Progressive Scholarship Workshop - Reading for Tuesday

[Anjali Motgi]

PSWers, ACSers, and friends at large,

Attached please find the reading for our first Progressive Scholarship Workshop, which will meet this Tuesday at 6:30 pm. The paper, "The Law (and Politics) of Disparate Impact," by Reva Siegel, is one that is still being written and revised for publication, making it the ideal vehicle to begin our exploration of both "progressive" ideas in the law and scholarship development. 

The paper traces disparate impact liability in the context of employment discrimination from Griggs v. Duke Power Co., the first Supreme Court case to recognize such liability under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to the 2009 case of Ricci v. DeStafano, in which the Supreme Court imposed significant limits on disparate-impact claims and even (Scalia, J., concurring) suggested that civil rights laws imposing disparate impact liability might violate the Equal Protection Clause. How did we get from there to here, and where might the Court go next with its equal protection jurisprudence? The paper is a work in progress, and Professor Siegel welcomes all student reactions and any suggestions readers might have--particularly with regard to the latter half of the paper, which she says is "under reconstruction." 

Let me know if anyone has any questions, and stay tuned for our meeting location. In the meantime, happy reading!

Yours,

Anjali