Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Crimes Of Suspicion, Lauryn P. Gouldin

Emory Law Journal

Requiring that officers have suspicion of specific crimes before they seize people during stops or arrests is a fundamental rule-of-law limitation on government power. Until very recently, the Supreme Court studiously avoided saying whether reasonable suspicion for street and traffic stops must be crime specific, and lower courts are sharply divided as a result. Statements made in Kansas v. Glover that the Fourth Amendment requires reasonable suspicion of a “particular crime” or of “specific criminal activity” may reflect an effort to rehabilitate this foundational principle, but crime specificity was not the Court’s focus in Glover. Meanwhile, Fourth Amendment scholars, even …

How They Get Away With Murder: The Intersection Of Capital Punishment, Prosecutor Misconduct, And Systemic Injustice, Rushton Davis Pope

Emory Law Journal

Black defendants are executed at a disproportionately high rate, an injustice quietly persisting in the shadow of America’s dark history of slavery and Jim Crow. While a variety of intersectional factors have perpetuated this injustice, the role of prosecutors who commit misconduct to secure a conviction is significant. Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, but when the prosecutors who carry the burden of proving that guilt choose not to play by the rules, they wantonly and recklessly embrace the risk of convicting—even killing—an innocent person.

This Comment focuses on two primary forms of prosecutor misconduct: Batson violations that occur …

Hired By A Machine: Can A New York City Law Enforce Algorithmic Fairness In Hiring Practices?, Lindsey Fuchs

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Workplace antidiscrimination laws must adapt to address today’s technological realities. If left underregulated, the rapidly expanding role of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) in hiring practices has the danger of creating new, more obscure modes of discrimination. Companies use these tools to reduce the duration and costs of hiring and potentially attract a larger pool of qualified applicants for their open positions. But how can we guarantee that these hiring tools yield fair outcomes when deployed? These issues are just starting to be addressed at the federal, state, and city levels. This Note tackles whether a new city law can be improved …

The Problem Of Habitual Offender Laws In States With Felony Disenfranchisement, Daniel Loehr

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Habitual offender laws operate to increase the sentence of an individual if that person already has a felony conviction. At the same time, many people with felony convictions cannot vote or run for office due to felony disenfranchisement laws. Thus, habitual offender laws target a formally disenfranchised group—people with felony convictions. That creates an archetypal political process problem. As John Hart Ely argued, laws that target a formally disenfranchised group are tainted and deserve heightened constitutional scrutiny. When reviewing habitual offender laws under the Eighth Amendment, however, courts have applied the opposite of heightened scrutiny—they have applied an extreme form …

A Federal Legislative Proposal To Address The Demise Of The Bivens Remedy, Henry Rose

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Facilitating Race-Conscious Targeted Purchasing Programs In The Shadow Of The Trump Judiciary, Daniel Choma

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Given Equal Weight Under The Law: Expanding Title Vii Protections To Prohibit Weight Discrimination, Chelsea L. Yedinak

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Approximately half of Americans have an overweight or obese body mass index (BMI), yet weight discrimination is legal in nearly every jurisdiction. This means employers can set BMI limits, maximum weights, waist sizes, and more with no legal consequences. This Note examines the history of anti-fat bias and weight discrimination and how that motivates weight discrimination in employment and in the law generally. It then discusses possible solutions. Currently, most scholars propose prohibiting weight discrimination on a state level through legislation similar to Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act or on a federal level by recognizing obesity as a disability protected …

Decolonizing Equal Sovereignty, Rosa Hayes

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

In Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), the Supreme Court announced that a tradition of equal sovereignty among the states prohibits unwarranted federal intrusions into state sovereignty and invoked this newly created doctrine to strike down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act. Scholarly critiques in Shelby County’s immediate aftermath debated the constitutional validity of the Court’s equal sovereignty reasoning and warned of the dire threat the VRA’s effacement posed to voting rights—concerns that recent litigation have vindicated.

But other recent litigation suggests that, abstracted from its problematic and consequential origins, equal sovereignty may be deployed …

Never Equals: Slavery, White Masculinities, And The Legacy Of Law In Today’S Workplace, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This essay discusses two themes of Race Unequals: (1) the role of law in creating and reinforcing gendered, classed, and raced identities on plantations in the Antebellum South; and (2) the existence of slavery's legacy today in workplaces and the law's frequent failure to remedy its damaging tentacles. Part II describes masculinities studies from the social sciences and Multidimensional Masculinities Theory in law and applies the theory to analyze the first theme. Part III considers slavery's legacy in today's workplaces and analyzes employment discrimination law's shortcomings in eliminating racism in workplaces. The essay concludes that White masculinities, established in the …

Sheriffs, Shills, Or Just Paying The Bills?: Rethinking The Merits Of Compelling Merchant Cooperation With Third-Party Policing In The Aftermath Of George Floyd’S Death, Stephen Wilks

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article frames the killing of George Floyd as the result of flawed business regulation. More specifically, it captures the expansion of third-party policing paradigms throughout local nuisance abatement regulations over a period of time that coincided with the militarization of policing culture across the United States. Premised on the notion that law enforcement alone cannot succeed in reducing crime and disorder, such regulations transform grocery stores, pharmacies, bars, and other retail spaces into surveillance hubs by prescribing situations that obligate businesses to contact the police. This regulatory framework, however, sustains the larger historical project of rationalizing enhanced scrutiny of …

Taking The Knee No More: Police Accountability And The Structure Of Racism, David Dante Troutt

Washington and Lee Law Review

From before the birth of the republic to the present day, police brutality has represented a signature injustice of state authority, especially against African Americans. Defining that injustice is the lack of accountability for official misconduct. The rule of law has systematically failed to deter lawbreaking by its law enforcement departments. This Article explores the various legal and institutional means by which accountability should be imposed and demonstrates the design elements of structured immunity. Using Critical Race Theory and traditional civil rights law notions of how structural racism operates, this Article argues that transformative change can only come about through …

Higher Education Redress Statutes: A Critical Analysis Of States’ Reparations In Higher Education, Christopher L. Mathis

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article introduces a novel concept, higher education redress statutes (“HERS”), to illustrate efforts that acknowledge and amend past wrongs towards African Americans. More proximally, the Article shines a probing light on the escalation of HERS in southeastern states that serve as a site for state regulation and monitoring. The Author exposes how higher education redress statutes, designed to provide relief or remedy to Black people for states’ higher education’s harm, categorically ignore groups of Black people who rightfully should also be members of the statutorily protected class. This Article queries whether legislators can expand the scope of such statutes …

Nestlé V. Doe: A Death Knell To Corporate Human Rights Accountability?, Phillip Ayers

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court in Nestlé v. Doe held that foreign plaintiffs who claimed to be victims of overseas tortious conduct by corporate defendants had no jurisdiction to sue in federal courts using the Alien Tort Statute. This Comment looks at the history of the Alien Tort Statute, from its inspiration, long dormancy, and recent reinvigoration beginning in the 1980s. The Comment then explores the background of Nestlé and its issues with child slavery in its cocoa supply chain. From there, the Comment analyzes the Nestlé v. Doe decision, and posits an alternative outcome. Finally, this Comment looks for a new …

Enhancing Rural Representation Through Electoral System Diversity, Henry L. Chambers Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

Rural Virginians face disparities in outcomes regarding healthcare, access to important infrastructure, and other services. Some disparities may be related to rurality. The sparseness of population in rural areas may limit the sites where people may access services, triggering the need to travel significant distances to obtain goods and services in such areas. Limited access may lead to disparities even when the quality of goods and services in rural areas is high. The disparities affect all rural Virginians, but disproportionately affect rural Virginians of color. The causes of the disparities are complex and myriad, and may be based on race, …

Going The Extra Mile: Expanding The Promoting Affordable Housing Near Transit Act, Emily Casey

Law Student Publications

The Promoting Affordable Housing Near Transit Act (“Act”), introduced in Congress in June 2021 and signed into law six months later, proposes a goal of balancing the disproportionately-high costs of housing and transportation felt by lower-income families by combining these resources in one project: transit-oriented housing developments. Middle-income and wealthy suburbanites have ready access to cities by car, but lower-income urbanites lack access to the suburbs without a private vehicle. While the goal of the Act recognizes this disparate outcome, the Act’s failure to include expansion of mass transit into the suburbs will continue to restrict low-income minorities to urban …

“Fundamental Fairness”: Finding A Civil Right To Counsel In International Human Rights Law, Meredith Elliot Hollman

Law Student Publications

Every other Western democracy now recognizes a right to counsel in at least some kinds of civil cases, typically those involving basic human rights. The World Justice Project’s 2021 Rule of Law Index ranked the United States 126th of 139 countries for “People Can Access and Afford Civil Justice.” Within its regional and income categories, the United States was dead last. The United Nations and other international treaty bodies have urged the United States to improve access to justice by providing civil legal aid. How did we fall behind, and what can we learn from the rest of the world? …

Beyond The Business Case: Moving From Transactional To Transformational Inclusion, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

While workplace diversity is a hot topic, the extent to which the diversity management movement has effectively improved intergroup relations and reduced racial inequality remains unclear. Despite large investments in diversity and inclusion training and other company wide initiatives, historically excluded groups remain vastly underrepresented in leadership and the most lucrative careers, such as finance, law, and technology. This calls the efficacy of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts into question, particularly with respect to reducing racial inequality in the workplace.

This Article explains why it is time for organizational leaders to move beyond the transactional case for diversity and …

In Re. J.T., 252 A.3d 1276 (R.I. 2021)., Pia Piscitelli

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Changemakers: 'You Have To Adapt To Survive', Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (January 2023): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.