scholarly journals Unequal Protection Under the Law: Encoding Racial Disparities for Hispanics in the Case of Smith v. Georgia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Bohon ◽  
Meghan Conely ◽  
Michelle Brown

We interrogate the Georgia Supreme Court ruling in the 2002 capital murder trial of Brandon Smith to illustrate how “fair cross section” implementation in Georgia’s legal system was used to create case law that institutionalized discrimination against Hispanic participation in the jury process. By paying scrupulous attention to legal precedents specifically intended to widen inclusion under the equal protection clause, the Justices’ decision put into place one legal standard for Hispanic participation in the jury process and another standard for all other groups. Using critical race theory, we argue that legal precedents based on distorted perceptions of the composition of the Hispanic community in new destination states, common practices of jury forced balancing and sole reliance on decennial census numbers collided to create case law that unintentionally deprives Georgia’s Hispanics of equal protection under the law and may contribute to the disproportionate presence of racialized minorities and Hispanic youth in the criminal justice system.

Today the Court holds that laws banning same-sex marriage are a form of caste or class legislation that violates the Equal Protection Clause. The Court recognizes the right of same-sex couples to marry under the suspect classification and fundamental rights strands of our equal protection case law. We join the majority opinion holding that equal protection guarantees the right of same-sex couples to marry....


Author(s):  
Gina Clayton ◽  
Georgina Firth ◽  
Caroline Sawyer ◽  
Rowena Moffatt ◽  
Helena Wray

Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. This chapter examines the requirements for refugee status, according to Article 1A of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 1951 and the Refugee Qualification Directive EC 2004/83, referred to as the Qualification Directive. This includes case law on the main concepts in refugee law: well-founded fear, persecution, Convention reason, causal link, and internal relocation. There is a focus on the particular problems in gender-based claims. The chapter considers protection for victims of trafficking, who may go through a parallel process to the asylum system.


Author(s):  
Tyler Lohse

This essay comments on the nature of the language of the law and legal interpretation by exam- ining their effects on their recipients. Two forms of philosophy of law are examined, legal positiv- ism and teleological interpretive theory, which are then applied to their specific manifestations in literature and case law, both relating to antebellum slave law. In these cases, the slave sustains civil death under the law, permissible by means of these legal interpretive strategies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuks Okpaluba

‘Accountability’ is one of the democratic values entrenched in the Constitution of South Africa, 1996. It is a value recognised throughout the Constitution and imposed upon the law-making organs of state, the Executive, the Judiciary and all public functionaries. This constitutional imperative is given pride of place among the other founding values: equality before the law, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution. This study therefore sets out to investigate how the courts have grappled with the interpretation and application of the principle of accountability, the starting point being the relationship between accountability and judicial review. Therefore, in the exercise of its judicial review power, a court may enquire whether the failure of a public functionary to comply with a constitutional duty of accountability renders the decision made illegal, irrational or unreasonable. One of the many facets of the principle of accountability upon which this article dwells is to ascertain how the courts have deployed that expression in making the state and its agencies liable for the delictual wrongs committed against an individual in vindication of a breach of the individual’s constitutional right in the course of performing a public duty. Here, accountability and breach of public duty; the liability of the state for detaining illegal immigrants contrary to the prescripts of the law; the vicarious liability of the state for the criminal acts of the police and other law-enforcement officers (as in police rape cases and misuse of official firearms by police officers), and the liability of the state for delictual conduct in the context of public procurement are discussed. Having carefully analysed the available case law, this article concludes that no public functionary can brush aside the duty of accountability wherever it is imposed without being in breach of a vital constitutional mandate. Further, it is the constitutional duty of the courts, when called upon, to declare such act or conduct an infringement of the Constitution.


Author(s):  
Ly Tayseng

This chapter gives an overview of the law on contract formation and third party beneficiaries in Cambodia. Much of the discussion is tentative since the new Cambodian Civil Code only entered into force from 21 December 2011 and there is little case law and academic writing fleshing out its provisions. The Code owes much to the Japanese Civil Code of 1898 and, like the latter, does not have a requirement of consideration and seldom imposes formal requirements but there are a few statutory exceptions from the principle of freedom from form. For a binding contract, the agreement of the parties is required and the offer must be made with the intention to create a legally binding obligation and becomes effective once it reaches the offeree. The new Code explicitly provides that the parties to the contract may agree to confer a right arising under the contract upon a third party. This right accrues directly from their agreement; it is not required that the third party declare its intention to accept the right.


Author(s):  
Masami Okino

This chapter discusses the law on third party beneficiaries in Japan; mostly characterized by adherence to the German model that still bears an imprint on Japanese contract law. Thus, there is neither a doctrine of consideration nor any other justification for a general doctrine of privity, and contracts for the benefit of third parties are generally enforceable as a matter of course. Whether an enforceable right on the part of a third party is created is simply a matter of interpretation of the contract which is always made on a case-by-case analysis but there are a number of typical scenarios where the courts normally find the existence (or non-existence) of a contract for the benefit of a third party. In the recent debate on reform of Japanese contract law, wide-ranging suggestions were made for revision of the provisions on contracts for the benefit of third parties in the Japanese Civil Code. However, it turned out that reform in this area was confined to a very limited codification of established case law.


Author(s):  
Aruna Nair

This chapter examines the law governing the availability of claims to traceable proceeds. It argues that the language used in the case law—which uses the terminology of property rights and of fiduciary relationships—cannot fully explain the law, since such claims are often available in the absence of fiduciary duties and are not available to holders of many types of property right. It argues that such claims instead presuppose a relationship of ‘control of assets’: where the defendant has a legal power to deal with some asset, correlating to a vulnerability to a loss of rights in that asset on the part of the claimant, and coupled with a duty not to exercise the power. It argues that relationships that have this formal structure also share normative characteristics that justify the subordination of defendant autonomy that has been shown to be at the heart of the tracing concept.


2021 ◽  
pp. 138826272110049
Author(s):  
Victoria E. Hooton

The role of proportionality and individual assessments in EU residency and welfare access cases has changed significantly over the course of the last decade. This article demonstrates how a search for certainty and efficiency in this area of EU law has created greater uncertainty, more legal hurdles for citizens, and less consistency in decision-making at the national level. UK case law illustrates the difficulty faced by national authorities when interpreting and applying the rules relating to welfare access and proportionality. Ultimately, the law lacks the consistency and transparency that recent CJEU case law seeks to obtain, raising the question of whether the shift from the Court's previous, more flexible, case-by-case approach was desirable after all.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document