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Articles 181 - 210 of 836

Full-Text Articles in Supreme Court of the United States

Interpretation And Institutions, Cass R. Sunstein, Adrian Vermeule Feb 2003

Interpretation And Institutions, Cass R. Sunstein, Adrian Vermeule

Michigan Law Review

Suppose that a statute, enacted several decades ago, bans the introduction of any color additive in food if that additive "causes cancer" in human beings or animals. Suppose that new technologies, able to detect low-level carcinogens, have shown that many potential additives cause cancer, even though the statistical risk is often tiny - akin to the risk of eating two peanuts with governmentally-permitted levels of aflatoxins. Suppose, finally, that a company seeks to introduce a certain color additive into food, acknowledging that the additive causes cancer, but urging that the risk is infinitesimal, and that if the statutory barrier were …

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Reply: The Institutional Dimension Of Statutory And Constitutional Interpretation, Richard A. Posner Feb 2003

Reply: The Institutional Dimension Of Statutory And Constitutional Interpretation, Richard A. Posner

Michigan Law Review

Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue in Interpretation and lnstitutions that judicial interpretation of statutes and constitutions should take account both of the institutional framework within which interpretation takes place and of the consequences of different styles of interpretation; they further argue that this point has been neglected by previous scholars. The first half of the thesis is correct but obvious; the second half, which the authors state in terms emphatic to the point of being immodest, is incorrect. Moreover, the authors offer no feasible suggestions for how the relation between interpretation and the institutional framework might be studied better …

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Section Five Overbreadth: The Facial Approach To Adjudicating Challenges Under Section Five Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Catherine Carroll Feb 2003

Section Five Overbreadth: The Facial Approach To Adjudicating Challenges Under Section Five Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Catherine Carroll

Michigan Law Review

In February 1996, the New York State Department of Transportation fired Joseph Kilcullen from his position as a snowplow driver in the Department's Highway Maintenance training program. Alleging that the state discharged him because of his epilepsy and learning disability, Kilcullen sued his former employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), which abrogated states' sovereign immunity and permitted private suits for damages against states in a federal court. Kilcullen asserted only that he was not treated the same as similarly situated non-disabled employees; his claim did not implicate the ADA's requirement that employers provide "reasonable accommodation" to disabled employees. …

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Resolving The Title Vii Partner-Employee Debate, Kristin Nicole Johnson Feb 2003

Resolving The Title Vii Partner-Employee Debate, Kristin Nicole Johnson

Michigan Law Review

In January of 2001, a New York court issued an order affirming a plaintiff's ability to bring suit against a law firm partnership for discriminatory acts that occurred during her tenure as an associate at the firm. The plaintiff, Stacy Ballen-Stier, joined Hahn & Hessen, L.L.P. as an associate and, on January 1, 1997, the firm invited her to join the partnership. According to Ms. Ballen-Stier's complaint, the words and actions of a fellow partner, Mr. Blejwas, created a hostile and abusive work environment and continued to plague her "even when [she] was away from the office." Ms. Ballen-Stier alleged …

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An Assignment By Any Other Name: Contingent-Fee Agreements As Partial Assignments Of The Claim, Andrew P. Lycans Feb 2003

An Assignment By Any Other Name: Contingent-Fee Agreements As Partial Assignments Of The Claim, Andrew P. Lycans

Michigan Law Review

In 1959, Mrs. Ethel West Cotnam of Alabama won a groundbreaking lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed her to subtract her legal fees, paid to her lawyer on a contingency basis, from her gross income. Mrs. Cotnam sued the estate of her former employer when the administrator refused to honor the decedent's promise to pay her one-fifth of his estate if she would care for him for the rest of his life. Upon the successful disposition of this suit, the Supreme Court of Alabama awarded Mrs. Cotnam $120,000. Of that amount, $50,365.83 …

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Road Work: Racial Profiling And Drug Interdiction On The Highway, Samuel R. Gross, Katherine Y. Barnes Dec 2002

Road Work: Racial Profiling And Drug Interdiction On The Highway, Samuel R. Gross, Katherine Y. Barnes

Michigan Law Review

Hypocrisy about race is hardly new in America, but the content changes. Recently the spotlight has been on racial profiling. The story of Colonel Carl Williams of the New Jersey State Police is a wellknown example. On Sunday, February 28, 1999, the Newark Star Ledger published a lengthy interview with Williams in which he talked about race and drugs: "Today . . . the drug problem is cocaine or marijuana. It is most likely a minority group that's involved with that. " Williams condemned racial profiling - "As far as racial profiling is concerned, that is absolutely not right. It …

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What Is And Is Not Pathological In Criminal Law, Kyron Huigens Dec 2002

What Is And Is Not Pathological In Criminal Law, Kyron Huigens

Michigan Law Review

In a recent article in this law review, William J. Stuntz argues that criminal law in the United States suffers from a political pathology. The incentives of legislators are such that the notorious overcriminalization of American society is deep as well as broad. That is, not only are remote corners of life subject to criminal penalties - such things as tearing tags off mattresses and overworking animals - but now crimes are defined with the express design of easing the way to conviction. Is proof of a tangible harm an obstacle to using wire and mail fraud statutes to prosecute …

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Safe, But Not Sound: Limiting Safe Harbor Immunity For Health And Disability Insurers And Self-Insured Employers Under The Americans With Disabilities Act, Rachel Schneller Ziegler Dec 2002

Safe, But Not Sound: Limiting Safe Harbor Immunity For Health And Disability Insurers And Self-Insured Employers Under The Americans With Disabilities Act, Rachel Schneller Ziegler

Michigan Law Review

When Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") on July 26, 1990, supporters heralded the Act as a full-scale victory for the 43 million disabled Americans. The Act's protections went far beyond those of its predecessor, the Rehabilitation Act of 1974, which only prohibited discrimination against individuals with disabilities by entities receiving federal funding. The new act was intended to prevent discrimination by private and public employers, public services, and public accommodations. In a bill signing ceremony at the White House, in front of more than two thousand advocates for the disabled, then President George Bush likened the ADA …

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Reply: Criminal Law's Pathology, William J. Stuntz Dec 2002

Reply: Criminal Law's Pathology, William J. Stuntz

Michigan Law Review

I thank Kyron Huigens for devoting his time and his considerable talent to responding to my article, The Pathological Politics of Criminal Law. I also thank editors of the Michigan Law Review for giving me the opportunity to reply. It is best to begin by defining the contested territory. Huigens and I agree (I think) on three propositions. First, American criminal law, both federal and state, is very broad; it covers a great deal more conduct than most people would expect. Second, American criminal law is very deep: that which it criminalizes, it criminalizes repeatedly, so that a single …

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The Principle And Practice Of Women's "Full Citizenship": A Case Study Of Sex-Segregated Public Education, Jill Elaine Hasday Dec 2002

The Principle And Practice Of Women's "Full Citizenship": A Case Study Of Sex-Segregated Public Education, Jill Elaine Hasday

Michigan Law Review

For more than a quarter century, the Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that sex-based state action is subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. But the Court has always been much less clear about what that standard allows and what it prohibits. For this reason, it is especially noteworthy that one of the Court's most recent sex discrimination opinions, United States v. Virginia, purports to provide more coherent guidance. Virginia suggests that the constitutionality of sex-based state action turns on whether the practice at issue denies women "full citizenship stature" or "create[s) or perpetuate[s) the legal, social, …

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Copyright And Time: A Proposal, Joseph P. Liu Nov 2002

Copyright And Time: A Proposal, Joseph P. Liu

Michigan Law Review

This Article makes a very specific and concrete proposal: it argues that courts should adjust the scope of copyright protection to account for the passage of time by expressly considering time as a factor in fair use analysis. More specifically, this Article argues that the older a copyrighted work is, the greater the scope of fair use should be - that is, the greater the ability of others to re-use, critique, transform, and adapt the copyrighted work without permission of the copyright owner. Conversely, the newer the work, the narrower the scope of fair use. Or, even more concretely, this …

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Towards Tribal Sovereignty And Judicial Efficiency: Ordering The Defenses Of Tribal Sovereign Immunity And Exhaustion Of Tribal Remedies, Kirsten Matoy Carlson Nov 2002

Towards Tribal Sovereignty And Judicial Efficiency: Ordering The Defenses Of Tribal Sovereign Immunity And Exhaustion Of Tribal Remedies, Kirsten Matoy Carlson

Michigan Law Review

In 1985, the Narragansett Indian Tribe ("Tribe") created the Narragansett Indian Wetuornuck Housing Authority ("Authority"). The Authority, which acts on the Tribe's behalf in its housing development and operations, entered into a contract with the Ninigret Development Corporation for the construction of a low-income housing development. After construction began, disputes developed over how to proceed with the construction. When conciliation efforts failed, the Authority cancelled the contract. The Narragansett Tribal Council, the governing body of the Tribe, followed the forum selection clause in the contract and notified the disputants that it would hold a hearing to resolve the dispute. Ninigret …

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Medicaid And The Unconstitutional Dimensions Of Prior Authorization, Jagan Nicholas Ranjan Nov 2002

Medicaid And The Unconstitutional Dimensions Of Prior Authorization, Jagan Nicholas Ranjan

Michigan Law Review

The political outcry over prescription drug costs has been one of the most vociferous in recent memory. From tales depicting renegade seniors sneaking cheap prescriptions of Vioxx out of Tijuana across the border, to the promises of reduced prices made by front-runners during the 2000 Presidential election, the calls for lower drug prices have been forceful and demanding. This war for lower-priced pharmaceuticals fought by consumers, interest groups and politicians against the pharmaceutical industry itself has recently developed yet another front. The latest battle is over Medicaid. The new victims are the poor. Presently, federal statutory provisions in the Medicaid …

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The Fable Of Entry: Bounded Rationality, Market Discipline, And Legal Policy, Avishalom Tor Nov 2002

The Fable Of Entry: Bounded Rationality, Market Discipline, And Legal Policy, Avishalom Tor

Michigan Law Review

Legal scholars have recently advanced a behavioral approach to the law and economics school of thought in an attempt to improve its external validity and predictive power. The hallmark of this new approach is the replacement of the perfectly rational actor with a "boundedly rational" decisionmaker who, apart from being affected by emotion and motivation, has only limited cognitive resources. To function effectively in a complex :world, boundedly rational individuals must rely on cognitive heuristics - simplifying mental shortcuts - that inevitably lead people to make some systematic decision errors; as a result, their behavior necessarily deviates from that predicted …

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Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky Oct 2002

Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

Michigan Law Review

In 1543, the Polish astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus, determined the heliocentric design of the solar system. Copernicus was motivated in large part by the conviction that Claudius Ptolemy's geocentric astronomical model, which dominated scientific thought at that time, was too incoherent, complex, and convoluted to be true. Hence, Copernicus made a point of making his model coherent, simple, and elegant. Nearly three and a half centuries later, at the height of the impressionist movement, the French painter Claude Monet set out to depict the Ruen Cathedral in a series of twenty paintings, each presenting the cathedral in a different light. Monet's …

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The Case Against Employment Tester Standing Under Title Vii And 42 U.S.C. § 1981, Michael Bowling Oct 2002

The Case Against Employment Tester Standing Under Title Vii And 42 U.S.C. § 1981, Michael Bowling

Michigan Law Review

In 1964, Congress passed comprehensive legislation aimed at eradicating discrimination in employment, public accommodations, public facilities, public schools, and federal benefit programs. Title VII of this Act directed its aim specifically at stamping out prejudice in employment. Four years later, the Supreme Court resurrected the provisions of § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which, among other things, protects citizens, regardless of race or color, in their right to "make and enforce [employment] contracts." Together, Title VII and § 1981 serve as the primary legal bases for challenging racially discriminatory actioris by private employers. More than thirty years …

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Suspecting The States: Supreme Court Review Of State-Court State-Law Judgments, Laura S. Fitzgerald Oct 2002

Suspecting The States: Supreme Court Review Of State-Court State-Law Judgments, Laura S. Fitzgerald

Michigan Law Review

At the Supreme Court these days, it is unfashionable to second-guess states' fealty to federal law without real proof that they are ignoring it. As the Court declared in Alden v. Maine: "We are unwilling to assume the States will refuse to honor the Constitution or obey the binding laws of the United States. The good faith of the States thus provides an important assurance that 'this Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land.'" Accordingly, without proof that a state has "systematic[ally]" …

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The Fourth Amendment In The Hallway: Do Tenants Have A Constitutionally Protected Privacy Interest In The Locked Common Areas Of Their Apartment Buildings?, Sean M. Lewis Oct 2002

The Fourth Amendment In The Hallway: Do Tenants Have A Constitutionally Protected Privacy Interest In The Locked Common Areas Of Their Apartment Buildings?, Sean M. Lewis

Michigan Law Review

One afternoon, a police officer spots a man driving a Cadillac through a run·down neighborhood. His interest piqued, the officer decides to follow the vehicle. The Cadillac soon comes to rest in front of an apartment building, and the driver, Jimmy Barrios-Moriera, removes a shopping bag from the trunk and enters the building. The moment Barrios-Moriera disappears within the doorway, the officer sprints after him because he knows that the door to the apartment building will automatically lock when it closes. He manages to catch the door just in time and rushes in. Barrios-Moriera is already halfway up a flight …

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No Longer Safe At Home: Preventing The Misuse Of Federal Common Law Of Foreign Relations As A Defense Tactic In Private Transnational Litigation, Lumen N. Mulligan Aug 2002

No Longer Safe At Home: Preventing The Misuse Of Federal Common Law Of Foreign Relations As A Defense Tactic In Private Transnational Litigation, Lumen N. Mulligan

Michigan Law Review

In an increasingly common litigation strategy, plaintiffs in Patrickson v. Dole Food Company, laborers in the banana industries of Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala and Panama, brought a classaction suit in Hawaii state court against Dole Food and other defendants. Plaintiffs brought only state law causes of action, alleging that they had been harmed by Dole Food's use of DBCP, a toxic pesticide banned from use in the United States. Dole Food removed the case to federal district court seeking the procedural advantages of a federal forum, as corporate defendants facing alien tort plaintiffs seeking redress for overseas conduct invariably do. …

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Some Effects Of Identity-Based Social Movements On Constitutional Law In The Twentieth Century, William N. Eskridge Jr. Aug 2002

Some Effects Of Identity-Based Social Movements On Constitutional Law In The Twentieth Century, William N. Eskridge Jr.

Michigan Law Review

What motivated big changes in constitutional law doctrine during the twentieth century? Rarely did important constitutional doctrine or theory change because of formal amendments to the document's text, and rarer still because scholars or judges "discovered" new information about the Constitution's original meaning. Precedent and common law reasoning were the mechanisms by which changes occurred rather than their driving force. My thesis is that most twentieth century changes in the constitutional protection of individual rights were driven by or in response to the great identity-based social movements ("IBSMs") of the twentieth century. Race, sex, and sexual orientation were markers of …

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The Rhetoric Of Constitutional Law, Erwin Chemerinsky Aug 2002

The Rhetoric Of Constitutional Law, Erwin Chemerinsky

Michigan Law Review

I spend much of my time dealing with Supreme Court opinions. Usually, I download and read them the day that they are announced by the Court. I edit them for my casebook and teach them to my students. I write about them, lecture about them, and litigate about them. My focus, like I am sure most everyone's, is functional: I try to discern the holding, appraise the reasoning, ascertain the implications, and evaluate the decision's desirability. Increasingly, though, I have begun to think that this functional approach is overlooking a crucial aspect of Supreme Court decisions: their rhetoric. I use …

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A Rational Basis For Affirmative Action: A Shaky But Classical Liberal Defense, Richard A. Epstein Aug 2002

A Rational Basis For Affirmative Action: A Shaky But Classical Liberal Defense, Richard A. Epstein

Michigan Law Review

I am honored to participate in a symposium on the occasion of the lOOth anniversary of one of America's preeminent law reviews. I am saddened, however, to write, at what should be a moment of celebration, with the knowledge that both the Law School and the College of Literature, Science and the Arts are enmeshed in extensive litigation over the critical and explosive issue of affirmative action. To find striking evidence of the deep split of learned judicial views on this issue, it is necessary to look no further than the sequence of opinions in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter …

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The Report Of The Attorney General's National Committee To Study The Antitrust Laws: A Retrospective, Thomas E. Kauper Jun 2002

The Report Of The Attorney General's National Committee To Study The Antitrust Laws: A Retrospective, Thomas E. Kauper

Michigan Law Review

In 1955, the third year of the Eisenhower administration, the Michigan Law Review published what I believe to be the only symposium on antitrust law ever to appear in its pages. The occasion was the release in March of that year of a Report of the Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws,2 a nearly fourhundred- page examination of virtually all facets of federal antitrust doctrine and enforcement. The pages of the symposium led me of course to revisit the Report itself, a visit a little like seeing an old high school friend long forgotten some forty years …

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Casting New Light On An Old Subject: Death Penalty Abolitionism For A New Millennium, Wayne A. Logan May 2002

Casting New Light On An Old Subject: Death Penalty Abolitionism For A New Millennium, Wayne A. Logan

Michigan Law Review

For opponents of capital punishment, these would appear promising times. Not since 1972, when the Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty as then administered, has there been such palpable concern over its use, reflected in the lowest levels of public opinion support evidenced in some time. This concern is mirrored in the American Bar Association's recently recommended moratorium on use of the death penalty, the consideration of or actual imposition of moratoria in several states, and even increasing doubts voiced by high-profile political conservatives. An array of troubling empirical realities has accompanied this shift: persistent evidence of racial bias in …

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How Is Constitutional Law Made?, Tracey E. George, Robert J. Pushaw Jr. May 2002

How Is Constitutional Law Made?, Tracey E. George, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Bismarck famously remarked: "Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made." This witticism applies with peculiar force to constitutional law. Judges and commentators examine the sausage (the Supreme Court's doctrine), but ignore the messy details of its production. Maxwell Stearns has demonstrated, with brilliant originality, that the Court fashions constitutional law through process-based rules of decision such as outcome voting, stare decisis, and justiciability. Employing "social choice" economic theory, Professor Stearns argues that the Court, like all multimember decisionmaking bodies, strives to formulate rules that promote both rationality and fairness (p. 4). Viewed through the lens …

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The Causation Fallacy: Bakke And The Basic Arithmetic Of Selective Admissions, Goodwin Liu Mar 2002

The Causation Fallacy: Bakke And The Basic Arithmetic Of Selective Admissions, Goodwin Liu

Michigan Law Review

Last Term, the Supreme Court turned down two invitations to resolve the constitutionality of affirmative action in college and university admissions. In May 2001, the Court for the second time declined to review a Fifth Circuit decision holding that the use of racial preferences to achieve diversity in the student body serves no compelling interest. A few weeks later, the Court let stand a conflicting Ninth Circuit decision that upheld a .law school affirmative action policy on the ground that "educational diversity is a compelling governmental interest that meets the demands of strict scrutiny." The legal controversy over admissions preferences …

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(E)Racing The Fourth Amendment, Devon W. Carbado Mar 2002

(E)Racing The Fourth Amendment, Devon W. Carbado

Michigan Law Review

It's been almost two years since I pledged allegiance to the United States of America - that is to say, became an American citizen. Before that, I was a permanent resident of America and a citizen of the United Kingdom. Yet, I became a black American long before I acquired American citizenship. Unlike citizenship, black racial naturalization was always available to me, even as I tried to make myself unavailable for that particular Americanization process. Given the negative images of black Americans on 1970s British television and the intra-racial tensions between blacks in the U.K. and blacks in America, I …

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Revenue Bonds And Religious Education: The Constitutionality Of Conduit Financing Involving Pervasively Sectarian Institutions, Trent Collier Mar 2002

Revenue Bonds And Religious Education: The Constitutionality Of Conduit Financing Involving Pervasively Sectarian Institutions, Trent Collier

Michigan Law Review

The Establishment Clause - and particularly the issue of government funding of religious education - is one of the murkiest areas of Supreme Court jurisprudence. The Supreme Court has acknowledged as much, and the sharp divide in the Court's most recent forays into Establishment Clause territory illustrates the point that the current jurisprudential standards allow for a broad range of interpretation. There is some hope that the Supreme court will provide further clarification of its Establishment Clause standard in the near future. For now, however, it appears that the dominant mode of the Establishment Clause analysis is the examination of …

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We Can Do This The Easy Way Or The Hard Way: The Use Of Deceit To Induce Consent Searches, Rebecca Strauss Feb 2002

We Can Do This The Easy Way Or The Hard Way: The Use Of Deceit To Induce Consent Searches, Rebecca Strauss

Michigan Law Review

In October of 1995, Aaron Salvo was studying and living at Ashland College. College officials informed local FBI agents that they suspected Salvo of possible child molestation and related conduct based on incriminating electronic mail. FBI agents approached Salvo at his dormitory, asked to speak with him in private about the suspicious mail, and suggested they speak in Salvo's dorm room. Salvo agreed to speak with the officers, but declined to do so in his room because his roommate was there, and he did not want to get anyone else involved in the embarrassing nature of the upcoming conversation. Salvo …

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Contract Rights And Civil Rights, Davison M. Douglas Jan 2002

Contract Rights And Civil Rights, Davison M. Douglas

Michigan Law Review

Have African Americans fared better under a scheme of freedom of contract or of government regulation of private employment relationships? Have court decisions striking down regulation of employment contracts on liberty of contract grounds aided black interests? Many contemporary observers, although with some notable dissenters, would respond that government regulation of freedom of contract, particularly the antidiscrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has benefited African Americans because it has restrained discriminatory conduct by private employers. Professor David E. Bernstein challenges the view that abrogation of freedom of contract has consistently benefited African Americans by …

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