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Coworker Retaliation in the #MeToo Era
Get PDFFor over a year now, the #MeToo movement has spread like wildfire, galvanizing feminist legal scholars to reconsider how law should respond to sexual harassment in the workplace and to assess the potential for #MeToo to change workplace culture. In the feminist legal scholarship considering #MeToo to date, less attention has been paid to how the movement and its fallout intersect with retaliation law than to the movement’s incongruity with the substantive law of sexual harassment. Given that the fear of retaliation is a primary reason for not confronting sexual harassment, retaliation law necessarily plays an outsized role in shaping responses to sexual harassment. This Article focuses on retaliation as a key site of inquiry in exploring the transformative potential of #MeToo
Representing Children in Dependency and Family Court: Beyond the Law
No full textRepresenting Children in Dependency and Family Court: Beyond the Law is a unique family law resource that focuses on the real-world issues that are central for working with child clients in dependency and family court settings. The authors – a board-certified psychologist who has worked with children since the mid-1980s, and an attorney who almost exclusively represents children in dependency court matters – recognize that professionals who represent children in these settings must understand all aspects of the case: the children themselves, the system in which they are engaged, the services available to them, the schools they attend, their ethnic and cultural issues, their special needs, the legal issues they face outside of family and juvenile courts, and more. In addition, lawyers need to take into account the diverse issues faced by the parents with whom they live. While some children\u27s representatives work exclusively in this area and want to delve more deeply into the issues of family dynamics examined in this book, this is also a useful resource for those who work with children\u27s cases less frequently or are just beginning in the area and have had limited or no exposure to these issues. This clearly written and logical guide is an informed resource accessible to professionals at any level of experience.https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/fac_books/1110/thumbnail.jp
A Century in the Making: The Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Origins of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment
Get PDFThe sixteen words in the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment have their roots in England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–89. This Article traces the historical events that initially gave rise to the prohibitions against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments. Those three proscriptions can be found in the English Declaration of Rights and in its statutory counterpart, the English Bill of Rights. In particular, the Article describes the legal cases and draconian punishments during the Stuart dynasty that led English and Scottish parliamentarians to insist on protections against cruelty and excessive governmental actions. In describing the grotesque punishments of Titus Oates and others during the reign of King James II, the Article sheds light on the origins of the language of Section 10 of the English Bill of Rights. That language became a model for similarly worded provisions in early American constitutions and declarations of rights, including the Virginia Declaration of Rights, that were linguistic forerunners of the Eighth Amendment. The U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, ratified in 1791, became the law of the land more than 100 years after the Glorious Revolution, though that provision of the U.S. Bill of Rights was shaped by the Enlightenment as well as by early American understandings of English law and custom. The Article describes the seventeenthcentury origins of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions and the Enlightenment’s impact on eighteenth-century thinkers, while highlighting how existing American prohibitions against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments are now understood to bar acts inconsistent with “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” The Article concludes by outlining the implications of the Eighth Amendment’s history for modern American jurisprudence. In doing so, it provides a critique of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Eighth Amendment decision in Bucklew v. Precythe
Menstrual Justice
Get PDFMenstrual injustice is the oppression of menstruators, women, girls, transgender men and boys, and nonbinary persons, simply because they menstruate. Acts of menstrual injustice occur every day in the United States. The narrative of menstruation is that it is a taboo, shameful, and that menstruators are dirty, impure, even dangerous. Menstruation has been shunned generally from public discourse as a result. This narrative negatively impacts menstruators. Menstruators are essentialized as women, often of means, excluding transgender men and nonbinary persons, and menstruators who experience poverty or are young. Menstruating workers, especially low-wage workers, are harassed, penalized, or fired for heavy bleeding and suffering from pain. Menstruators are subjected to indignities and control. Society expects menstruators to be solely and invisibly responsible for their menstruation without recognizing it as part of the necessary reproductive life cycle. Menstruators suffer economic disadvantage. They also suffer health disadvantages due to inadequate health research.By analyzing the pervasiveness and variety of acts of menstrual injustice, this Article argues that menstrual injustice is another example of structural intersectionality. Menstrual injustice is not merely the operation of patriarchy, the structural oppression of women, but rather structural intersectionality, the overlapping forms of domination such as patriarchy, white supremacy, transphobia, classism, and ableism. Menstrual injustice is structural intersectionality because it is the manifestation of oppressive power that affects different persons based upon their location, such as those at the intersection of gender and age, as seen by menstrual injustices toward school girls; those at the intersection of gender and gender identity, as seen by the menstrual injustices toward transgender males and nonbinary persons who menstruate but are often excluded as menstruators; and those at the intersection of gender, race, class, and carceral status, as seen by the menstrual injustice towards menstruators who are incarcerated and are disproportionately of color and low income.But menstrual injustice has not received nearly enough attention. Lawyers, legislators, and advocates have started addressing some of these injustices. This Article looks at the good work that has been done and suggests ways in which future work can continue to address all menstrual injustices. This Article argues that menstrual injustice and actions to counter it should be examined through the lens of structural intersectionality. By using this lens, the focus can include the unequal treatment of women and men. Arguments against such things as the lack of menstrual products and the so called “tampon tax” include this focus as one argument in favor of change. In addition, by using this lens, the focus also can be on menstrual injustice as the operation of “overlapping systems of gender, race, and class [as well as other forms of oppression].” This lens brings into focus the essentialization, harassment, discrimination, insults and indignities, and economic and health disadvantage that impacts the wide array of menstruators in different ways. This Article suggests that by using the lens of structural intersectionality and building from the strengths of the intersectionality of menstruators, society can identify more menstrual injustices and build towards menstrual justice more effectively
The Future of Clinical Legal Scholarship
Get PDFThe legal academy is questioning the future of legal scholarship given its costs and perceived disconnect from law practice. However, the future of clinical legal scholarship is typically left out of these debates, although it offers a powerful rejoinder to these recurring critiques – it is deeply engaged with real-world problems, and it has demonstrable impacts. In addition, clinical scholars are an overlooked conduit for disseminating scholarship outside the ivory tower. Doctrinal faculty are unaware how much clinical faculty can ensure their work has an impact beyond SSRN citation counts. As law schools consider how to implement the new accreditation requirement that students take at least six credits of experiential education, scholarship should be part of the calculus. This Essay argues that at this inflection point for legal education, choosing to promote, rather than to further degrade, structures to support clinical scholarship allows the academy to not only ensure quality legal education that graduates practice ready lawyers, but also to support engaged scholarship and enhance the scholarly mission of law schools. In short, the future of legal scholarship and the goals of experiential education are intertwined and hinge on a robust commitment to clinical faculty with security of position who write pursuant to an expansive definition of scholarship
Show Me the Money
No full textShould college athletes be paid? ft. Del. Brooke Lierman, UB Law Prof. Dionne L. Koller, and Terps Football Starting Center Ellis McKennie. The pod opens with a quick synopsis of the state of affairs for Division I athletes\u27 ability to be paid. Prof. Koller & Ellis break it down from both a legal and player\u27s perspective (4:00). Del. Lierman talks about her work on a bill to give student athletes the ability to unionize. The legislation was filed in response to the tragic death of Jordan McNair who died during a University of MD football practice, and would give players an independent representative outside of the Athletic Department and give them the ability to bargain for wages (11:30). The conversation then turns to California\u27s controversial decision to pass statewide legislation allowing players to sign endorsement deals and hire agents (20:50). Is Maryland ready to follow? Will Title IX be impacted and would women athletes be compensated fairly (30:30)? The three discuss the risks associated with big time college athletics and the truth about student athletes attending four year universities because they do not have viable semi-pro/developmental league options (33:35). Ellis explains what the NCAA\u27s new cost of attendance stipend is for Power 5 Conference athletes(40:45). Del. Lierman says she will renew her push to create laws to fix student-athlete compensation in next year\u27s legislative session (45:00). The episode closes with a discussion on the ever-expanding post seasons for D1 athletes (47:20)
State Report Cards: Grading Criminal Record Relief Laws for Survivors of Human Trafficking
Get PDFMany survivors of human trafficking exploited in the commercial sex industry or other labor sectors have been arrested for offenses stemming from their victimization. Resulting criminal records – both arrest and court documents – then follow survivors and create barriers that impact their independence, stability, and safety. In 2010, New York became the first state to allow trafficking survivors to clear certain charges from their criminal records. In the years since, almost every state has enacted some form of criminal record relief for trafficking survivors. However, these laws vary greatly. Many are too limited to offer meaningful relief. Others include conditions that make relief inaccessible. This report analyzes existing state criminal record relief laws for survivors of human trafficking, grades the laws, and recommends best practices. The grading rubric was designed by researchers and practitioners and informed by the experiences of criminalized survivors of trafficking. The resulting “report cards” attempt to codify an ideal criminal record relief law for trafficking survivors. The hope is that this framework will serve as a blueprint for policymakers and advocates as to how best to draft, amend, or implement state law and that this will lead t