Fourteenth Amendment Commons^™

Minority Preferences Reconsidered, Terrance Sandalow

Reviews

During the academic year 1965-66, at the height of the civil rights movement, the University of Michigan Law School faculty looked around and saw not a single African-American student. The absence of any black students was not, it should hardly need saying, attributable to a policy of purposeful exclusion. A black student graduated from the Law School as early as 1870, and in the intervening years a continuous flow of African-American students, though not a large number, had been admitted and graduated. Some went on to distinguished careers in the law.

Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court increasingly has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a mandate for the state to treat citizens as if they were equal-as a limitation on the state's ability to draw distinctions on the basis of characteristics such as race and, to a lesser extent, gender. In the context of race, the Court has struck down not only race-specific policies designed to harm the historically oppressed, but race conscious policies designed to foster racial equality. Although in theory the Court has left open the possibility that benign uses of race may be constitutional under some set of facts, in …

The Politics Of Race On The Electronic Highway: An Analysis Of The Video Dialtone Redlining Cases, And The Nynex Consent Decree In Roxbury, Madeleine Mercedes Plasencia

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

53 Years In The Struggle For Equal Rights: An African-American Jurist's Life In The Law (Equal Justice Under The Law: An Autobiography By Constance Baker Motley), Lancelot B. Hewitt

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Race As Resistance: Racial Identity As More Than Ancestral Heritage, Chris K. Iijima

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court, Sexual Citizenship And The Idea Of Progress, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

Is American Progressive Constitutionalism dead ... yet? I propose to seek the beginnings of an answer to this question in the pages of a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court. I do feel obliged to say this, not because I am committed to a court-centered adjudicative conception of American constitutionalism; to the contrary. But rather, because the decision on which I want to focus seems to me to offer a rich resource for critical reflection on the idea of self-government whose connections to Progressive Constitutionalism give us our topic this afternoon.

Caste, Class, And Equal Citizenship, William E. Forbath

Michigan Law Review

There is a familiar egalitarian constitutional tradition and another we have largely forgotten. The familiar one springs from Brown v. Board of Education; its roots lie in the Reconstruction era. Court-centered and countermajoritarian, it takes aim at caste and racial subordination. The forgotten one also originated with Reconstruction, but it was a majoritarian tradition, addressing its arguments to lawmakers and citizens, not to courts. Aimed against harsh class inequalities, it centered on decent work and livelihoods, social provision, and a measure of economic independence and democracy. Borrowing a phrase from its Progressive Era proponents, I will call it the social …

Equal Rights, Special Rights, And The Nature Of Antidiscrimination Law, Peter J. Rubin

Michigan Law Review

Despite the continued belief held by most Americans that certain characteristics should not form the basis for adverse decisions about individuals in employment, housing, public accommodations, and the provision of a wide range of governmental and private services and opportunities, antidiscrimination laws have increasingly come under attack on the ground that they provide members of the group against whom discrimination is forbidden with "special rights." The "special rights" objection has been voiced most strongly, but not exclusively, against laws that seek to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This line of attack has not always been effective, but …

Unconscious Racism And The Criminal Law, Sheri Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Accommodating Outness: Hurley, Free Speech, And Gay And Lesbian Equality, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this article I explore two important questions raised by the Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston decision. First, although the Supreme Court did not analyze the case under the Roberts framework, it suggested at the conclusion of the opinion that the case would have the same outcome under that test. The Court's dictum concerning the Roberts trilogy thus raises the question whether Hurley indicates that the Court might disturb the Roberts doctrine if presented with the opportunity. Second, the Hurley Court, in rejecting GLIB's claim, found that the parade organizers were not attempting to exclude …

Hopwood, Equal Protection, And Affirmative Action: Can Anyone's Ox Be Gored?, David J. Jannuzzi

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Voting Rights, Eric Lane

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection, Supreme Court, New York County: Walter V. City Of New York Police Department

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Women And The Promise Of Equal Citizenship, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

Anticipating the decision in United States v. Morrison (2000), holding that the civil rights remedy of the Violence Against Women Act was not a legitimate exercise of Congress's power to enforce the Equal Protection Clause, this article argues that the Act could be upheld as an exercise of Congress's authority under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress's authority under the Citizenship Clause is analogous to its authority under the "badges and incidents" doctrine of the Thirteenth Amendment, which allows Congress to provide protection from discriminatory violence. This theory would also guide interpretation of the act to focus on …

Subtracting Sexism From The Classroom: Law And Policy In The Debate Over All-Female Math And Science Classes In Public Schools, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

No abstract provided.

Diversity: The Red Herring Of Equal Protection, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

Couching the constitutional inquiry in cases like Bakke and VMI in the context of integration also puts in perspective the diversity justification. Affirmative action policies are constitutional because they integrate state programs. Integration on the basis of race and sex also diversifies state programs. In contrast, attempts to justify sex-segregation in state programs by arguing the policy promotes diversity is irrelevant to an equal protection analysis. Voluntarily created all-female schools should be constitutional because they promote the equal citizenship of women without damaging the equal citizenship stature of men. This is true for voluntarily race-segregated programs for minorities; as well. …

Reflections On Constitutional Interpretation, Raoul Berger

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Punishing Bias: An Examination Of The Theoretical Foundations Of Bias Crime Statutes, Anthony M. Dillof

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Race, Redistricting And A Republican Poll Tax: The Supreme Court's Voting Rights Decisions Of The 1995-96 Term, Frank Parker

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

United States, Puerto Rico, And The Territorial Incorporation Doctrine: Reaching A Century Of Constitutional Authoritarianism, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 55 (1997), Gabriel A. Terrasa

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brown V. State Of New York: Judge Simons Says New York State Can Be Held Liable For Money Damages, Eric J. Stockel

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection Held Hostage: Ransoming The Constitutionality Of The Hostage Taking Act, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

This Article contends that, following the Supreme Court's lead in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña and City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Centers, Inc., the continuing maltreatment of noncitizens in this country requires that federal alienage classifications be reviewed with the same strict, or at least heightened rational basis, scrutiny applied to state legislation.

Part II of this Article describes the 1979 Hostage Taking Convention and sets forth some of its provisions in an effort to better understand the impetus for the HTA. Part III examines the legislative history of the HTA and briefly describes the Yunis case as …

Congruence Principle Applied: Rethinking Equal Protection Review Of Federal Alienage Classifications After Adanrand Constructors, Inc. V. Peña, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

This article suggests that the Supreme Court's 1995 decision in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña constitutes a starting point for a renewed dialogue on the intersection of race, noncitizens' rights, and immigration law.

Part I of this Article examines the historical foundations of the plenary power doctrine up to the current dichotomy between judicial review of state and federal alienage classifications under equal protection. Part II reviews the Adarand decision, arguing that Justice O'Connor's congruence principle provides the bulwark for a revision of judicial review of federal legislation, especially in light of the historical and continuing perception of Asian- and …

The Constitution And Racial Preference In Law School Admissions, Robert A. Sedler

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Abolitionist Feminism, Moral Slavery, And The Constitution: “On The Same Platform Of Human Rights”, David A.J. Richards

Cardozo Law Review

The analogy between race and gender plays an increasingly important role in the interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, interpretive arguments about the analogy make little or no reference to the abolitionist historical background of the Reconstruction Amendments in general and the Fourteenth Amendment in particular. This might make some sense if the only legitimate interpretive appeal to history were Raoul Berger's version of originalism, namely, the specific denoted things (including persons and practices) to which the relevant drafters and ratifiers of the pertinent constitutional text would or would not have applied the language in …

Attainder And Amendment 2: Romer's Rightness, Akhil Reed Amar

Michigan Law Review

Call me silly. In fact, call me terminally silly. For despite Justice Scalia's remarkably confident claim, I believe, and shall try to prove below, that the Romer Court majority opinion invalidating Colorado's Amendment 2 was right both in form and in substance, both logically and sociologically. I stress "form" and "logic" at the outset because I share Justice Scalia's belief in the importance of these things in constitutional adjudication. I also share his commitment to constitutional text, history, and structure, and his suspicion of "free-form" constitutionalism. And so I shall highlight the text, history, and spirit of a constitutional clause …

Is Amendment 2 Really A Bill Of Attainder? Some Questions About Professor Amar's Analysis Of Romer, Roderick M. Hills Jr.

Michigan Law Review

As I first discovered as a law student in Professor Amar's classes on legal history and federal courts, it is generally an intellectual treat to listen to Professor Amar's legal analysis, even when he is attacking one's own arguments. So my pleasure at reading Professor Amar's analysis of the Court's decision in Romer v. Evans was only partly dampened by his disapproval of the respondents' brief that I and other plaintiffs' counsel filed with the Court. According to Amar, this respondents' brief provided the Court with "so little help" that it had to rely on an entirely different and much …

The Fifteenth Amendment And "Political Rights", Akhil Reed Amar

Cardozo Law Review

Professor Xi Wang has offered us an altogether exemplary paper on black suffrage. Rather than trying to criticize it, I shall attempt to extend it by picking up where he left off. My main text is the Fifteenth Amendment. I would like to suggest that the best interpretation of the Fifteenth Amendment would read it as encompassing a cluster of political rights; the Amendment protects not only the right to vote, but also the right to hold office, the right to be voted for, the right to vote in a legislature, the right to serve on a jury, and even …

Black Suffrage And The Redefinition Of American Freedom, 1860-1870, Xi Wang

Cardozo Law Review

One of the most important outcomes of the Civil War was the establishment of a new constitutional order. Under this new order, African Americans, a people whose essential human rights had been denied under the old constitutional order, were constitutionally emancipated from slavery and recognized as American citizens. They received the privileges and immunities that white Americans had automatically assumed. Male black Americans also received the right to vote. This new order, as embraced by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, was a truly remarkable achievement of Reconstruction. What is additionally significant is that these Amendments became …

Are The Similarities Between A Woman's Right To Choose An Abortion And The Alleged Right To Assisted Suicide Really Compelling?, Marc Spindelman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, Marc Spindelman examines the relationship between abortion and assisted suicide. He begins his discussion with the constitutional framework within which courts should consider the assertion that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects an individual's decision to commit assisted suicide. The Author then considers and, based on relevant Supreme Court doctrine, rejects the conception of personal autonomy that undergirds the claimed constitutional right to assisted suicide. Finally, the Author points out some legal and cultural distinctions between abortion and assisted suicide, arguing that these distinctions offer courts good reasons for holding that the Fourteenth Amendment's …