Gender Equality and Customary Marriage: Bargaining in the Shadow of Post-Apartheid Legal Pluralism

This Report represents the culmination of a year-long project undertaken by the Crowley Program in International Human Rights at the Fordham Law School to study issues surrounding women and customary law marriages in South Africa in light of its international legal commitments. This Report presents the findings of this research effort. Following this introduction, Part I of this Report describes South Africa\u27s international and domestic legal obligations regarding culture and gender equality, particularly with respect to marriage, divorce, and family formation. Part I then sketches two distinct approaches to the tension between customary law and gender equality, both of which may be found in the domestic law regulating the family. Part II evaluates the effectiveness of the two approaches with reference to data collected in the course of several hundred interviews with South African men and women in May and June 2006. Part II also offers tentative conclusions and suggestions for reform

Overinterpreting Law

Overinterpretation has attracted considerable attention in other fields, such as literary studies, science, and rhetoric, but it is undertheorized in law. This Article attempts to initiate a theory of legal overinterpretation by examining the rhetorical nature of excess, the sociological dimensions of roles in team performances, and citation to legal and non-legal sources that have discussed overinterpretation. The Article concludes by positing illustrative categories of potential legal overinterpretation, and providing an examination of ways to minimize legal overinterpretation through a judicious, pragmatic balance between abstract considerations and concrete considerations in law

Data fluidity in DARIAH -- pushing the agenda forward

This paper provides both an update concerning the setting up of the European DARIAH infrastructure and a series of strong action lines related to the development of a data centred strategy for the humanities in the coming years. In particular we tackle various aspect of data management: data hosting, the setting up of a DARIAH seal of approval, the establishment of a charter between cultural heritage institutions and scholars and finally a specific view on certification mechanisms for data

Racing on Two Different Tracks: Using Substantive Due Process to Challenge Tracking in Schools

Tracking is a widespread educational practice where secondary schools divide students into different classes or “tracks” based on their previous achievements and perceived abilities. Tracking produces different levels of classes, from low ability to high ability, based on the theory that students learn better when grouped with others at their own level. However, tracking often segregates students of color and low socioeconomic status into low-tracked classes and these students do not receive the same educational opportunities as white and/or wealthier students. Students and parents have historically challenged tracking structures in their schools using an Equal Protection Clause framework. However, this legal framework does not currently provide much relief for students in schools without a history of intentional discriminatory practices. Alternatively, the Due Process Clause can potentially provide another framework for plaintiffs to challenge tracking. Though the Supreme Court has rejected a fundamental right to education, it has recognized the possibility of a fundamental right to a minimally adequate education. Furthermore, other state constitutions have recognized a fundamental right to education or at least a minimally adequate education. According to the standards that currently govern the doctrine for a minimally adequate education, social science evidence focused on tracking’s impacts shows that this educational practice likely violates that right. Challenging tracking in states that recognize such rights under a substantive due process claim may provide a more effective litigation strategy

Interpretation and the Constraints on International Courts

This paper argues that methodologies of interpretation do not do what they promise – they do not constrain interpretation by providing neutral steps that one can follow in finding out a meaning of a text – but nevertheless do their constraining work by being part of what can be described as the legal practice

The Diversity Distraction: A Critical Comparative Analysis of Discourse in Higher Education Scholarship

This critical literature review investigates how diversity and equity are employed in top-cited higher education scholarship published between 2000 and 2015. No analysis to date has offered such a comparative exploration relative to well-recognized racial disparities in higher education. Findings reveal a divergence with diversity largely attending to affirmative action concerns and equity to analyses of the pursuit of equity in higher education. The article concludes with advocacy for the equity frame because of its presumption of a normative justice-oriented standard and embedded orientation toward inquiry and action, both of which offer greater promise for policy, practice, and research that aim to enhance racial justice in higher education