Sexuality and the Law Commons^™

Legislating Morality In The Gilded Age And Progressive Era: Moral Panic And The “White Slave” Case That Changed America, Nancy C. Unger

History

This article is based on the presidential address presented to the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era at the meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Los Angeles in 2023. Its focus is Maury Diggs and Drew Caminetti, two white men from Sacramento, California, charged with violating the Mann Act (known as the White Slave Trafficking Act) in 1913. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era obsession with white slavery, a phenomenon that has particular resonance in today’s climate, reveals the power of moral panics. Examining the steps, and missteps, that various legal, social, and political …

Accessing The Arts: The Use Of Reproductive Justice In The Fight For Lgbt+ Rights, Leila Y. Vicinelli

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

Procreation has long been an integral component within the family structure. While the ability to produce offspring was once a privilege reserved for fertile, heterosexual pairings, modern advancements in Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART) have made same-sex procreation possible. Although ART makes it possible for same-sex couples to biologically produce offspring , accessibility to treatment is often hindered by financial, legal, and social impediments. This Note will explore the current limitations on LGBT+ accessibility to ART treatments and provide much needed solutions for these challenges. In a post-Obergefell world, the prominence of and rights owed to same-sex households can no …

The Sentiments Of Drag Performers On Anti-Drag Legislation: A Thematic Analysis, Brian D. Briggs

Senior Theses

Since 2022, at least 21 states have considered, filed, or passed legislation with the goal of banning or limiting drag performances in public spaces or in the presence of minors. These pieces of legislation seek to suppress drag performances on the grounds that they appeal to sexual interests, and they even go as far as to claim that drag performers aim to groom and assault children at their performances. These claims are baseless and vastly misrepresent the true breadth of drag as a performance art and the positive messages it promotes, as well as suggest that bias against the LGBTQ+ …

Bostock And Its Progeny: A Path To Protection For The Lgbtq+ Community, Colton Shelly

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The Bostock v. Clayton County decision marked a pivotal moment in extending federal protections under Title VII to the LGBTQ+ community, prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This ruling has had far-reaching implications, influencing various cases across federal and state courts, though its application varies, leading to a diverse landscape of protections.

On The Genealogy Of Intimate Digital Harm, Aziz Z. Huq

Michigan Law Review

A review of The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age. By Danielle Keats Citron.

Amdip Annual Meeting Of Law School Diversity Professionals: Hosted By Roger Williams University School Of Law: April 23-25, 2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Out Of Place When Studying China’S Sex Industry, Margaret Boittin

Articles & Book Chapters

The chapter explains how being out of place can paradoxically put one back in place – or exactly where one needs to be to achieve their research goals and values. The author, Margaret Boittin, is a lawyer and US-trained political scientist who works in a Canadian law faculty. She explains how being out of place is relative. She may not be out of place in North America as “a white woman with blond hair and blue eyes,” but she was obviously out of place when she was studying sex workers in China. Embracing this outsider status also became the source …

Free Exercise, The Respect For Marriage Act, And Some Potential Surprises, Mark Strasser

Cleveland State Law Review

Congress recently passed the Respect for Marriage Act to assure that certain marriages would remain valid even if the Supreme Court were to overrule past precedent and hold that the Constitution does not protect the right to marry a partner of the same sex or of a different race. However, the Act, as written, may not offer protection for certain same-sex or interracial marriages and may open the door to the federal protection of plural marriages, congressional intent notwithstanding, because of the Court’s increasingly robust free exercise jurisprudence.

Rereading Pico And The Equal Protection Clause, Johany G. Dubon

Fordham Law Review

More than forty years ago, in Board of Education v. Pico, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a school board’s decision to remove books from its libraries. However, the Court’s response was heavily fractured, garnering seven separate opinions. In the plurality opinion, three justices stated that the implicit corollary to a student’s First Amendment right to free speech is the right to receive information. Thus, the plurality announced that the relevant inquiry for reviewing a school’s library book removal actions is whether the school officials intended to deny students access to ideas with which the officials disagreed. …

Speaking Back To Sexual Privacy Invasions, Brenda Dvoskin

Washington Law Review

Many big players in the internet ecosystem do not like hosting sexual expression. They often justify these bans as a protection of sexual privacy. For example, Meta states that it removes sexual imagery to prevent the nonconsensual distribution of sexual images. In response, this Article argues that banning digital sexual expression is counterproductive if the aim is to alleviate the harms inflicted by sexual privacy losses.

Contemporary sexual privacy theory, however, lacks analytical tools to explain why nudity bans harm the interests they intend to protect. This Article aims at building those tools. The main contribution is an invitation to …

The Surprising Result Of The Supreme Court Case That Allowed Slurs In Brands, Michael Goodyear

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

How Viable Is Viability? Artificial Womb Technology And The Threat To Abortion Access, James E. Brown

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The viability standard plays an important role in abortion access around much of the United States. In fact, before the Dobbs decision, the viability standard was the constitutional gatekeeper to abortion access and was uniform across the entire nation. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has removed the constitutional right to abortion altogether. Nevertheless, I will provide an argument as to why Dobbs does not signal the end of viability-based abortion around the U.S. I will prove the importance of the viability standard even in a post-Dobbs society, highlighting its operation within various state laws, such as Michigan’s Prop. 3, as well …

Henderson And The Objective Observer Standard: The Future Of Race-Conscious Standards Post-Students For Fair Admissions, Gabriela Dionisio

Seattle University Law Review

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down race-conscious admissions policies. Within just a year after its ruling, Students for Fair Admissions has already had a sweeping impact, reaching beyond higher education. Although the Supreme Court did not indicate whether Students for Fair Admissions applies to sectors beyond higher education, law firms, and other employers have already modified their diversity policies and initiatives, erasing race and company diversity considerations. Given those dramatic changes, there is growing fear that Students for Fair Admissions …

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

Deconstructing Concepts About Nature: An Alternative Perspective For Ecofeminism Based On The Rights Of Nature, Leslie Terrones

PEEL Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars For The Advancement Of Children’S Constitutional Rights In Support Of Defendants-Appellees: St. Mary Catholic Parish V. Roy, Lauren Fontana, Catherine Smith, Tanya M. Washington, Robin Walker Sterling, Suzette Malveaux, Jeremiah Chin, Sara S. Hildebrand

Scholarly Articles

Amici are scholars of children and the law, education law, family law, and anti-discrimination law. Amici draw this Court’s attention to the harms that four-year-olds in the LGBT community – LGBT children and children with LGBT parents – would bear should state-funded religious schools be granted a license to discriminate against them. An exemption to Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program’s equal-opportunity requirement would allow plaintiffs to discriminate against these children and plant unfair barriers in their paths to a high-quality education and inflict dignitary, psychological, and familial harms upon an entire class of young people solely because of their or their …

Advocating For Equality: Restoring Same-Sex Marriage Recognition In Bermuda, Coleman Watts

Human Rights Brief

In May 2017, Bermuda made significant strides towards marriage equality by legalizing same-sex marriage. Following the general elections in mid-2017, Bermuda’s newly elected PLP (Progressive Labour Party) government enacted legislation in December 2017 to replace same-sex marriage with domestic partnerships. This article suggests arguments that may be used to challenge the revocation of same-sex marriage rights in Bermuda.

Navigating Sexual Consent In Japan, Samara Mizutani Cesar

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Employing an exploratory sequential research design, including focus groups and an online survey, this thesis explores the factors influencing how Japanese people navigate the gray zones of sexual consent. This study not only addresses gaps in the literature on sexual consent but also provides a preliminary understanding of Japanese individuals’ perceptions, beliefs, behaviors, and experiences in ambiguous sexual interactions, which is particularly meaningful given Japan’s recent legal revisions and changing sociocultural landscape. Findings indicated the impact of traditional sexual scripts on consent perceptions, with gender and relationship norms contributing to the dismissal of sexual assaults within specific relationships. It was …

Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …

Robo-Voting: Does Delegated Proxy Voting Pose A Challenge For Shareholder Democracy?, John Matsusaka, Chong Shu

Seattle University Law Review

Robo-voting is the practice by an investment fund of mechanically voting in corporate elections according to the advice of its proxy advisor— in effect fully delegating its voting decision to its advisor. We examined over 65 million votes cast during the period 2008–2021 by 14,582 mutual funds to describe and quantify the prevalence of robo-voting. Overall, 33% of mutual funds robo-voted in 2021: 22% with ISS, 4% with Glass Lewis, and six percent with the recommendations of the issuer’s management. The fraction of funds that robo-voted increased until around 2013 and then stabilized at the current level. Despite the sizable …