Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Technology's War On Terror: The Need For Platform Accountability In The Wake Of A National Security Crisis, Meagan Schantz

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

January 6, 2021. A day that “will live forever in infamy.” That day marked the first breach of the United States Capitol Building since 1814—and the second breach ever in American history (the first was during the War of 1812). Five people lost their lives that day and many more were injured in an unprecedented attack on American democracy. Yet, social media records show that “there were no surprises” as to what insurrectionists did on that infamous day.

The plan to “storm the Capitol” began on less-trafficked social media sites, the “darker or more-obscure corners of the internet,” including …

The Right To Bear 3d-Printed Firearms: Problems Created By Modern Gunsmithing, Chelsea Karen

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Picture a typical Friday evening at London’s St. Pancras train station with travelers trying to get away for the weekend. You board a train leaving for Paris after going through a vigorous safety check, which includes walking through a metal detector and having your bag scanned. You finally take a seat in a crowded train car when you notice a man standing at the front of the car holding what appears to be a child’s toy gun. It’s clunky, plastic, and crude-looking in that it seems it would fall apart if the man attempted to pull the trigger. In …

Small Business Relief In The Time Of Covid-19: Deservingness Judgments Lead The Ppp To Failure, Blair Hendricks

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In 2020, going to the grocery store or getting a bite to eat looked a little different than usual: normal outings in 2020 required masks and temperature checks, among other safety precautions. As if patronizing businesses was not difficult enough, operating a business in 2020 could have been downright tragic. In December 2020, Steven Klein, the owner of Vision Lanes Bowling Alley, posted a tribute on his Facebook page to his beloved business. The following is an excerpt from that post:

This is NOT a political post. My sources are telling me an extension is going to be announced. …

Weekly Pop-Up Class: Understanding The Lgbtq+ Civil Rights Movement And Why It Matters, Dmytro Vovk, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

2022 Event Invitations

Dmytro Vovk, Cardozo Visiting Associate Professor will cover Religious Freedom and LGBTQ+ Rights: The European Court of Human Right's Perspective.

Dmytro Vovk runs the Center for Rule of Law and Religion Studies at Yaroslav the Wise National Law University in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He was an expert on human rights and rule of law for USAID, OSCE/ODIHR, Council of Europe and Constitutional Commission of Ukraine.

Abolition, And A Mule: Guest Lecturer In Race And The Foundations Of American Law Course 09-28-2022, Paul Butler, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Power Of International Nationality Courts When Settling Foreign Investment Disputes, Dr. Ibrahim Refaat El Beherry

مجلة جامعة الإمارات للبحوث القانونية UAEU LAW JOURNAL

States shall be sovereign in determining their nationality in accordance with their economic and social policies and circumstances. However, when international courts decide matters relating to their personal competence in international disputes, they may be called upon to rule on preliminary matters such as nationality. However, when these tribunals confer jurisdiction on themselves by this mission, they enjoy a broad discretion based on the general principles of people’s law, treaty law, case law, doctrine and the principle of jurisdiction-jurisdiction in arbitral matters. However, the scope of this recognized power is limited and its authorized investiture must not exceed the primary …

Weekly Pop-Up Class: Understanding The Lgbtq+ Civil Rights Movement And Why It Matters: Professor Edward Stein, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

2022 Event Invitations

The first class will cover the evolution of LGBTQ+ family law in the United States and will be presented by LGBTQ+ legal expert and Cardozo Professor and former Vice Dean Edward Stein, author of The Mismeasure of Desire, The Science, Theory, and Ethics of Sexual Orientation and other scholarly works on sexual identity and the law.

'To Empower And Amplify Lgbtq+ Voices' 09-16-2022, Michelle Choate

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

White Picket Fences & Suburban Gatekeeping: How Long Island’S Land Use Laws Cement Its Status As One Of The Most Segregated Places In America, Jessica Mingrino

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The average wealth of Black families is one-seventh that of white families in the United States today. Homeownership—the primary avenue through which Americans accumulate personal and generational wealth—is the leading driver of the wealth disparity between white and Black American families, known as the “racial wealth gap.” The systematic and intentional exclusion of Black people from developing communities during the twentieth century largely excluded people of color from the housing boom and denied them the opportunity afforded to white people to multiply their assets. Contrary to widespread belief, however, legislation-backed oppression of Black Americans did not end in the …

Separate And Unequal: Promoting Racial Equity In Public Schools In The United States And South Africa, Paige Sferrazza

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

On January 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States announced that it will hear two cases, against Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, which “rais[e] serious doubts about the future of affirmative action in higher education.” The plaintiff in both cases, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (“SFFA”), is a non-profit organization devoted to eradicating affirmative action programs nationwide. Described as the “culmination of a years-long strategy by conservative activists,” these cases represent the first affirmative action challenges to be argued before the Court’s new conservative majority, where they “pose the gravest threats yet” to over …

Death By Dehumanization: Prosecutorial Narratives Of Death-Sentenced Women And Lgbtq Prisoners, Jessica Sutton, John Mills, Jennifer Merrigan, Kristin Swain

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

At the core of every capital sentencing proceeding is a guarantee that before condemning a person to die, the sentencer must consider the humanity and dignity of the individual facing the ultimate sanction. This principle—that “death is . . . different” and, therefore, requires consideration of the “diverse frailties of humankind”—echoes throughout the United States Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. And yet courts are reluctant to remedy the devastating impact of prosecutorial arguments that dehumanize marginalized persons facing the death penalty, condemning these arguments while nevertheless “affirm[ing] resulting convictions based on procedural doctrines such as harmless error.”

These dehumanizing …

Falling Away Into Disease: Disability-Deviance Narratives In American Crime Control, Matt Saleh

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Who in society is predisposed to crime? Many of us are familiar with cultural narratives that trace criminal behavior to some cognitive defect in the perpetrator. For instance, we might recall the persistent media allusions to Adam Lanza’s Asperger Syndrome after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, despite evidence that individuals on the autism spectrum are, on average, not more likely, and are quite possibly less likely, to commit serious crime in their lifetime. Similarly, popular narratives about the relationship between “mental illness” and violence are pervasive, despite the broad meaning of the terminology and a deeply-misunderstood …

Race, Class, And Second Chances: The Impact Of Multiple Identities On Reentry And Reintegration, S. David Mitchell

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Race, class, and other identities directly impact the process of reentry and the successful reintegration back into society for individuals who have had prior involvement in the criminal justice system. Collectively, persons convicted of a crime face numerous legal barriers that interfere with or prevent successful reentry and reintegration back into society, such as being prevented from securing housing and obtaining employment among other collateral consequences. For many, the process of reentry and reintegration is made even more difficult because of prior discriminatory policies and practices that were based solely on demographic factors, some of which are innate or …

You Have The Right To Remain Powerless: Deprivation Of Agency By Law Enforcement And The Legal And Carceral Systems, Marco Maldonado, Michael Onah, Jennifer Merrigan

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The charges against Philadelphia Police Officer Phillip Nordo read like an episode of The Shield. The grand jury presentment, should you have the stomach for it, is closer to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. For over twenty years, Officer Nordo groomed, sexually assaulted, and used crime reward funds to pay off vulnerable men in Philadelphia. Whether in his transport van, prison visiting rooms, or police interrogation rooms, he regularly exploited his unfettered access to and absolute control over vulnerable individuals. Though he was not convicted until 2022, the communities he stalked and preyed upon knew exactly …

A Call For An Intersectional Feminist Restorative Justice Approach To Addressing The Criminalization Of Black Girls, Donna Coker, Thalia González

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The persistent criminalization and pathologizing of Black youth in the U.S. educational system is a fundamental driver for their entry into the criminal legal system. Despite decades of evidence of the far-reaching harms of the “school-to-prison pipeline” and, more recently, demands from Black Lives Matter activists to defund school police, the role of schools in criminalizing Black girls has been left out of mainstream academic discourse. This occurs even though Black girls experience some of the most subjective and discriminatory practices in schools and evidence of an upward trend in discipline disparities since the mid-2000s. For Black girls with …

#Includetheirstories: Rethinking, Reimagining, And Reshaping Legal Education, Leslie Culver, Elizabeth A. Kronk Warner

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The entire world was shaken by the events of 2020—a year that the historians will pen with infamy. Along with a global health pandemic that tested both human frailties and social infrastructures, the world witnessed the devastation of George Floyd, an African American man, dying under the knee of Derek Chauvin, a White male police officer. The nation erupted. As 2020 ended, many organizations and institutions clamored both to process ethnic divides and injustices, and to gain tools and skills to create meaningful change and lasting impact. Legal education was one such institution. During the summer and fall of 2020, …

Parading The Horribles: The Risks Of Expanding Religious Exemptions, Law, Rights, And Religion Project

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

People of faith now have a constitutional right to practice their religion—even when doing so conflicts with a government law or policy — that is more rigorously protected than nearly any other right. Some states have passed bills that provide an even broader right to such “religious exemptions” from the law than provided under the U.S. Constitution. Other religious exemption bills have been introduced and await consideration.

Liability For Toxic Workplace Cultures, Dana Florczak

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Title VII is meant to protect employees from discrimination and has historically been a crucial tool for creating social change in the workplace. But when considering modern-day workplace discrimination wrought by “toxic workplace cultures” defined herein, Title VII’s frameworks for confronting systemic discrimination prove outdated and ineffective. This Note proposes the codification of a new theory of discrimination under Title VII targeting toxic workplace cultures, with substantive and procedural elements working in tandem to better enable plaintiffs to collectively bring actions to hold employers accountable for fostering discriminatory environments. Part I defines toxic workplace cultures and walks through case studies …

Wrong Line: Proposing A New Test For Discrimination Under The National Labor Relations Act, Joshua D. Rosenberg Daneri, Paul A. Thomas

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

There has long been a consensus among scholars and union-side practitioners that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is under-enforced. As a result, employers often treat violations of the NLRA as a cost of doing business rather than a serious violation of a federal statute. Calls for reform have historically tended to propose legislative amendments to the NLRA to constrain employer conduct and impose greater consequences for discrimination violations. However, little attention has been given to improving the flawed legal test by which such discrimination is analyzed, Wright Line, 251 N.L.R.B. 1083 (1980), enforced 662 F.2d 899 (1st Cir. 1981), …

Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, And Homelessness Post-Bostock, Alaina Richert

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a critical problem facing LGBTQ+ people in the United States. In addition, LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender people, disproportionately suffer from homelessness and face discrimination by homeless shelters on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This homelessness and discrimination both disproportionately affect transgender people of color. This Note makes two contributions that would enable courts to grant meaningful relief in these contexts. First, it argues that “sex” in the Fair Housing Act includes sexual orientation and gender identity after the holding in Bostock v. Clayton County. Second, …