Denis Binder

A Survey of Federal Agency Response to President Clinton's Executive Order No. 12898 on Environmental Justice

We are attempting to assess the progress the federal government has made toward integrating environmental justice into its policies, programs, and activities, as well as whether federal agencies have made a substantial effort to direct and deliver environmental services to environmental justice communities. We are also interested in seeing if an agencys goals are matched by reality. This independent report will also allow federal agencies to compare their efforts with those of other agencies. One of our goals is that this survey will be the first in a periodic series to assess the ongoing efforts of federal agencies to advance environmental justice.

The Disinvestment in Public Higher Education

Americas rise in the World has many reasons. One of the most siginificant is upper mobility. Americans are not limited by caste, class, ethnic background, national origin, religion, race, skin color, accent, or gender. The key to success for most Americans is a system of higher education par excellence. Education was viewed as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the New World. Harvard was initially funded by a grant from the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. America led the world in mandating secondary education. Public univesities have existed for over two centuries in America, led by the chartering of the University of North Carolina in 1789. The concept of land grants to fund education originated with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia and Benjamin Franklin the University of Pennsylvania. The Morrill Act of 1862 created the public land grant universities, which became the core of the public higher education system in most states. Subsequent acts furthered public higher education. The combination of the exisiting public universities and the land grant institutions marked the ascendancy of public higher education outside the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The post-World War II boom in public funding for higher education resulted in changing the paradigm from one of elitism to that of universal access. Scores of public institutions, especially the masters and community colleges, opened their doors. From the days of their formation, many of the public institutions led the way in offering affordabiltiy and accessibility to higher education for their residents, and in opening their doors to women students as well as racial and religious minorities. They soon added professional schools to their offerings. That was then. State spending on higher education is discretionary and is increasingly being squeezed by mandates, especially medicaid. Periodic budget crisis further reduce state spending; the early part of the New Millenium was especially devastating to the finances of the public institutions. Large tuition increses coupled with substantial budget cuts, curricular cuts, and matriculation of high tuition, non-residents to offset the budget cuts is threatening accessibility and affordability, especially at the flagship universities. Michigan, for example, is now a quasi-private university.

Sex Discrimination in the Airline Industry: Title VII Flying High

Настоящая работа представляет собой перевод статьи Дэниса Биндера, профессора университета им. Чепмена (Chapman University), опубликованной в 1971 г. в журнале “California Law Review”. В статье освещены важные правовые вопросы, связанные с дискриминацией по признаку пола в сфере труда. Автор анализирует принцип профессиональной квалификации, его содержание, толкование в правоприменительной практике как единственное законное исключение из установленного Законом о гражданских правах 1964 г. запрета гендерной дискриминации. Анализируются широкий подход к толкованию принципа профессиональной квалификации, основанный на учете общих характеристик, в целом относящихся к полу, и узкий подход, предполагающий оценку физического лица исходя из индивидуальных качеств, а не общих характеристик пола. Автор обосновывает необходимость узкого толкования принципа профессиональной квалификации. Рассматривается аргументация судами правомерности учета работодателем таких дополнительных факторов, как наличие детей или состояние в браке, и особенности применения выработанных подходов к спорам авиакомпаний со стюардессами. Помимо запрета брака существовало и возрастное ограничение для стюардесс, когда многие авиакомпании автоматически увольняли их по достижении 32—35 лет без учета индивидуальных особенностей конкретной женщины, в то время как возраст выхода на пенсию мужчин-стюардов составлял 65 лет. Автор называет коллективные договоры эффективным инструментом разрешения проблем существующих для стюардесс ограничений, которые, однако, не устраняют практики дискриминации полностью. Высказывается мнение о необходимости развития судебной практики, чтобы заставить авиакомпании отказаться от дискриминации по признаку пола на всех этапах занятости. Ключевые слова: гендерная дискриминация, трудовое право.

The Next Threshold in Medical Monitoring: Subclinical Injury and Tobacco Litigation

Tobacco litigation has been with us for 6 ½ decades. The related field of Toxic Torts is 3 decades old. Both have common and overlapping issues of causation, damages, discovery, and theories of relief, but with the exception of a few cases involving asbestos and tobacco, they have generally existed in parallel legal universes. A recent Massachusetts opinion, Donovan v. Philip Morris USA, Inc. has finally woven them together in a novel case applying the Toxic Torts remedy of medical monitoring for sub-clinical injuries in a tobacco case.