Civil-Rights Law
Was Sexual Harassment Law a Mistake? The Stories We Tell
Does our sexual harassment law hinder the larger project of reducing harassment? This Essay demonstrates that the law constrains stories of harassment and hamstrings our calls for reform. Ultimately, the law, not just public perception, must change if this movement is to have a lasting effect.
Brief Lives
In this Review of Owen Fiss’s book, Pillars of Justice: Lawyers and the Liberal Tradition, Laura Kalman explores Fiss's views on the legal figures appearing in the book. In addition, Kalman discusses the criticisms of Brown v. Board of Education and legal liberalism that are missing in Fiss’s account.
The First Amendment Freedom of Assembly as a Racial Project
Beginning with the author’s experience of being arrested as a legal observer during a Ferguson protest, this Essay explores the First Amendment freedom of assembly’s fragile protection for those who fight for racial justice, arguing that civil rights movements have always been and continue to be disproportionately chilled by authorities.
Title VII’s Statutory History and the Sex Discrimination Argument for LGBT Workplace Protections
In light of Hively, Evans, and Zarda, this Feature argues that Title VII’s bar to discrimination “because of sex” applies to LGBT individuals. This interpretation follows from Title VII's ordinary meaning, particularly in light of its purpose to entrench a merit-based workplace, in addition to its statutory history.
How Qualified Immunity Fails
This Article reports the findings of the largest and most comprehensive study to date of the role qualified immunity plays in constitutional litigation. I found that qualified immunity rarely served its intended role as a shield from discovery and trial in these cases.
Policing Through an American Prism
Policing practices in America are under scrutiny. Video clips, protests, and media coverage bring attention and a sense of urgency to fatal police civilian incidents that are often accompanied by broader calls for reform. Tensions often run high after officer involved shootings of unarmed civilians, and minority communities, law enforcement, and politicians bring different perspectives to both the individual events and broader policy issues.
The Difference a Whole Woman Makes: Protection for the Abortion Right After Whole Woman’s Health
As the case that became Whole Woman’s Health worked its way to the Supreme Court, few were confident about how the Court would respond to a law, enacted in the name of protecting women’s health, that would predictably shut most of a state’s abortion clinics. All agreed that the governing standard was the undue burden framework the Court had adopted a quarter century earlier in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But the meaning of “undue burden” was in doubt. Opponents of the abortion right asserted that after the Court decided Gonzales v. Carhart, upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Casey framework meant little more than rational basis deference to legislative decision making. Supporters were confident that the undue burden framework provided women more constitutional protection than that—but many still worried that the standard was too indeterminate to constrain state legislatures.