Law and Gender Commons^™

Why Corporate Boards Should Include Lgbtq+ People, Jeremy Mcclane, Darren Rosenblum

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate boardrooms sit at the heart of most of society’s most consequential decisions but fall far short of the diversity of our society. The current movement toward board diversification aims to remedy the underrepresentation of marginalized groups on corporate boards. More recently, some efforts have included LGBTQ+ people, even though the basis for their inclusion on corporate boards remains largely unstated. This Article examines both the normative and instrumental bases for LGBTQ+ inclusion in board diversity initiatives, articulating unspoken assumptions and linking LGBTQ+ people to the broader inclusion effort. In so doing, it begins to surface the unique issues LGBTQ+ …

Sex Trait Discrimination: Intersex People And Title Vii After Bostock V. Clayton County, Sam Parry

Washington Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from workplace discrimination and harassment on account of sex. Courts have historically failed to extend Title VII protections to LGBTQ+ people. However, in 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County changed this. Bostock explicitly extended Title VII’s protections against workplace discrimination to “homosexual” and “transgender” people, reasoning that it is impossible to discriminate against an employee for being gay or transgender without taking the employee’s sex into account. While Bostock is a win for LGBTQ+ rights, the opinion leaves several questions unanswered. The reasoning in …

Carrie Menkel-Meadow: Dispute Resolution In A Feminist Voice, Andrea K. Schneider

Articles

The presence of women in the law has changed the law’s substance, practice, and process. Carrie Menkel-Meadow, whose scholarship centers on this theme, is one such revolutionary woman.

Professor Menkel-Meadow, who I am proud to call my colleague, co-author, and friend (hereinafter referred to as Carrie), began her career in 1977 with a series of simple questions that sparked a breathtaking body of work. Carrie probed the depth of male domination in the realm of law and wondered what changes female representation might engender. In particular, she focused her inquiry on the value orientation each respective gender might bring to …

Taking Courthouse Discrimination Seriously: The Role Of Judges As Ethical Leaders, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

Sexual misconduct allegations against Alex Kozinski, a once powerful judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit, spotlighted concerns related to sexual harassment in the judiciary. Following news reports related to the alleged misconduct, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. charged a working group with examining safeguards to deal with inappropriate conduct in the judicial workplace. Based on recommendations made in the Report of the Federal Judiciary Workplace Conduct Working Group, the Judicial Conference approved a number of reforms and improvements related to workplace conduct in the federal judiciary. The reforms included revising the Code of …

Appointing And Training Judges In Egypt And Comparative Systems, Moataz Muhammad Al-Saghir Aidaros

Theses and Dissertations

The topic of the paper is very important, as it comes up at a time when the Egyptians have come to a point that reforming Egypt’s justice system is a hopeless case. This is due to the outdated and inefficient way of thinking and performing in the judiciary. Thus the goal of this paper is to make an intellectual contribution to a sustainable reform program of the Egyptian judiciary and namely the systems of judicial appointment and judicial training using their roles as agents of progress and development. This aspiring research argues that the Higher Council of Judicial Entities and …

Three Observations About Justice Alito's Draft Opinion In Dobbs - Commentary, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "There is much to say about Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which was leaked from the United States Supreme Court on May 2 [2022].

Obviously, the most significant direct consequence of the proposed decision, which overrules Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) while upholding the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that outlaws most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, would be the restriction or elimination of abortion services throughout much of the nation. This will have all sorts of attendant consequences, large and smaller, many of which …

Bridges Of Law, Ideology, And Commitment, Steven L. Winter

Touro Law Review

Law has a distinctive temporal structure—an ontology—that defines it as a social institution. Law knits together past, present, purpose, and projected future into a demand for action. Robert Cover captures this dynamic in his metaphor of law as a bridge to an imagined future. Law’s orientation to the future necessarily poses the question of commitment or complicity. For law can shape the future only when people act to make it real. Cover’s bridge metaphor provides a lens through which to explore the complexities of law’s ontology and the pathologies that arise from its neglect or misuse. A bridge carries us …

Revitalizing The Ban On Conversion Therapy: An Affirmation Of The Constitutionality Of Conversion Therapy Bans, Logan Kline

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Two Types Of Empirical Textualism, Kevin Tobia, John Mikhail

Brooklyn Law Review

Modern textualist and originalist theories increasingly center interpretation around the “ordinary” or “public” meaning of legal texts. This approach is premised on the promotion of values like publicity, fair notice, and democratic legitimacy. As such, ordinary meaning is typically understood as a question about how members of the general public understand the text—an empirical question with an objective answer. This essay explores the role of empirical methods, particularly experimental survey methods, in these ordinary meaning inquiries. The essay expresses optimism about new insight that empirical methods can bring, but it also cautions against the view that these methods will deliver …

Modernizing Discrimination Law: The Adoption Of An Intersectional Lens, Marisa K. Sanchez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

What Telling Of A Survivor's Story Will Finally Force A Remedy? Notes On A Silencing By Lacy Crawford And Is Rape A Crime? A Memoir, An Investigation, And A Manifesto By Michelle Bowdler, Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Time To Panic! The Need For State Laws Mandating Panic Buttons And Anti-Sexual Harassment Policies To Protect Vulnerable Employees In The Hotel Industry, Kristy D'Angelo-Corker

Seattle University Law Review

One only has to turn on the television or read the newspaper to see news story after news story reporting instances of women facing harassment, discrimination, or assault while at work. The “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” campaigns have brought many of these issues to the forefront and have shown that women are fighting to be respected and demanding equal treatment. Although this fight for equal protection is ongoing, many women, such as those in lower-paying service industries, are still unable to protect themselves from sexual harassment, discrimination, and assault, as they do not have the support or power to …

Introductory Remarks, Michael Rogers, Hannah Hamley, Rayshaun D. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Introductory Remarks.

Marissa Jackson Sow’S “Whiteness As Contract”, Marissa Jackson Sow

Seattle University Law Review

Marissa Jackson Sow’s “Whiteness as Contract.”

Closing Remarks, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

Closing Remarks.

Foreword, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Foreword.

The Deans' Roundtable, Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean Danielle Conway, Dean Tamara Lawson, Dean Mario Barnes, Dean L. Song Richardson

Seattle University Law Review

The Deans' Roundtable.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Women’S Votes, Women’S Voices, And The Limits Of Criminal Justice Reform, 1911–1950, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

Deriving its vigor from the work of grassroots organizations at the state and local levels, the League of Women Voters (LWV) sought, in the first half of the twentieth century, to provide newly enfranchised women with a political education to strengthen their voice in public affairs. Local branches like the San Francisco Center learned from experience—through practical involvement in a variety of social welfare and criminal justice initiatives. This Article, written for a symposium commemorating the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, assesses the role of LWV leaders in California and especially San Francisco in reforming three aspects of the criminal …

Abortion Rights In The Supreme Court: A Tale Of Three Wedges, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

No abstract provided.

Dissenting From The Bench, Christine M. Venter

Journal Articles

This paper examines the oral dissents of Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg from the year 2000 to the times of their respective deaths. It explores the concept and purpose of oral dissent and details the kinds of cases in which each justice was more likely to orally dissent. The paper analyzes the kinds of rhetoric that each justice used to refer to their subject matter, and argues that Scalia's rhetoric evinces a view of the law as "autonomous", operating independently of the facts of the case. In contrast, Ginsburg's view espouses a view of the law as responsive …

It's About Bloody Time And Space, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

Time frames relationships of power, especially in the context of law. One of the clearest ways in which time is implicated in both law and society is via discourses about women’s biological functions. This Article is an introduction to a larger project that analyzes legal discourses regarding a crucial aspect of women’s calendrically-associated biological functions: women’s menstrual periods. Over the course of the project, I explore legal discourses about menstruation through the notion of what literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin calls “chronotopes”—a connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships. Temporality, Bakhtin argues, is closely associated with certain paradigmatic spaces, and the combination …

Dispute Settlement Under The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement: A Preliminary Assessment, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) will add a new dispute settlement system to the plethora of judicial mechanisms designed to resolve trade disputes in Africa. Against the discontent of Member States and limited impact the existing highly legalized trade dispute settlement mechanisms have had on regional economic integration in Africa, this paper undertakes a preliminary assessment of the AfCFTA Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM). In particular, the paper situates the AfCFTA-DSM in the overall discontent and unsupportive practices of African States with highly legalized dispute settlement systems and similar WTO-Styled DSMs among other shortcomings. Notwithstanding the transplantation of …

Court-Packing In 2021: Pathways To Democratic Legitimacy, Richard Mailey

Seattle University Law Review

This Article asks whether the openness to court-packing expressed by a number of Democratic presidential candidates (e.g., Pete Buttigieg) is democratically defensible. More specifically, it asks whether it is possible to break the apparent link between demagogic populism and court-packing, and it examines three possible ways of doing this via Bruce Ackerman’s dualist theory of constitutional moments—a theory which offers the possibility of legitimating problematic pathways to constitutional change on democratic but non-populist grounds. In the end, the Article suggests that an Ackermanian perspective offers just one, extremely limited pathway to democratically legitimate court-packing in 2021: namely, where a Democratic …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Dirty Johns: Prosecuting Prostituted Women In Pennsylvania And The Need For Reform, Mckay Lewis

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Prostitution is as old as human civilization itself. Throughout history, public attitudes toward prostituted women have varied greatly. But adverse consequences of the practice—usually imposed by men purchasing sexual services—have continuously been present. Prostituted women have regularly been subject to violence, discrimination, and indifference from their clients, the general public, and even law enforcement and judicial officers.

Jurisdictions can choose to adopt one of three general approaches to prostitution regulation: (1) criminalization; (2) legalization/ decriminalization; or (3) a hybrid approach known as the Nordic Model. Criminalization regimes are regularly associated with disparate treatment between prostituted women and their clients, high …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Gender And Judicial Decision-Making, Alexandra Just

Undergraduate Theses

This study employs a unique two-tiered approach, involving both quantitative and qualitative methodology to analyze the influences – specifically, a judge’s gender – on the judicial decision-making process. First, a quantitative bivariate regression analysis was conducted to determine whether a Federal District Court judge’s gender had a statistically significant influence on the ideological direction of case outcomes (which is either liberal, meaning the decision was in favor of the petitioner, or conservative, meaning the decision was against the petitioner). Data was analyzed using the statistical program SPSS and was pulled from the 2016 Carp-Manning database, which contains over 110,000 federal …

(Un)Common Law And The Female Body, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

A dissonance frequently exists between explicit feminist approaches to law and the realities of a common law system that has often ignored and even at times exacerbated women’s legal disabilities. In The Common Law Inside the Female Body, Anita Bernstein mounts a challenge to this story of division. There is, and has long been, she asserts, a substantial interrelation between the common law and feminist jurisprudential approaches to law. But Bernstein’s central argument, far from disrupting broad understandings of the common law, is in keeping with a claim that other legal scholars have long asserted: decisions according to precedent, …

Dehumanization 'Because Of Sex': The Multiaxial Approach To The Title Vii Rights Of Sexual Minorities, Shirley Lin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Although Title VII prohibits discrimination against any employee “because of such individual’s . . . sex,” legal commentators have not yet accurately appraised Title VII’s trait and causation requirements embodied in that phrase. Since 2015, most courts assessing the sex discrimination claims of LGBT employees began to intentionally analyze “sex” as a trait using social-construction evidence, and evaluated separately whether the discriminatory motive caused the workplace harm. Responding to what this Article terms a “doctrinal correction” to causation within this groundswell of decisions, the Supreme Court recently issued an “expansive” and “sweeping” reformulation of but-for causation in Bostock v. Clayton …