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Lightening the (Cognitive) Load: Strategies to Combat Stereotype Threat and Imposter Syndrome in Law School Learning
No full textStudents who fall into historically underrepresented populations at law schools face additional cognitive burdens that can affect their ability to learn and retain information as easily as some of their classmates. This session will discuss the cognitive effects of impostor syndrome and stereotype threat experienced by many groups of law students and give practical suggestions for how to help these students—as well as all of their colleagues—learn more effectively. Attendees will have an opportunity to put several of these practical suggestions into practice during the session
Transgender Students and the First Amendment
No full textSuppose a transgender child experiences teasing and harassment from their classmates, whose hostile reactions interrupt the school day. School administrators tell the transgender child that, in order to allow educational activities to continue, they must dress in more gender-neutral clothing, ideally cionsistent with the sex they were assigned at birth. The student\u27s parents protest, arguing that their child\u27s clothing is speech that expresses their gender identity. The school points to Tinker v. Des Moines, allowing suppression of student speech where it creates a material disruption, as well as recent legislation characterizing discussion of gender identity as lewd and obscene.
This Article is the first analyis to map out and counter both obscenity and material disruption as justifications to limit gender-identity speech. Although not all clothing choices made by students are symbolic speech, gender presentation is the type of intentional and cognizable message that is protected under the First Amendment. Comprehensive examination of student speech cases demonstrates that current attempts to define gender identity as an inappropriately sexualized topic for children are inconsistent with expsting law. Finally, the Article illustrates for the first time how schools can create a heckler\u27s veto by teaching students that the speech of transgender students is abnormal. The Article proposes an analytical revision that takes the schools\u27 role into account, reconciles the conflict between the heckler\u27s veto doctrine and Tinker\u27s material disruption test, and strengthens protection of all controversial speech
Fights Over Continuity - In Life and Law
No full textWhat is the whole: a river or that river and its tributaries? There is no “natural” answer to the question, only so many answers as there are reasons for asking. Lately, the Clean Water Act has been the captive of such diversions in our Supreme Court’s agenda. Changing it will not free it from that captivity. For whatever reforms we choose could still provide boundless opportunities for frustration in questions like the above. If the Court is as eager to cause that frustration as it has appeared lately, maybe we should help the Court to its fight with this iconic statute. Continuity is everywhere in life, but it is fleeting in law. For tribunals trading on the strength and clarity of reasons that have neither strength nor clarity, it is probably even more so. In a race against time like the Chesapeake Bay’s restoration, success may turn on how fast such an agent can be expelled from the fray. And that turns on how quickly more Americans recognize judges who have ceased judging and begun, instead, to dictate
Juries and Tax: The Effect of Income Taxation on Tort Damages
No full textIn some shape or form, most tort damages for personal injuries have been excluded from federal income taxation since 1919. Despite this rule having celebrated its 100th birthday, the tax policy justification for the exclusion eludes consensus. Whether the policy is justified or not, the exclusion raises two other issues: should compensatory damage awards reflect non-taxability, and should juries be informed about tax treatment when determining awards? Like the disagreement over policy justifications for the exclusion, states are not in accord on their damage rule or approach to jury instructions.
Proponents of a rule that awards should reflect taxation and informing the jury of the tax exclusion stress compensation. Without this rule and information, juries may mistakenly believe that they must inflate damages to account for taxes, thereby handing the plaintiff a windfall. Opponents argue that awards should not reflect taxation and that providing exclusion information unnecessarily complicates trial and benefits the tortfeasor by lowering damage awards. What damages rule should a state adopt, and what should a court do to implement the rule when the defendant requests an instruction informing the jury that some damages are excluded from federal income tax?
We revisit the issue of the taxation of damages and review the policy justifications that have been offered to justify the current exclusion. We then argue that the efficient rule is to measure damages by the gross harm caused by the tortfeasor. To determine how best to implement that rule, we conducted an experiment designed to determine the effects of tax jury instructions. Our conclusion is that the optimal damages rule is best implemented by giving no jury instructions on damages. Perhaps surprisingly, that is our conclusion even if tax law changed to make damages taxable. Even if a jurisdiction were to adopt an inefficient rule of damages, our experiment offers guidance on the approach to jury instructions that would best implement the rule