Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Disparate Impact And Pregnancy: Title Vii's Other Accommodation Requirement, Camille Hébert

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Immigrant Labor In Fish Processing In The Pacific Northwest And British Columbia And Current Undocumented Labor, Adi D. Salinas Ferreira

Pomona Senior Theses

The beginning of industrialized fish processing plants reveals themes of labor exploitation, racial and gender segregation, and antagonistic legislation that have continued well into the present. Today in the Pacific North West, the majority of workers are Latino and many among them are undocumented or DACAmented. Many aspects of the work conditions in salmon canneries back in the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s and the work conditions in present day fish processing plants have not changed. Many jobs in a fish processing plant remain gendered, and when there is more than one race working in a single plant racial …

Diversity As A Law School Survival Strategy, Aaron N. Taylor

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the past few years, law schools have been dealing with a drastic and, so far, unyielding decline in student interest. Between 2010 and 2013, student enrollments fell almost 25%, to levels not seen in 40 years. This trend has prompted many to wonder what schools have done, and what they can do, to ensure their survivalin this new climate. This article explores the extent to which law schools have used students of color, particularly black and Hispanic students, to bolster enrollments and lessen the effects of the downturn. The results of this analysis suggest that a school’s median LSAT …

Our Uneasiness With Police Unions: Power And Voice For The Powerful?, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

The police shooting of Michael Brown, and the other recent police shootings of black men and boys, gave rise to many important discussions about race, inequality, power, and policing. But one issue not as widely discussed was the the role and propriety of police unions. This Essay describes the history and uniqueness of public sector unions, such as police unions, and why they are both useful and problematic.

This Essay describes ways police unions might be used to help solve the current problems, such as helping to connect officers with the community. The Federal and State governments have provided recommendations …

Let’S Pretend That Federal Courts Aren’T Hostile To Discrimination Claims, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

Professor Sandra Sperino’s article, Let’s Pretend Discrimination Is a Tort,[1] makes a valuable contribution to the debate about the proper interpretation of Title VII and other employment discrimination laws in light of Supreme Court trends. Professor Sperino ably describes the way that the Supreme Court has used tort concepts increasingly in recent cases,[2] even having gone so far as to have called employment discrimination statutes federal torts.[3] This development has created significant concern among scholars,[4] including Professor Sperino herself.[5]

Rather than simply reiterate those concerns, however, in her article Professor Sperino adopts a novel approach: she takes the Court at …

Did Multicultural America Result From A Mistake? The 1965 Immigration Act And Evidence From Roll Call Votes, Gabriel J. Chin, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

Between July 1964 and October 1965, Congress enacted the three most important civil rights laws since Reconstruction: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965. As we approach the 50th anniversary of these laws, it is clear that all three have fundamentally remade the United States; education, employment, housing, politics, and the population itself have irreversibly changed.

Arguably the least celebrated yet most consequential of these laws was the 1965 Immigration Act, which set the United States on the path to become a "majority minority" nation. In …

The Political Economy Of Environmental Justice: A Comparative Study Of New Delhi And Los Angeles, Ratik Asokan

CMC Senior Theses

Though mainstream environmentalism, both in the U.S. and India, was initially rooted in social justice, it has, over time, moved away from this focus. The Environmental Justice Movement consequently arose to reunite social and environmental activism. In this thesis, I trace the historical relationship between the mainstream environmentalism, the Environmental Justice Movement, and marginalized communities. After providing this general overview, I examine two case studies – in Los Angeles and New Delhi respectively – where marginalized communities have been involved in Environmental Justice activities. My analysis reveals that marginalized communities often act in an ‘environmentalist’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ manner, without …

Backsliding: The United States Supreme Court, Shelby County V. Holder And The Dismantling Of The Voting Rights Act Of 1965, Bridgette Baldwin

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court, having found that certain states received unequal treatment under the Voting Rights Act, struck down the Act’s preclearance provision in its Shelby v. Holder holding. The Author, in an effort to critique the conclusion reached by the Court, argues that these states, historically responsible for obstructing the ability of African-Americans to vote, continue to engage in practices that result in voting irregularities and acts of discrimination in the electoral process. Today, this strategic disenfranchisement rears its head in the form of legislation making voting difficult or impossible for many minority voters, a criminal justice system that targets …

Preferential Judicial Activism, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

The Author examines the Supreme Court’s use of “preferential judicial activism”—whereby justices decide whether to formalistically dismiss cases or instead choose to engage judicial activism based on their policy preferences—through contrasting the Court’s reasoning in Shelby v. Holder with its decisions in cases concerning national security. In Shelby, the majority characterized the Court’s review of the Voting Rights Act of 2006 as necessary given the fundamental rights at stake and the unusually broad reach of the Act in mandating federal jurisdiction over voting matters. However, in national security-related cases in which plaintiffs have alleged violations of fundamental rights, the …

Religion And Marriage Equality Statutes, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

To date, every state statute that has extended marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples has included accommodations for actors who oppose such marriages on religious grounds. Debate over those accommodations has occurred mostly between, on the one hand, people who urge broader religion protections and, on the other hand, those who support the types of accommodations that typically have appeared in existing statutes. This article argues that the debate should be widened to include arguments that the existing accommodations are normatively and constitutionally problematic. Even states that presumptively are most friendly to LGBT citizens, as measured by their demonstrated …

The Americans With Disabilities Act At 25: The Highest Expression Of American Values, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Enacted in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a watershed piece of legislation which enshrines in law a social promise of equality and inclusion into all facets of life, while offering an inspiring model that much of the world has come to embrace. This editorial launches JAMA’s theme issue on the 25th anniversary of the ADA by detailing the Act’s history, main provisions, and far-reaching impacts on health, providing a context for the three Original Investigations and six scholarly Viewpoints that make up the theme issue. The editorial begins with a discussion of the ADA’s history, highlighting …

The Triumph Of Gay Marriage And The Failure Of Constitutional Law, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's much anticipated invalidation of gay marriage bans improved the personal lives of millions of ordinary Americans. It made the country a more decent place. Even Chief Justice Roberts, at the conclusion of his otherwise scathing dissent, acknowledged that the decision was a cause for many Americans to celebrate.

But although the Chief Justice thought that advocates of gay marriage should "by all means celebrate today's decision," he admonished them "not [to] celebrate the Constitution." The Constitution, he said, "had nothing to do with it".

Part I of this article quarrels with the Chief Justice's assertion that the …

Good Faith Discrimination, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's current doctrinal rules governing racial discrimination and affirmative action are unsatisfying. They often seem artificial, internally inconsistent, and even conceptually incoherent. Despite a long and continuing history of racial discrimination in the United States, many of the problems with the Supreme Court's racial jurisprudence stem from the Court's willingness to view the current distribution of societal resources as establishing a colorblind, race-neutral baseline that can be used to make equality determinations. As a result, the current rules are as likely to facilitate racial discrimination as to prevent it, or to remedy the lingering effects of past discrimination.

Revoking Rights, Craig J. Konnoth

Publications

In important areas of law, such as the vested rights doctrine, and in several important cases--including those involving the continued validity of same-sex marriages and the Affordable Care Act--courts have scrutinized the revocation of rights once granted more closely than the failure to provide the rights in the first place. This project claims that in so doing, courts seek to preserve important constitutional interests. On the one hand, based on our understanding of rights possession, rights revocation implicates autonomy interests of the rights holder to a greater degree than a failure to afford rights at the outset. On the other …

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

Publications

No abstract provided.

How The Other Half Banks, Daria Roithmayr

Publications

No abstract provided.

More Than A Woman: Insights Into Corporate Governance After The French Sex Quota, Daria Roithmayr

Publications

In 2011, France enacted a Corporate Board Quota to establish a forty percent floor for either sex on corporate boards. Existing literature presumes that women will change the way firms function and that their presence in upper management will improve both governance and financial returns. To assess the potential impact of the quota, we interviewed twenty-four current and former corporate board members. Our analysis of these interviews generates two findings. First, our results indicate that, at least in the view of board members, the sex quota has had an impact on the process of board decision-making, but adding women has …

Has The “Machinery Of Death” Become A Clunker?, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

From the Essay

This symposium essay sounds a cautionary note while ultimately remaining agnostic about what the future holds for the death penalty. There are a variety of reasons to be skeptical about the abolitionists' newfound optimism. The usual reasons for optimism about ending the death penalty-sharp declines in public support for the death penalty and of the ultimate sanction-do not necessarily portend the demise of the death penalty. This essay argues that other factors can account for recent declines in capital punishment and that there are countervailing factors suggesting that the American death penalty is alive and well, despite …

Built For Boyhood?: A Proposal For Reducing The Amount Of Gender Bias In The Advertising Of Children's Toys On Television, Nareissa L. Smith

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

While the last half-century has seen a dramatic increase in the number of US women in the workforce, women remain under represented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. For years, researchers and social commentators have tried to explain the persistence of this gender gap. Some have even argued that genetic differences explain women's inability to excel in the hard sciences. This Article asserts that the impact of socialization on children's educational and occupational choices has been greatly underestimated. Specifically, the toys that are marketed to boys teach spatial skills that prepare boys for STEM careers. Conversely, the toys …

Report From The Restorative Justice Process At The Dalhousie University Faculty Of Dentistry, Jennifer Llewellyn, Jacob Mcissac, Melissa Mackay

Reports & Public Policy Documents

In December 2014, female students in Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Dentistry filed complaints under the University’s Sexual Harassment Policy after they became aware some of their male colleagues had posted offensive material about them in a private Facebook group. The select materials revealed from the Facebook group reflected misogynistic, sexist and homophobic attitudes. At the complainants’ request, the University began a restorative justice process to investigate the matter, address the harms it caused and examine the climate and culture within the Faculty that may have influenced the offensive nature of the Facebook group’s content. Twenty-nine students from the class of …