Civil Rights Law

“I Am Cait,” But It’s None of Your Business: The Problem of Invasive Transgender Policies and a Fourth Amendment Solution

Written by: Elise Holtzman

Abstract Transgender people constitute a distinct minority with unique legal battles. There is a widespread societal misunderstanding of what it means to be transgender that results in treating the transgender community the same as their lesbian, gay, and members of bisexual counterparts. This misunderstanding is even more prevalent in the legal context, resulting in a […]

When Girls Play With G.I. Joes and Boys Play With Barbies: The Path to Gender Reassignment in Minors

Written by: Nicole Burt

Abstract Currently, the process of gender reassignment in minors requires parental consent and the approval of a mental-health counselor. The actual treatment can begin with puberty blockers—which stall the beginnings of puberty—followed by hormone injections to transform the minor into the requested gender. The hormone injections are thought to have irreversible features, but the effects […]

Iesha S. Nunes, "Hands Up, Don't Shoot": Police Misconduct and the Need for Body Cameras

Abstract The 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri is probably the most notable of the many recent cases in the media involving police officers’ use of excessive force. After Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Brown, varying accounts of what transpired between the two men surfaced. Officer Wilson claimed he was defending himself […]

Daniel J. DiMatteo, To Enforce a Privacy Right: The Sovereign Immunity Canon and the Privacy Act's Civil Remedies Provision After Cooper

In 2005, a joint investigation between separate government agencies revealed that Stanmore Cooper, a pilot, failed to disclose to the Federal Aviation Administration that he was HIV positive. Cooper sued the agencies in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming that they violated the Privacy Act by disclosing his medical records to one another without […]

Camilla Cohen, Goodyear Dunlop's Failed Attempt to Refine the Scope of General Personal Jurisdiction

In first-year civil procedure, students spend a great deal of time parsing an “answer” to a deceptively simple question: When may a state exercise its adjudicatory authority over an out-of-state defendant? Since Pennoyer v. Neff, the United States Supreme Court has addressed the issue of personal jurisdiction in at least thirty-five cases spanning three centuries. Following the Court’s decision in International […]

Steven G. Calabresi & Abe Salander, Religion and the Equal Protection Clause: Why the Constitution Requires School Vouchers

Ask anyone whether the Constitution permits discrimination on the basis of religion, and the response will undoubtedly be no. Yet the modern Supreme Court has not recognized that the antidiscrimination command of the Fourteenth Amendment protects religion in the same way that the Amendment protects against discrimination on the basis of race or gender. In […]