Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Cyberharassment And Workplace Law, Helen Norton

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No abstract provided.

My Coworker, My Enemy: Solidarity, Workplace Control, And The Class Politics Of Title Vii, Ahmed A. White

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No abstract provided.

Slides: “Human Sustainability” In Natural Resources Industries: The New Frontier In Compliance, Social Responsibility, Disclosure, And Transparency, T. Markus Funk

Natural Resource Industries and the Sustainability Challenge (Martz Winter Symposium, February 27-28)

Presenter: T. Markus Funk, Partner, Perkins Coie

21 slides

Missing The Forest For The Trees: Gender Pay Discrimination In Academia, Melissa Hart

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Women in virtually every job category still make less than men. Academia is no exception. This Article will explore some of the structural explanations for this continued disparity and the continued resistance to seriously confronting those structural barriers to equality. Using the still-unfolding story of a charge of discrimination filed against a university, this Article examines the script that has become all-too-familiar in discussions about the gender pay gap, whether in academia or elsewhere. The basic storyline in pay discrimination litigation is this: Evidence is presented about the existence of a gap between men's earnings and women's earnings. The response …

Internships As Invisible Labor, Melissa Hart

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No abstract provided.

Workers Disarmed: The Campaign Against Mass Picketing And The Dilemma Of Liberal Labor Rights, Ahmed A. White

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In the late 1930s and early 1940s, mass picketing, characterized by large numbers of workers congregating in common protest at or near their employers' establishments, emerged as a crucial weapon in a historic campaign by American workers to realize basic labor rights and build an enduring labor movement in the face of strident resistance from a powerful business community. So potent a weapon did mass picketing prove that these business interests, aided by allies at all levels of government, moved quickly to ban the tactic. From the real-world complexities of labor conflict, this coalition forged a simplistic, analytically dubious, but …

A Diamond In The Rough: Trans-Substantivity Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And Its Detrimental Impact On Civil Rights, Suzette Malveaux

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No abstract provided.

Inmates For Rent, Sovereignty For Sale: The Global Prison Market, Benjamin Levin

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In 2009, Belgium and the Netherlands announced a deal to send approximately 500 Belgian inmates to Dutch prisons, in exchange for an annual payment of £26 million. The arrangement was unprecedented, but justified as beneficial to both nations: Belgium had too many prisoners and not enough prisons, whereas the Netherlands had too many prisons and not enough prisoners. The deal has yet to be replicated, nor has it triggered sustained criticism or received significant scholarly treatment. This Article aims to fill this void by examining the exchange and its possible implications for a global market in prisoners and prison space. …

The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey

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This Article presents a hypothesis suggesting how and why the criminal justice response to domestic violence changed, over the course of the twentieth century, from sympathy for abused women and a surprising degree of state intervention in intimate relationships to the apathy and discrimination that the battered women' movement exposed. The riddle of declining public sympathy for female victims of intimate-partner violence can only be solved by looking beyond the criminal law to the social and legal changes that created the Exit Myth.

While the situation that gave rise to the battered women's movement in the 1970s is often presumed …

Bad Briefs, Bad Law, Bad Markets: Documenting The Poor Quality Of Plaintiffs' Briefs, Its Impact On The Law, And The Market Failure It Reflects, Scott A. Moss

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For a major field, employment discrimination suffers surprisingly low-quality plaintiffs' lawyering. This Article details a study of several hundred summary judgment briefs, finding as follows: (1) the vast majority of plaintiffs' briefs omit available caselaw rebutting key defense arguments, many falling far below basic professional standards with incoherent writing or no meaningful research; (2) low-quality briefs lose at over double the rate of good briefs; and (3) bad briefs skew caselaw evolution, because even controlling for win-loss rate, bad plaintiffs' briefs far more often yield decisions crediting debatable defenses. These findings are puzzling. In a major legal service market, how …

(In)Competence In Appellate And District Court Brief Writing On Rule 12 And 56 Motions, Scott A. Moss

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No abstract provided.

American Gangsters: Rico, Criminal Syndicates, And Conspiracy Law As Market Control, Benjamin Levin

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In an effort to reexamine legal and political decisions about criminalization and the role of the criminal law in shaping American markets and social institutions, this Article explores the ways in which criminal conspiracy laws in the United States have historically been used to subdue nonstate actors and informal markets that threatened the hegemony of the state and formal market. To this end, the Article focuses primarily on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) as illustrative of broader trends in twentieth-century criminal policy. Enacted in 1970, RICO provides criminal sanctions for individuals engaged in unacceptable organized activities and …

The Power And Promise Of Procedure: Examining The Class Action Landscape After Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Suzette M. Malveaux

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No abstract provided.

The Jury (Or More Accurately The Judge) Is Still Out For Civil Rights And Employment Cases Post-Iqbal, Suzette M. Malveaux

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No abstract provided.

Title Ix’S Protections For Transgender Student Athletes, Scott Skinner-Thompson, Ilona M. Turner

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This article examines legal authority and policy to determine whether transgender students in K-12 schools must be permitted to participate in athletics according to their gender identity, and without any requirement for medical intervention. The articles concludes that such a policy is consistent with legal authority under Title IX and Title VII and, more importantly, best advances the well-being of already vulnerable transgender youth by helping to incorporate and include such students in activities that are critical to physical, social, mental, emotional development, and health.

Part II of this article briefly details the history of Title IX with respect to …

Plausibility Pleading And Employment Discrimination, Suzette M. Malveaux

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No abstract provided.

Blue-Collar Crime: Conspiracy, Organized Labor, And The Anti-Union Civil Rico Claim, Benjamin Levin

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This Article provides an historically-rooted analysis of a recent spate of civil RICO complaints arising from labor union organizing campaigns. The Article historicizes contemporary civil RICO suits against labor unions by analogizing to nineteenth century conspiracy prosecutions of unions. In tracing this history of organized labor’s social standing, the Article addresses the cultural framing of the union and its place in political and cultural discourse over the past century. The civil RICO complaints have received limited scholarly attention mainly focusing on issues of federal preemption; this Article argues for a broad reading of the cases as a way to understand …

Made In The U.S.A.: Corporate Responsibility And Collective Identity In The American Automotive Industry, Benjamin Levin

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This Article challenges the corporate-constructed image of American business and industry. By focusing on the automotive industry and particularly on the tenuous relationship between the rhetoric of automotive industry advertising and doctrinal corporate law, this Article examines the ways that social and legal actors understand what it means for a corporation or its products to be American. In a global economy, what does it mean for a corporation to present the impression of national citizenship? Considering the recent bailout of American automotive corporations, the automotive industry today becomes a powerful vehicle for problematizing the conflicted public/private nature of the corporate …

Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit: Bureaucratic Politics In Federal Workplace Agencies Serving Undocumented Workers, Ming H. Chen

Publications

This Article integrates social science theory about immigrant incorporation and administrative agencies with empirical data about immigrant-serving federal workplace agencies to illuminate the role of bureaucracies in the construction of rights. More specifically, it contends that immigrants' rights can be protected when workplace agencies incorporate immigrants into labor law enforcement in accordance with the agencies' professional ethos and organizational mandates. Building on Miles' Law that "where you stand depends on where you sit," this Article argues that agencies exercise discretion in the face of contested law and in contravention to a political climate hostile to undocumented immigrants for the purpose …

The Second-Class Class Action: How Courts Thwart Wage Rights By Misapplying Class Action Rules, Scott A. Moss, Nantiya Ruan

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Courts apply to wage rights cases an aggressive scrutiny that not only disadvantages low-wage workers, but is fundamentally incorrect on the law. Rule 23 class actions automatically cover all potential members if the court grants plaintiffs' class certification motion. But for certain employment rights cases--mainly wage claims but also age discrimination and gender equal pay claims--29 U.S. C. § 216(b) allows not class actions but "collective actions" covering just those opting in affirmatively. Yet courts in collective actions assume a gatekeeper role just as they do in Rule 23 class actions, disallowing many actions by requiring a certification motion proving …

Civil Rights And Systemic Wrongs, Melissa Hart

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Systemic employment discrimination is a structural, social harm whose victims include not only those who can be specifically identified, but also many who cannot. Pattern and practice claims in employment litigation are an essential tool for challenging this structural harm. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes brushes aside the systemic nature of the plaintiffs' claims, making both theoretical and doctrinal mistakes in its application of the procedural and substantive law applicable in employment discrimination class action litigation. The most troubling part of the Court's opinion--its rejection of statistical modeling for remedial determinations--has received little attention. This article …

Class Actions At The Crossroads: An Answer To Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Suzette M. Malveaux

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The Supreme Court has recently decided to hear argument in the largest private-employer civil rights case in American history, Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. This historic case involves up to 1.5 million women suing Wal-Mart, one of the largest companies in the world, for alleged gender discrimination in pay and promotions, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like many employees who challenge companywide employment discrimination, the plaintiffs in Dukes brought their case as a class action pursuant to Rule 23(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and sought injunctive and declaratory relief, …

Clearing Civil Procedure Hurdles In The Quest For Justice, Suzette M. Malveaux

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No abstract provided.

How Goliath Won: The Future Implications Of Dukes V. Wal-Mart, Suzette M. Malveaux

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No abstract provided.

Excluding Unemployed Workers From Job Opportunities: Why Disparate Impact Protections Still Matter, Helen Norton

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No abstract provided.

Section 5 Constraints On Congress Through The Lens Of Article Iii And The Constitutionality Of The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Craig Konnoth

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The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that will (hopefully) soon prohibit discrimination against LGB, and ideally, T, individuals, allows state employees to sue states for this discrimination. Scholars and activists fear that these provisions will be struck down as violative of state sovereign immunity, using the Court's recent jurisprudence on Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. This jurisprudence requires Congress to put forth evidence of past state violations of a defined constitutional right before it can subject states to suit. This Congress has done.

However, this Comment suggests that a new requirement of Section 5 legislation is in the works. Key …

From Wards Cove To Ricci: Struggling Against The Built-In Headwinds Of A Skeptical Court, Melissa Hart

Publications

When the Supreme Court in 1971 first recognized disparate impact as a legal theory under Title VII, the Court explained that the "absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as ‘built-in headwinds’ for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability." Forty years later, it is the built-in headwinds of a Supreme Court skeptical of - perhaps even hostile to - the goals of disparate impact theory that pose the greatest challenge to continued movement toward workplace equality. The essay examines the troubled trajectory that disparate impact law has taken in the …

Yes, Labor Markets Are Flawed--But So Is The Economic Case For Mandating Employee Voice In Corporate Governance, Scott A. Moss

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No abstract provided.

Industrial Terrorism And The Unmaking Of New Deal Labor Law, Ahmed A. White

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The passage of the Wagner (National Labor Relations) Act of 1935 represented an unprecedented effort to guarantee American workers basic labor rights--the rights to organize unions, to provoke meaningful collective bargaining, and to strike. Previous attempts by workers and government administrators to realize these rights in the workplace met with extraordinary, often violent, resistance from powerful industrial employers, whose repressive measures were described by government officials as a system of "industrial terrorism." Although labor scholars have acknowledged these practices and paid some attention to the way they initially frustrated labor rights and influenced the jurisprudence and politics of labor relations …

Business-Like: The Supreme Court's 2009-2010 Labor And Employment Decisions, Melissa Hart

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The 2009-10 Term at the Supreme Court was a relatively quiet one for labor and employment law. While the Justices were in the news for decisions on corporate political donations and the Second Amendment, the Court’s work-related docket grabbed no headlines. In fact, though, the Court considered 7 work law cases this Term, in areas ranging from standards for arbitration agreements to employee privacy rights in new technology to time limitations for filing Title VII disparate impact claims. This article discusses the Court’s labor and employment cases for the Term. While they may not have made much news, several of …