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“Entitled”: Why Victims of Sex Discrimination Should Be Entitled to Seek Relief Under Title VII and Title IX
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The Power to Exclude and the Power to Expel
Get PDFProperty laws have far-reaching implications for the way people live and the opportunities they and their children will have. They also have important consequences for property developers and businesses, both large and small. It is not surprising, therefore, that modern developments in property law have been so strongly influenced by political pressures. Unfortunately, those with the most economic resources and political power have had the most telling influences on the way property laws have developed in the United States during the twentieth century. This article introduces a normal form game – I call it the “Not-In-My-Backyard Game” – to illustrate the motivations of various parties with interests in the direction of American property law. As the analysis indicates, affluent residents and upscale businesses owners have incentives to pressure suburban governments for zoning regulations that effectively exclude less affluent residents from their neighborhoods. Affluent residents and corporations who want to relocate into urban neighborhoods have incentives to pressure city governments to use eminent domain to facilitate urban redevelopment projects, and the takings often effectively expel many less affluent residents and smaller businesses from their neighborhoods. The analysis accords with the historical evidence. In the early twentieth century suburban governments began to use zoning ordinances to exclude poor and less affluent residents from suburban neighborhoods. Around the middle of the twentieth century, city governments began to use takings to effectively expel less affluent residents and smaller businesses from urban neighborhoods. The United States Supreme Court upheld the powers of local governments to exclude and expel, and state courts acquiesced to them. The consequence has been high and rising land prices, housing unaffordability, homelessness, and the perpetuation of the de facto segregation of the American people by income, wealth, race, ethnicity, religion, and national origin
Lessons from a Daunting Malpractice Event
No full textA case-based discussion about the failure to perform a cesarean delivery
Recognizing X : A Comparative Analysis of the California Gender Recognition Act--Identifying the Limitations and Conceptualizing Possible Solutions
Get PDFSex Harassment Training Must Change: The Case for Legal Incentives for Transformative Education and Prevention
Get PDFIn the wake of the #MeToo moment, employers, legislators, and human resources professionals have defaulted to a familiar solution to what seems like an epidemic of workplace harassment: mandatory sex harassment training. The chosen antidote, however, begs an important question that this author posed over 15 years ago: Does sex harassment training actually prevent harassment? My review of the social science research in 2001 revealed no convincing evidence that sex harassment training curbs harassment. In fact, the scant research available indicated that training, as typically conducted in American workplaces, may backfire, triggering stereotypes about women and people of color, and creating resentments. In light of the empirical evidence, this author decried a developing jurisprudence of education and prevention in employment discrimination law that inoculated against liability those employers who provided harassment and diversity training.
This essay updates that research, with particular focus on the 2016 report published by the co-chairs of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, which failed to conclude that training prevents harassment. The essay reviews suggested changes in training protocols and notes that articles in the popular press questioning the efficacy of harassment training are now common. It argues that the ethos of training and prevention built into sex harassment law has promoted a cosmetic rather than a substantive solution to a serious impediment to equal employment opportunity. The confluence of the #MeToo movement, an important government report with counterintuitive conclusions about training efficacy, and greatly altered public perceptions about harassment prevention presents an opportunity for courts to reevaluate legal doctrines that make training relevant to discrimination claims. The essay concludes that law can incentivize effective interventions for harassment and actual cultural change by refusing to allow training to function as a shield for liability. Creating doctrinal incentives for transformative prevention efforts can strengthen the impact of equal employment opportunity law and make harassment a rare, rather than everyday, phenomenon
