Notes

The American legal system views the relationship between parent and child as sacrosanct, only to be severed through a knowing, voluntary relinquishment by the parent or through a formal court proceeding known as a termination of parental rights (TPR). Termination of parental rights fundamentally affects the relationship between parent and child. For the parent, termination means the irretrievable loss of “the companionship, care, custody, and management of his or her children.”‘ For the child, termination raises the specter of total loss of the parent as well as loss of “‘the right of support… ; the right to inherit; and all other rights inherent in the legal parent-child relationship, not just for [a limited] period…, but forever.”‘

Once a court finds that a teacher has sexually harassed a student, it must decide whether the school should bear liability for the teacher’s harassment. While most agree that the teacher should be held liable for his actions, many courts disagree as to the liability of the institution that employs the teacher. When should a school district be held accountable for a teacher’s misconduct? Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1971 “[u]nquestionably … place[s] on [educational institutions] the duty not to discriminate on the basis of sex.” Sex-based discrimination resulting from sexually harassing conduct by a teacher may manifest itself in various forms: For example, a teacher may make sexual comments, leer, or inappropriately touch a student; he may make offensive sexual advances toward a student; he may solicit or coerce sexual acts from a student by promising to grade the student highly if the student complies or by threatening to fail the student if she does not; and he may rape a student. Although Title IX allows a student to bring a claim against a school for such abusive misconduct by a teacher, no definitive legal standard for assessing liability currently exists. In addition, the standards that are applied today by most courts are inadequate: They fail to provide schools with sufficient incentives to create effective preventive and monitoring measures against harassment, and they fail to provide students who have been sexually harassed with appropriate relief under Title IX. A superior standard is needed.

LoCal, a local electric utility company, plans to expand its service into the newly developed outskirts of Anytown. To effectuate this plan, it must build new electric transmission and distribution lines through several existing neighborhoods. Despite vigorous opposition from homeowners groups, the public utility commission approves the placement and construction of the new power lines. Within a few months, LoCal acquires the necessary property through eminent domain, and condemnation proceedings begin.

An appreciation of the importance of diverse viewpoints and of the commingling of those viewpoints in a democratic society animates the protection of public speech achieved by the public forum doctrine. This Note proposes that cable access advocates should ground a similar claim to access under the public forum doctrine as it has been interpreted in state courts. Cable television, and soon the new technologies of communication labeled the “information superhighway,” will far outstrip the shopping mall in altering the terms and domain of public discourse. The arguments that commended extension of the public forum doctrine to the mall thus resonate even louder in the context of those communications media.

In analyzing the Reno Rule, this Note goes beyond the policy-focused debate to examine the limits on the Department’s authority. It argues that, although the Reno Rule is justifiable from a policy standpoint, it is invalid as currently promulgated because it exceeds the Department’s delegated authority.

This Note examines the Manocherian court’s use of heightened scrutiny and argues that application of heightened scrutiny, though perhaps justified in Nollan and Dolan, should not be applied to general regulatory takings claims. The purpose of this Note is to use Manocherian as an example in arguing that the use of heightened scrutiny under the Takings Clause should be limited to those situations where the Supreme Court has already applied it—land-use exaction settings—and that it should not be extended to general regulatory takings claims.

This Note will demonstrate that Title VII’s antiretaliation provision must be interpreted broadly to achieve Title VII’s basic purpose—the elimination of employment discrimination. Part I discusses the rationale supporting those decisions that have argued for a narrow interpretation. Part II argues for a broad interpretation of the provision by responding to the arguments discussed in Part I and offering a normative argument that reflects the general purpose of Title VII and section 704(a)’s role in Title VII’s framework. Part III concludes with an argument for expanding retaliatory protection to include not only postemployment retaliation that is employment-related, but also postemployment retaliation that is personal in nature.

This Note argues that standards for seizures and consent searches that do not capture the different level of cognitive and emotional development of minors as compared to adults fail to adequately protect juveniles’ Fourth Amendment rights. The Note proposes a new framework for assessing the legality of consent searches and seizures of juveniles on the street. The framework builds on, first, Supreme Court cases in other areas of the law that recognize minors as “different” and, second, scholarship on juveniles’ cognitive, emotional, and social development.

What is it about the death penalty that causes so many Americans to express support, despite the contradictions underlying this support? And since utilitarian and moral arguments have proven to be ineffective, how can those who oppose capital punishment most effectively fight against it?

This Note addresses these questions by analyzing narratives about the death penalty, focusing on films that are based on true-life stories. Since these true-life narratives recount actual occurrences, they provide examples of how reality is shaped into narratives. Narrative is one of the primary ways in which people make sense of the world, and as Robert Cover notes, “[n]o set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning.” As such, these popular culture narratives help illuminate the role that the death penalty plays in America. In addition, they offer insights into how death penalty opponents can use narrative to erode capital punishment’s high but unstable support. Analyzing how a particular narrative tells the story of an actual defendant may therefore provide insight for those who tell real-life stories to juries, to commutation boards, and to the media.

This Note has argued that a proper understanding of the market-correcting nature of nonprofit activity is necessary to the enforcement of the antitrust laws. As long as the competition-enhancing virtues of nonprofit activity are recognized, the flexible rule of reason can be used to implement the objectives of the Sherman Act by insuring the proper functioning of our markets. However, an antitrust jurisprudence that is blind to the imperfect nature of the markets in which nonprofit organizations operate and chooses instead to rely on an unyielding faith that “all elements of a bargain . . . are favorably affected by the free opportunity to select among alternative offers” can only reinforce market failures and thus frustrate the various policy objectives of the Sherman Act.