Optimizing Orientation
In Sexual Reorientation I argued that antidiscrimination law should distinguish between an individual’s general orientation, defined as “the sex toward which the individual is attracted the majority of the time,” and specific orientation, defined as “the sex of the individual’s desired or actual partner(s).” I argued further that where sexual-orientation discrimination is prohibited, individuals whose general [...]
The Death of the Bisexual Saboteur
Professor Glazer offers us, in Sexual Reorientation, an appealing and intuitive way to deal with the difficulty of bisexual identity, an identity that has always fit uneasily and sometimes quite unhappily in the LGBT rights movement. If the principal problem of bisexuality is its very temporal changeability, its tendency to dissolve into heterosexuality or homosexuality [...]
Sexual Disorientation
In Sexual Reorientation, Elizabeth Glazer claims that antidiscrimination law ought to distinguish between an individual’s general orientation (the sex toward which an individual is attracted most of the time) and specific orientation (the sex of one’s actual partner). When only general orientation is protected, then those whose general orientation is ambiguous, such as bisexuals, are [...]
Hybrid Revisited
In Sexual Reorientation, Professor Elizabeth Glazer seeks to offer a “new way of understanding sexual orientation that reflects the lived experience of human sexuality.” This new framework is based on the concepts of “specific orientation” and “general orientation.” “Specific orientation” is the “sex of the individual’s desired or actual partner(s).” “General orientation” is the “sex [...]
Bad Footage: Surveillance Laws, Police Misconduct, and the Internet
On the night of March 3, 1991, Rodney King was savagely beaten by Los Angeles police officers. The ensuing trial of four of those officers charged with police brutality resulted in three acquittals and one nonverdict; the City of Los Angeles was subsequently engulfed in riots that lasted for days. Those same four officers were [...]
Vested Interests: The Federal Felon Body-Armor Ban and the Continuing Vitality of Scarborough v. United States
In response to a spate of violent clashes between “heavily armored assailants and comparatively unprotected police officers,” Congress enacted the James Guelff and Chris McCurley Body Armor Act (Body Armor Act) in the fall of 2002. Named for two police officers who had been shot and killed in the line of duty in the late 1990s, [...]
From the Blue Lights of “Police” to the Red Lights of “First Responders”: The Changing Rhetoric of Law Enforcement in Michigan v. Bryant
The Participation Interest
Lack of participation is a primary problem with money in politics. Relatively few people make political contributions—less than one-half of one percent of the population provides the bulk of the money that politicians collect from individual contributors. This Article introduces and details the state’s interest in expanding citizen participation in financing politics. Rather than focus [...]
Explaining the Housing Bubble
There is little consensus as to the cause of the housing bubble that precipitated the financial crisis of 2008. Numerous explanations exist: misguided monetary policy; a global savings surplus; government policies encouraging affordable homeownership; irrational consumer expectations of rising housing prices; inelastic housing supply. None of these explanations, however, is capable of fully explaining the [...]
Commerce Games and the Individual Mandate
While the Supreme Court declined an early invitation to resolve challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or the Act), a split between the United States Courts of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (sustaining the ACA’s “individual mandate”) and the Eleventh Circuit (striking it down) ulti- mately compelled the Court to grant [...]