Can women capture the benefits of equal citizenship in a legal system that does not mandate accommodations for pregnant workers? This Article argues that they cannot. Current pregnancy discrimination law, which bases the right to work on full capacity, systematically deprives women of equal opportunity to make use of their innate capacities and talents in the workplace. This failure, in turn, compromises the quest for equal social citizenship—which includes, among other things, the right of equal access to paid work—that has been a cornerstone of the modern women’s movement.
Early women’s rights advocates relied on formal citizenship status as a basis for demanding the substantive rights that full citizens enjoy—a broad spectrum of political, personal, and civil rights from suffrage to child custody to property ownership. Out of the Seneca Falls convention in 1848 came the Declaration of Sentiments, a wish list that would serve as the blueprint for a… Read More »
- Georgetown Law Journal
- 01 March 2010
- Law Review Article
Pregnancy, Work, and the Promise of Equal Citizenship
Joanna L. Grossman - Hofstra University School of Law
- N.Y.U. Law Review
- 26 February 2010
- Law Review Note
The Costs of “Discernible and Manageable Standards” in Vieth and Beyond
Joshua S. Stillman
Judges have the often unenviable task of having to answer very difficult legal questions. Some apprehension toward this task is understandable, so how might a judge duck the task of writing a new doctrinal test to resolve the hard question and similar claims in the future? Aside from using familiar… Read More »
- Duke Law Journal
- 25 February 2010
- 2010 Judicial Workshop Symposium
The Costs Of Judging Judges By The Numbers
Marin K. Levy & José A. Cabranes & Kate Stith
What is to be gained by using empirical evidence to rank or “judge” judges? These empirical studies claim two major benefits. First, because the criteria are assertedly apolitical, the resulting rankings will identify the “best” judges across the political spectrum and thereby improve, for instance, the Supreme Court nomination process. Second,… Read More »
- Stanford Law Review
- 24 February 2010
- Law Review Article
Breaking the Law to Enforce It: Undercover Police Participation in Crime
Elizabeth E. Joh - UC Davis School of Law
Covert policing necessarily involves deception, which in turn often leads to participation in activity that appears to be criminal. In undercover operations, the police have introduced drugs into prison, undertaken assignments from Latin American drug cartels to launder money, established fencing businesses that paid cash for stolen goods and for… Read More »
- Duke Law Journal
- 23 February 2010
- 2010 Judicial Workshop Symposium
Evaluating Judges and Judicial Institutions: Reorienting the Perspective
Mitu Gulati & David F. Levi & David E. Klein
In September 2009, we hosted an unusual workshop at Duke Law School. The workshop focused on the empirical evaluation of judges, judging, and judicial institutions. Most work in this area has been driven by the agendas and constraints of empirical researchers, and empiricists from multiple disciplines—including history, sociology, anthropology, political… Read More »
- U. Chicago Law Review
- 22 February 2010
- Law Review Article
Differential Formalism in Claiming Intellectual Property: A Response to Fromer
Henry Smith - Harvard Law School
This article is a response to an earlier posted piece by Jeanne C. Fromer: Claiming Intellectual Property.
Claiming intellectual property is an act of communication, but as with all communication not everything can be spelled out with exactitude all the time—far from it. By drawing out an additional distinction between… Read More »
- U. Chicago Law Review
- 22 February 2010
- Law Review Article
Protect Us, Lord, from Richard Epstein
Jonah Gelbach & Lesley Wexler & Jonathan Klick
This article is a response to an earlier posted piece by Richard Epstein: Protect Us, Lord, from Title VII: A Response to Gelbach, Klick, and Wexler.
We thank Richard Epstein for commenting on our online Article. He brings a unique perspective to the field of employment discrimination and pushes other scholars… Read More »
- N.Y.U. Law Review
- 15 February 2010
- Law Review Article
The Rights of Immigrants: An Optimal Contract Framework
Adam B. Cox & Eric A. Posner
It is bedrock policy that the government can treat citizens and noncitizens differently. Virtually no one believes that noncitizens should have the right to vote or to run for office. Many noncitizens—including tourists, business people, and the spouses of certain visa holders—do not even have the right to work or… Read More »
- N.Y.U. Law Review
- 12 February 2010
- Law Review Note
Paying-To-Play in Securities Class Actions: A Look at Lawyers’ Campaign Contributions
Drew T. Johnson-Skinner
Congress enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) to reduce plaintiffs’ lawyers’ influence in securities class actions. The PSLRA’s presumption that the class member with the largest financial interest would be named lead plaintiff was meant to ensure that the class, not a law firm, would be… Read More »
- Stanford Law Review
- 10 February 2010
- Law Review Article
Nonlethal Self-Defense, (Almost Entirely) Nonlethal Weapons, and the Rights to Keep and Bear Arms and Defend Life
Eugene Volokh - UCLA School of Law
Owning a stun gun or Taser is a crime in seven states and several cities. Carrying irritant sprays, such as pepper spray or Mace, is probably illegal in several jurisdictions. Even possessing irritant sprays at home is illegal in Massachusetts if you’re not a citizen.
Yet in most of these… Read More »