Removing Categorical Constraints on Equal Employment Opportunities and Anti-Discrimination Protections

It has been the historical tendency of anti-discrimination law to use categories to define protected classes of people. This Article challenges the categorical approach and seeks to change that limited framework. This Article focuses on the flaws with Title VII\u27s categorical approach and discusses why there is a desperate need for change to combat the different types and targets of workplace discrimination today, focusing on the transgender community as one example. After discussing the current framework and operation of Title VII, this Article analyzes the insurmountable flaws inherent in the categorical approach to anti-discrimination law, and specifically considers Title VII\u27s failures to the transgender community as exhibited by case precedents. Then, this Article refutes the categorical approach and proposes a de-categorized reformulation of Title VII, a concept that, to the Author\u27s knowledge, has never before been proposed. This new category-less approach would replace relevant parts of Title VII\u27s text with language focusing on an individual\u27s objective qualifications for employment. Under this new proposal, the determination of whether that individual is the most qualified for the job is the key question, and employment decisions based on factors other than job qualifications are strictly prohibited. The culmination is the Employment Qualifications Approach ( EQA ). Penultimately, this Article addresses the possible benefits and drawbacks that might attend implementation of the EQA. Finally, this Article asserts that the EQA is the best hope and means by which to afford currently unprotected employees, including transgender persons, equal employment opportunities and non-discrimination protections through the law

Emphasizing Substance: Making the Case for a Shift in Political Speech Jurisprudence

Political speech is vital to a functioning democracy and is highly protected. That much is hardly disputed. What courts, legal scholars, and those seeking to convey a political message do dispute is how political speech should be identified and protected, and who should decide what constitutes political speech. This Note looks at the history of political speech doctrine and critiques two intent-based approaches that have been proposed by First Amendment scholars to define political speech. This Note proposes a solution to many problems inherent in defining, identifying, and protecting political speech within intent-based frameworks, arguing that focusing on intent creates a distinction without a difference and leads to uneven results in similar situations. The proposed solution, which I term the Substance-based Political Contribution Approach, focuses on the substance of the speech and the objective contribution it makes to political discourse, rather than focusing solely on the intent of the speaker or actor. This approach finds support in history and precedent, and is based on the Supreme Court\u27s recent decision in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life. An objective approach emphasizing substance rather than intent, such as the Substance-based Political Contribution Approach, will more effectively consider and evaluate free speech rights and First Amendment concerns, providing greater determinacy, preventing unequal results in similar instances of speech or action, and protecting a greater proportion of expressive conduct, to the benefit of all

Emphasizing Substance: Making the Case for a Shift in Political Speech Jurisprudence

Political speech is vital to a functioning democracy and is highly protected. That much is hardly disputed. What courts, legal scholars, and those seeking to convey a political message do dispute is how political speech should be identified and protected, and who should decide what constitutes political speech. This Note looks at the history of political speech doctrine and critiques two intent-based approaches that have been proposed by First Amendment scholars to define political speech. This Note proposes a solution to many problems inherent in defining, identifying, and protecting political speech within intent-based frameworks, arguing that focusing on intent creates a distinction without a difference and leads to uneven results in similar situations. The proposed solution, which I term the Substance-based Political Contribution Approach, focuses on the substance of the speech and the objective contribution it makes to political discourse, rather than focusing solely on the intent of the speaker or actor. This approach finds support in history and precedent, and is based on the Supreme Court\u27s recent decision in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life. An objective approach emphasizing substance rather than intent, such as the Substance-based Political Contribution Approach, will more effectively consider and evaluate free speech rights and First Amendment concerns, providing greater determinacy, preventing unequal results in similar instances of speech or action, and protecting a greater proportion of expressive conduct, to the benefit of all

Three-dimensional potential vorticity structures for extreme precipitation events on the convective scale

Three-dimensional potential vorticity (PV) structures on the convective scale during extreme precipitation events are investigated. Using the high resolution COSMO-REA2 data set, 3D composites of the PV, with and without Coriolis parameter and related variables, are evaluated for different classes of precipitation intensity. The development of a significant horizontal dipole structure in the immediate vicinity of the precipitation maximum and the updraft can be explained by the twisting term in the vorticity equation. This is because the vorticity equation is proportional to the PV equation for strong convective processes. This theoretical is important on the convective scale without the consideration of the Coriolis effect, which is a typical characteristic on the synoptic scale. In accordance to previous studies, the horizontal PV dipole is statistically confirmed by 3D composites of the PV and corresponding variables. We show that the dipole structures are especially distinct for the relative PV without Coriolis parameter and the relative vorticity. On the convective scale, the thermodynamical sources and sinks of the potential vorticity indicate the diabatic processes that are related to conservative vortex dynamics via the proportionality of the diabatic heating and the vertical velocity. This work confirms that the PV equation is an important tool in atmospheric dynamics that unifies the thermodynamical processes as well as the dynamical processes into one scalar

Reference Distorted Prices

I show that when consumers (mis)perceive prices relative to reference prices, budgets turn out to be soft, prices tend to be lower and the average quality of goods sold decreases. These observations provide explanations for decentralized purchase decisions, for people being happy with a purchase even when they have paid their evaluation, and for why trade might affect high quality local firms 'unfairly'

Decision by sampling

We present a theory of decision by sampling (DbS) in which, in contrast with traditional models, there are no underlying psychoeconomic scales. Instead, we assume that an attribute’s subjective value is constructed from a series of binary, ordinal comparisons to a sample of attribute values drawn from memory and is its rank within the sample. We assume that the sample reflects both the immediate distribution of attribute values from the current decision’s context and also the background, real-world distribution of attribute values. DbS accounts for concave utility functions; losses looming larger than gains; hyperbolic temporal discounting; and the overestimation of small probabilities and the underestimation of large probabilities