Are refusals to provide services for same-sex weddings anti-gay discrimination? The answer, the Supreme Court seems to say, is “no.” Last Term in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the Court held that the Constitution’s Free Speech Clause granted a web designer the right to refuse same-sex wedding services. In so doing, the Court also appeared to opine that the refusal involved no anti-gay discrimination.
Scholarship has yet to explore...
Boys and men in all racial and ethnic groups and across most socioeconomic groups are struggling on many fronts, including education, employment, physical and mental health, and social integration. In these areas and more, boys and men are much worse off than they were only a few decades ago. The crisis—which is concentrated among men without college degrees—is rooted in large-scale structural changes to the economy that have decimated jobs...
Across the economy, monopolists of all kinds are engaged in “conditional dealing.” This is the practice of unilaterally offering benefits and penalties, or bribes and threats, to induce trading partners to refrain from competing against the monopolist or from dealing with its rivals. Pharma giants offer discounts conditioned on “loyalty,” agricultural monopolists impose “exit penalties” for switching to rivals, and social networks offer...
Commentators posit that reducing domestic abuse requires an increase in prosecutions and a decrease in criminal reform efforts. The “abuser” is as set a role as the “sympathetic victim,” with little room to examine how both may exist simultaneously within an individual. A deeper look into what occurs for survivors reveals that legal discourse often overlooks and scrutinizes Black women’s abuse, particularly with Black women who exist...
Engaging with the sociocultural dimensions of race and racism across U.S. history is essential when creating, critiquing, and reforming the law. Building on Robin West’s exploration of the law and culture movement, this Piece introduces a novel “hermeneutic” project that reads Black American culture throughout U.S. history to gain critical insights into the nature and function of law in America. Black American culture, deeply rooted in the...
The criminal and immigration systems in the United States have increasingly overlapped, adversely affecting noncitizens even distantly involved in criminal activity. Individuals without legal status who have engaged significantly with a criminal organization can cooperate with law enforcement in exchange for formal immigration benefits. There are no formal protections, however, for individuals residing in the country without legal status who have...
What kinds of reasons should matter in choosing an approach to constitutional or legal interpretation? Scholars offer different types of reasons for their theories of interpretation: conceptual, linguistic, normative, legal, institutional, and reasons based on theories of law. This Article argues that normative reasons, and only normative reasons, can justify interpretive choice. This is the “normative choice thesis.” This Article formulates...
Sexuality is integral to the human experience. Yet choices related to sexuality—sex, intimate relationships, marriage, pleasure, and childbearing—are often controlled for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Discourse on sexuality primarily focuses on acts of sexual violence against this community, emphasizing a victim–perpetrator binary. This binary view directs legal and policy efforts to ameliorate this sexual violence,...
The Supreme Court has adopted divergent interpretations of the Equal Protection Clause as applied to race and redistricting. Vote dilution doctrine requires mapmakers to consider race to ensure that racial minorities are not packed or cracked. Congress, moreover, has embraced vote dilution doctrine in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. By contrast, racial gerrymandering doctrine triggers strict scrutiny if mapmakers subordinate traditional redistricting...
This Piece operates at the intersection of comparative environmental law and legal history. It introduces a novel distinction between two paradigms of technology-based pollution standards: the first, uniform across all places and environmental conditions, and the second, tailored to local environmental and economic circumstances. It then compares the air pollution regimes of the United States and the European Union with an eye to the relative place...