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This student-focused treatise provides a concise, accessible, comprehensive, and readable overview of the doctrine, policy, history, and theory of civil rights and constitutional litigation under Section 1983 and its Bivens federal counterpart. The book works for dedicated civil rights courses and larger federal courts classes; it can function as a primary assignment, as an assigned or recommended case and statutory supplement to a casebook or case materials, and as a supplemental study guide for students wanting additional background, context, and synthesis of the material. The third edition: Covers all aspects of civil rights and constitutional litigation, including the history of civil rights legislation in the United States; the substantive elements of Section 1983 and Bivens causes of action; individual immunity defenses; governmental liability and immunity; procedural and jurisdictional hurdles; abstention; and remedies. Explores the doctrinal areas that have undergone substantial changes or challenges since the prior edition, including the retraction of Bivens; the extension, criticism, and cross-ideological calls for reform of qualified immunity; the narrowing of abstention; debates over the scope of injunctive relief; and the Supreme Court's increasing engagement earlier in constitutional cases. Explores new applications of long-standing doctrines, including controversies over when social-media companies and public officials act under color of state law in controlling who has access to sites and pages. Adds new and expanded "Puzzles" for most topics within the book. These short problems, drawn from news stories, lawsuits, and lower-court decisions, challenge students to work through and apply the doctrine. The book can serve as a primary source for a problem-centered civil rights courses. Includes appendices containing the United States Constitution, Emancipation Proclamation, and selected substantive, jurisdictional, and procedural federal statutes and rules that govern in civil rights and constitutional litigation.
As a white Yale Law School graduate, Meltsner began his career with the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP, working initially under Thurgood Marshall and later under Jack Greenberg. From his vantage point at LDF, Meltsner witnessed and participated in litigation support of the civil rights movement in the South. As the movement shifted north and the fight for desegregation gave way to black-power slogans, Meltsner remained involved with the LDF and later went on to teach public interest practice at Columbia Law School. He watched the move from the high expectations after the Brown v. Board of Education decision to the lows of subsequent resegregation. He recalls his involvement in other civil rights efforts, from the campaigns to abolish capital punishment to Muhammad Ali's legal battle to regain his right to box. Meltsner closes with a chapter that examines the strategic possibilities of the No Child Left Behind mandate. Meltsner brings a personal perspective to this assessment of the hopes, potential, and shifting terrain of public service law. A worthy read. --Vernon Ford Copyright 2006 Booklist.
From the 1930s to the early 1960s civil rights law was made primarily through constitutional litigation. Before Rosa Parks could ignite a Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Supreme Court had to strike down the Alabama law which made segregated bus service required by law; before Martin Luther King could march on Selma to register voters, the Supreme Court had to find unconstitutional the Southern Democratic Party's exclusion of African-Americans; and before the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court had to strike down the laws allowing for the segregation of public graduate schools, colleges, high schools, and grade schools. Making Civil Rights Law provides a chronological narrative history of the legal struggle, led by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, that preceded the political battles for civil rights. Drawing on interviews with Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers, as well as new information about the private deliberations of the Supreme Court, Tushnet tells the dramatic story of how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund led the Court to use the Constitution as an instrument of liberty and justice for all African-Americans. He also offers new insights into how the justices argued among themselves about the historic changes they were to make in American society. Making Civil Rights Law provides an overall picture of the forces involved in civil rights litigation, bringing clarity to the legal reasoning that animated this "Constitutional revolution", and showing how the slow development of doctrine and precedent reflected the overall legal strategy of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP.
Profiles African American lawyers during the era of segregation and the civil rights movement, with an emphasis on the conflicts they felt between their identities as African Americans and their professional identities as lawyers.
The new 5th edition retains the statute-based focus of the original, guiding students through the rules, doctrines, and theories that apply to major litigation under the three generations of primary civil rights statutes (the original statutes, sections 1983, 1981, 1982, and 1985(3), with their emphasis on constitutional litigation; the revolutionary statutes of the 1960's and early 1970's, Title VII, Title VI, the Voting Rights Act, and section 504), and the evolutionary enactments after 1990 (the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Amendments of 1991, and the judicially-limited Violence Against Women Act). The 5th edition continues an emphasis begun in the 4th edition on legal realism and how the statutes respond to or fail to ameliorate real-life problems. The combination of statutory coverage and legal realism allows each professor to choose the topical areas and political viewpoints that he or she wishes to emphasize. In addition to widespread general updating, the new 5th edition significantly expands on prior editions with a new focus on Fourth Amendment litigation post-Scott, several new approaches both substantive and procedural -- to official immunity defenses, and new cases relating to the increasingly fractured sovereign immunity defense. In addition, a significant new sub-section explores the Supreme Court's attempt in the Ricci case to adjust the relation between disparate impact and disparate treatment analyses, highlighting its substantial impact on affirmative action concepts as well. Finally, the new 5th edition also covers the 2008 Amendments to the Americans With Disabilities Act and their significant alteration of the Court's previous attempts to restrict disability litigation. The new edition will also include any new decisions anticipated thro
This book provides a thorough review of multinational human rights litigation in various countries where such litigation has been pursued, predominantly on behalf of victims in the Global South. It covers cases relating to environmental damage, occupational disease, human rights abuses involving complicity with state security, and in the context of supply chains. The volume is edited by Richard Meeran, who pioneered the first series of tort-based multinational parent company cases in the 1990s and whose firm, Leigh Day, has been at the forefront of this area for almost 30 years. Contributions come from highly experienced legal practitioners in the countries in question who have run many of the key ground-breaking cases, and who understand the opportunities and hurdles that arise in practice. They provide their perspectives and insights into the features of the relevant laws, procedures, and practical considerations in their respective legal systems. Chapters address the potential legal remedies that are available; the legal, procedural, and practical obstacles to justice including funding; as well as strategic issues. This developing area of corporate legal accountability has increasingly become an integral part of the field of business and human rights, which has grown significantly in recent decades. This collection is an essential guide to the field.
Strategic human rights litigation (SHRL) is a growing area of international practice yet one that remains relatively under-explored. Around the globe, advocates increasingly resort to national, regional and international courts and bodies 'strategically' to protect and advance human rights. This book provides a framework for understanding SHRL and its contribution to various forms of personal, legal, social, political and cultural change, as well as the many tensions and challenges it gives rise to. It suggests a reframing of how we view the impact of SHRL in its multiple dimensions, both positive and negative. Five detailed case studies, drawn predominantly from the author's own experience, explore litigation in a broad range of contexts (genocide in Guatemala; slavery in Niger; forced disappearance in Argentina; torture and detention in the 'war on terror'; and Palestinian land rights) to reveal the complexity of the role of SHRL in the real world. Ultimately, this book considers how impact analysis might influence the development of more effective litigation strategies in the future.
Despite international conventions and human rights declarations, millions of people have suffered and continue to suffer torture, slavery, or violent deaths, with no remedy or recourse. They have fallen, in essence, “below the law,” outside of law’s protection. Often violated by their own governments, sometimes with support from transnational corporations, or nations benefiting from human rights violations, how can these victims find justice? Lawyers Beyond Borders reveals the inner workings of the advances and retreats in the quest for redress and restoration of human rights for those whom international legal-political systems have failed. The process of justice begins in the US, with a handful of human rights lawyers steeped in the American tradition of advancing civil rights through civil litigation. As the civil rights movement gained traction and an ample supply of lawyers, this small cadre turned their attention toward advancing international human rights, via the US legal system. They sought to build another piece of the rights revolution, this time for survivors of egregious human rights violations in faraway lands. These cases were among the most unlikely to be slated for victory: The abuses occurred abroad; the victims are aliens, usually with few, if any, resources; the perpetrators are politically powerful, resourced, and well connected, often members of governments, militaries, or multinational corporations. The legal and political systems’ structures are mostly stacked against these survivors, many who bear the scars of trauma and terror. Lawyers Beyond Borders is about agency. It is about how, in the face of powerful interests and seemingly insurmountable obstacles—political, psychological, economic, geographical, and physical—a small group of lawyers and survivors navigated a terrain of daunting barriers to begin building, case-by-case, new pathways to justice for those who otherwise would have none.