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Synopsis Of The Report Of The Second Circuit Task Force On Gender, Racial And Ethnic Fairness In The Courts, Jay C. Carlisle

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The recent Report of the Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts (‘Taskforce‘) observes “some biased conduct toward parties and witnesses based on gender or race or ethnicity has occurred on the part of both judges and lawyers.” “Biased conduct toward lawyers based on gender or race or ethnicity, has occurred to a greater degree.” The Report concludes that such conduct is unacceptable and admonishes all participants in the Second Circuit courts to guard against it. The purpose of this Perspective is to review several sections of the Report. The Perspective is written from …

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 …

Splitting The Atom Or Splitting Hairs - The Hate Crimes Prevention Act Of 1999 Note., Andrew M. Gilbert, Eric D. Marchand

St. Mary's Law Journal

Problems of bias-motivated violence plague our nation and threaten to erase the progress made during the civil rights era. Recent statistical surveys conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) indicate the number of hate crimes has generally increased over the past few years. In 1996, over 11,000 individuals were victims of hate crimes—five percent more than reported the previous year. Hate crimes are not only injurious to the individual victim, but also fracture surrounding communities and create disharmony among citizens. As a result, some states implemented legislation in the 1980s to deter hate-motived crimes and a few states have …

The Joke In Critical Race Theory: De Gustibus Disputandum Est?, Dan Subotnik

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Same-Sex Harassment - The Next Step Up In The Evolution Of Sexual Harassment Law Under Title Vii Comment., Regina L. Stone-Harris

St. Mary's Law Journal

Women sexually harassed by male co-workers are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Yet, men are not protected because the federal courts in the Fifth Circuit do not protect men who are sexually harassed by other men. Male victims of sexual harassment are protected if they live in another district which does offer Title VII protection to same-sex victims. But should geography dictate protection? The federal courts are currently split as to whether a claim of sexual harassment between members of the same gender is actionable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In the absence …

Introduction: O.J. Simpson And The Criminal Justice System On Trial, Christopher B. Mueller

Publications

No abstract provided.

Idealism And The Individual Woman: Reading Bessie Head's A Question Of Power, Paul J. Heald

Scholarly Works

In A Question of Power, South African exile Bessie Head graphically illustrates the relevance of gender difference to religion, political philosophy, and human rights. At first glance, the novel is a startling interior view of the psychosis that can result from constant alienation. The madness so painfully described, however, is portrayed as specific to women. And the road from madness -- the rejection of idealism, the rejection of universalism, and the rejection of power -- carries an important message to those seeking to understand the various feminist perspectives on human rights and spirituality. In Head's view, the recognition of …

First And Last Chance: Looking For Lesbians In California's Fifties Bar Cases, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

Do all of us who choose members of our own sex as objects of desire and as sexual partners share some meaningful common identity, such as “homosexual,” “gay” or perhaps “queer”? The classifications “homosexual” and “gay” claim for themselves just that kind of inclusiveness; that is, that the gay world includes people of all races, all classes and any possible gender identity. You, me, James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, J. Edgar Hoover: we are all gay together. In this way “homosexual” or “gay” is a generic term, like, for example, “human being.” But we know that the alleged inclusiveness masks just …

Girls And The Getaway: Cars, Culture, And The Predicament Of Gendered Space, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

What does law tell us about our relations to material things? Property theorists maintain that there are no legal relations between persons and things. Things can be owned, transferred, bequeathed, assigned, repossessed, and so on, but such arrangements really describe relationships among different persons with regard to the object rather than relationships between persons and things.

Yet the quality or shape of the legal relations among persons often depends on the cultural meaning of the thing in question, a meaning (or meanings) that exists, in some form anyway, prior to or independent of, legal concepts traditionally attached to things such …

Deciding To Kill: Revealing The Gender In The Task Handed To Capital Jurors, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

Day after day, across this country, ordinary people are summoned to court for a selection process that ultimately leaves them in a room deciding, with other jurors, whether a criminal defendant should be killed. The task handed to these jurors is an awesome, personal, moral decision, encased within the complex legal standards and procedures that constitute modern capital jurisprudence. The doctrine that created and sustains this moment of conscience reflects an ongoing struggle of rule against uncertainty, reason against emotion, justice against mercy, and thus, at one level, male against female. Capital jurisprudence -- the law for deciding whether to …