Judicial Diversity After Shelby County v. Holder

In 2014, voters in ten of the fifteen states previously covered by the Voting Rights Act ( VRA ) preclearance formula-including six of the nine states covered in their entirety-will go to the polls to elect or retain state supreme court justices. Yet despite the endemic underrepresentation of minorities on state benches and the judiciary\u27s traditional role in fighting discrimination, scholars have seemingly paid little attention to how Shelby County v. Holder\u27s suspension of the coverage formula in section 4(b) has left racial minorities vulnerable to retrogressive changes to judicial-election laws. The first election year following Shelby County thus provides a compelling opportunity to assess the VRA\u27s ongoing role in the fight to diversify state benches

Day Care: A Spectrum of Issues and Policy Options

Currently, debates about the merits of one form or another of day care frequently miss some significant issues and hence some of the important policy options may be ruled out or in for the wrong reasons. Here, child day care is layed on a spectrum one end of which offers maximum market freedom in the form of income redistribution, a negative income tax, children\u27s allowance, or other transfer assistance, to be spent on the market if so desired for day care services, and on the other end of the spectrum a system of comprehensive child day care centers. In between are various mixtures of the two and various special blends like voucher systems. Hopefully, by so arraying the issues and discussing them certain similarities between antipoverty and child care policy become evident and certain problems of transfers in cash or provision in kind can be clarified. Various day care policy options are discussed in relationship to assumptions that they make about cost, theories of child development, definitions of universality, the preference of parents, returns to scale, economic rationality, market responsiveness, quality, consumer democracy, and citizen control. Finally three central issues which lie outside of this analysis, freedom, political environment, and the target group to whom day care should be directed are discussed. In this discussion the point is made that day care is best conceived of as directed toward mothers not toward children or families. It is the mother who is most in need of the benefit of day care policy most of the time and to whom reasonable policy of day care should be directed. This consideration quite alters what seem fairly reasonable conclusions in favor of market day care in favor of day care by voucher or by direct service

Student Evaluation of Law Teaching

So it is that at law schools today no one is particularly happy with their questionnaire and student/facility committees continue to be engaged intermittently in trying to do something about it. Everyone agrees that evaluation ought to be done, but few are satisfied that it is now being done properly, or meaningfully. It was into this thicket that the Teaching Methods Section of the Association of American Law Schools set out recently to collect data in the hope that it might lead to a recommended teacher evaluation questionnaire

Understanding Admissibility of Prior Bad Acts: A Diagrammatic Approach

One of the most misunderstood areas of evidence in criminal cases is the admissibility of a defendant\u27s prior bad acts. This article discusses both the practical and theoretical perspectives of prior bad acts and presents a diagram of the different admissibility theories. This visual aid is a great step forward in simplifying this problematic area

Judicial Diversity After Shelby County v. Holder

In 2014, voters in ten of the fifteen states previously covered by the Voting Rights Act ( VRA ) preclearance formula-including six of the nine states covered in their entirety-will go to the polls to elect or retain state supreme court justices. Yet despite the endemic underrepresentation of minorities on state benches and the judiciary\u27s traditional role in fighting discrimination, scholars have seemingly paid little attention to how Shelby County v. Holder\u27s suspension of the coverage formula in section 4(b) has left racial minorities vulnerable to retrogressive changes to judicial-election laws. The first election year following Shelby County thus provides a compelling opportunity to assess the VRA\u27s ongoing role in the fight to diversify state benches

Five plays

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