues at stake, balancing whether minority set-asides are needed with the recognition that discrimination and lack of economic opportunity for minorities still exists in our society. Finally, the Note will examine several lower …

A Critical Approach To Section 1983 With Special Attention To Sources Of Law, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The Civil Rights Act of 1871¹ ("§ 1983") establishes a tort-like remedy for persons deprived of federally protected rights "under color of law."'² While the statute's broad language provides a remedy for violations of federal constitutional and statutory rights, the statute itself provides little or no guidance regarding important subjects such as the measure of damages, the availability of punitive damages, the requirements for equitable relief, the statute of limitations, survival of claims, proper parties, and immunities from suit.³...

...The first part of this article examines the narrowly "legal" analysis of § 1983 in the cases …

The Supreme Court's Denial Of Reasonable Attorney's Fees To Prevailing Civil Rights Plaintiffs, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

The Supreme Court, through a series of recent decisions has effectively overridden Congress’ dictate that prevailing civil rights plaintiffs are entitled to recover reasonable attorney’s fees and costs. The solution to the current crisis lies not in reluctant court-appointed attorneys, but rather in a broad-based reform of the law regarding court-awarded attorney’s fees.

This article argues that only action by Congress will suffice to override the Supreme Court’s erroneous ruling and ensure just compensation for civil rights attorneys. Absent such legislation, it seems virtually certain that both the quantity and quality of civil rights litigation will continue to decrease. Fewer …

Do The United States Sentencing Guidelines Deprive Defendants Of Due Process?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

It is difficult to determine whether due process requires individualized sentencing because sentencing goals and practices have varied greatly during the course of this nation's history. A court applying Judge Bork's original intent doctrine of constitutional interpretation would probably reach a result different from that reached by a court employing a more liberal view of due process protections.1o It is likely that liberals and conservatives on the current Supreme Court would disagree on whether the Guidelines violate due process.

This article argues that the Guidelines can be saved and can satisfy due process requirements if the Supreme Court interprets the …

Can Mental Health Professionals Predict Judicial Decisionmaking? Constitutional And Tort Liability Aspects Of The Right Of The Institutionalized Mentally Disabled To Refuse Treatment: On The Cutting Edge, Michael L. Perlin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

1983-84 Current Developments In Civil Liberties, Ivan E. Bodensteiner, Rosalie Levinson

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Standing To Sue In Fair Housing Cases, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Few procedural issues have commanded more attention from the Supreme Court in recent years than standing. The question of who is a proper party to bring a particular claim has arisen in a variety of contexts, but the Court has been especially active in addressing standing problems in cases concerning allegations of housing discrimination. The recent decision of Gladstone Realtors v. Village of Bellwood marked the fifth time in the past decade that the justices have decided a fair housing case on standing grounds.

The Supreme Court's determination to emphasize standing issues in many of its early fair housing opinions …

Making Sense Of Desegregation And Affirmative Action, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

This review discusses J. Harvie Wilkinson's "From Brown to Bakke" and its companion work, "Counting by Race: Equality from the Founding Fathers to Bakke and Weber" written by Terry Eastland and William J. Bennett. Wilkinson's work is found to maintain a narrow focus on its specific subject of school desegregation and the Supreme Court, but it suffers from over-exaggeration and an abundance of adornment in his writing style. "Counting" is a provocative piece that asserts the position that the Constitution is still not color-blind, despite what many have proposed, and makes an authoritative argument for such a claim.

The Body Of John Merryman: Ex Parte Merryman, A Case Of Executive-Judicial Conflict Over The Suspension Of Habeas Corpus, Eric Paul Anderson

All Master's Theses

At the outbreak of the Civil War the Federal military arrested certain people whose loyalty was suspect. One victim, John Merryman, attempted to free himself by petitioning for a writ of habeas corpus. However, President Lincoln authorized the military to suspend the writ in such cases. The matter came before Chief Justice Taney who disputed the president's authority to suspend the writ and ruled in Merryman's favor. This thesis recounts the history of the habeas corpus process in Anglo-American law and its inclusion in the Constitution, Merryman's role in the first hostilities, his arrest, and the attempt to free him. …

Bakke Revisited - What The Court's Decision Means - And Doesn't Mean, Douglas D. Scherer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

From Washington To Arlington Heights And Beyond: Discriminatory Purpose In Equal Protection Litigation, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

When the Supreme Court decided Washington v. Davis on June 7, 1976, it began a new era in civil rights law. Rejecting the contention that state action is unconstitutional solely because it operates to injure more blacks than whites, the Court held that proof of discriminatory purpose is necessary to establish a claim of racial discrimination under the equal protection clause. In two cases decided the following term—Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. and Castaneda v. Partida—the Court reaffirmed its commitment to the discriminatory purpose requirement, but was badly divided on how to apply the …

Searching For The Intent Of The Framers Of Fourteenth Amendment , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

IN 1946 JUSTICE HUGO BLACK DECLARED that one of the objects of the fourteenth amendment was to apply the Bill of Rights to the States. He was confident that an analysis of the intent of the framers of the amendment would support his assertion. A few years later the Supreme Court requested such an investigation, but when the analysis was made and the results presented to it, the Supreme Court concluded that the framers' intent could not be determined. The uncertainty surrounding the intent of the framers of the fourteenth amendment has had profound implications on the application of that …

The Desegregation Opinion Revisited:Legal Or Sociological?, Morris D. Forkosch

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is the thesis of this article that the Supreme Court, regardless of its decision for or against the state laws, had the judicial ability and jurisdiction to render the opinion in the Desegregation Case of 1954. A distinction is drawn here between the judicial power to decide a case regardless of any attendant consequences, and the reasons given for that decision. When reasons which were supposedly valid seventy years ago are now rejected, there is nothing illogical in this rejection so long as the Court still adheres to the identical procedure used earlier; but when the substance within the …

Book Review, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

This review of "The Supreme Court on Trial" by Charles Hyneman, questions why the work’s tackling the age-old issues of the source of judicial review and its constitutionality is particularly novel or unique from other such examinations. Issue is also taken with Brown v. Board of Educaion's dominance of such discussion and the book’s poor treatment of the desegregation cases.

The Supreme Court And Racial Discrimination, George W. Spicer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The purpose of this essay is to consider the response of the Supreme Court of the United States to two general aspects of racial discrimination: first, discrimination as restrictive of political freedom and, second,discrimination as restrictive of the enjoyment of such social advantages as the acquisition and occupancy of real estate, transportation and education.

The Appointment Of Mr. Justice Harlan, Ellwood W. Lewis

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Rutledge And Civil Liberties, W. Howard Mann

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.