Appending Transgender Equal Rights to Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Equal Rights

In recent years, the identity group of transgender persons has been cohering and bringing its concerns to the attention of progressive legal thinkers as well as to organs of government. In the domain of conventional anti-discrimination coverage, the result has been a number of local ordinances, a few state laws and a modest number of victories in judicial settings. In addition, advocates for transgender concerns have taken up family issues such as whether gender identity poses obstacles to child custody, access to medical services associated with gender transition and the processes for legally changing one’s name and gender. The law review literature in this area has taken off like a rocket. Much of the academic thought devoted to transgender issues has focused on the problem of judicial determinations of an individual’s gender, whether and how to gain coverage for gender identity under Title VII, the advantages and pitfalls of a disability-rights framework that medicalizes trans identity, issues specific to youth (especially youth in foster care and in the juvenile justice system), prisoner classification and sex- segregation and insurance coverage for gender-affirming care. A few critically-inclined thinkers have focused on the power that formal and discretionary bureaucratic decisions have on trans people and on the limits of formal equality, though these voices are a bit lonely

The Gay Agenda

This Article is designed to illuminate options that the author believes have been difficult for advocates of gay rights to imagine due to an incessant culture war and the hard work of anti-gay forces that have kept pro-gay advocates under persistent fire. The culture war, this paper argues, while a fundraising boon and a media draw, compels a particular type of participation and a particular reform agenda, eclipsing reform possibilities that might be preferable in the long run

The Gay Agenda

This Article is designed to illuminate options that the author believes have been difficult for advocates of gay rights to imagine due to an incessant culture war and the hard work of anti-gay forces that have kept pro-gay advocates under persistent fire. The culture war, this paper argues, while a fundraising boon and a media draw, compels a particular type of participation and a particular reform agenda, eclipsing reform possibilities that might be preferable in the long run

Federalism and Family

The Lopez decision reaffirms that family's proper place under federalism is with the states. In the aftermath of Lopez, federal courts have been and will continue to be faced with controversies regarding which types of family matters may be accorded federal attention." This article seeks to shed some light on these controversies and aid reformers in advocating reforms that advance the interests of families under our federalist system. The article proceeds as follows: Part II introduces the rhetoric of federal incongruity with family and uses the issue of same-sex marriage to test the usefulness of this general rule. Part III identifies family-shaping rules in such wide-ranging areas of federal law as tax, bankruptcy, housing, and the whole gamut of benefits programs.' This part also examines the history of early assistance programs designed to aid poor, female-headed families. During the 1920s and 30s, when these programs were being founded, progressive legal thinkers formulated a profoundly influential critique of the public/private distinction as it was used to justify laissez-faire treatment of the wage-labor market. While subverting this distinction for purposes of the wage-labor market, however, reformers of the period re-enacted the distinction on a new axis: the market/family axis. Part IV reviews the historical exclusion of family matters from federal court jurisdiction. It argues that the common law development of this exclusion reveals an ideological reliance on the public/private distinction along with a strategy of marshalling exceptions to preserve the rule of state governance of family. Part V jumps into the present to examine controversies surrounding two federal statutes, criminalizing failure to pay child support and acts of domestic violence, respectively. It argues that the rhetoric offered by supporters of these statutes further entrenches the ideology of the private, state-controlled family. Finally, part VI concludes that examples discussed throughout the article demonstrate the impossibility of confining family to the state sphere. As a result, proponents of the general rule against federal governance of family have been forced to deploy multiple exceptions-that is, to advocate federal governance of exceptional aspects of family, as a strategy for sustaining the rule

On the \u3cem\u3eWhy\u3c/em\u3e of Same-Sex Marriage in Cuba

Cuba is expected to revise its family code soon and the legal availability of marriage to a person of the same sex will be among the anticipated revisions. This essay pushes past the assumption that same-sex marriage operates as an obvious item along any nation’s progressive path, or a universally desirable and sensible legal advance, and inquires as to the why. In a country that is markedly less religious than its neighbors, has a low marriage rate accompanied by a comparatively high divorce rate, and socializes resources such as health care such that they do not depend on marital ties, why is same-sex marriage a legal objective

Dignity and Degradation: Transnational Lessons from the Constitutional Protection of Sex

This paper begins by tracing the history of the concept of human dignity from the time of Cicero through the Enlightenment, to the aftermath of WW II. It then examines the contemporary constitutional concept across multiple national jurisdictions, focusing on cases related to sex. Ultimately, the paper urges that while dignity has been regarded as an overarching value that promises to protect all human beings against threats to the most fundamental of human rights, it instead produces undesirable hierarchies and demeans a range of sexual practices that pro-sex feminists and queers want to see constitutionally protected

Single-Inclusive Jet Production in Polarized pp Collisions at O(alpha_s^3)

We present a next-to-leading order QCD calculation for single-inclusive high-p_T jet production in longitudinally polarized pp collisions within the ``small-cone'' approximation. The fully analytical expressions obtained for the underlying partonic hard-scattering cross sections greatly facilitate the analysis of upcoming BNL-RHIC data on the double-spin asymmetry A_{LL}^{jet} for this process in terms of the unknown polarization of gluons in the nucleon. We simultaneously rederive the corresponding QCD corrections to unpolarized scattering and confirm the results existing in the literature. We also numerically compare to results obtained with Monte-Carlo methods and assess the range of validity of the ``small-cone'' approximation for the kinematics relevant at BNL-RHIC.Comment: 23 pages, 8 eps-figure

Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportunities

A golden age for heavy quarkonium physics dawned a decade ago, initiated by the confluence of exciting advances in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and an explosion of related experimental activity. The early years of this period were chronicled in the Quarkonium Working Group (QWG) CERN Yellow Report (YR) in 2004, which presented a comprehensive review of the status of the field at that time and provided specific recommendations for further progress. However, the broad spectrum of subsequent breakthroughs, surprises, and continuing puzzles could only be partially anticipated. Since the release of the YR, the BESII program concluded only to give birth to BESIII; the $B$-factories and CLEO-c flourished; quarkonium production and polarization measurements at HERA and the Tevatron matured; and heavy-ion collisions at RHIC have opened a window on the deconfinement regime. All these experiments leave legacies of quality, precision, and unsolved mysteries for quarkonium physics, and therefore beg for continuing investigations. The plethora of newly-found quarkonium-like states unleashed a flood of theoretical investigations into new forms of matter such as quark-gluon hybrids, mesonic molecules, and tetraquarks. Measurements of the spectroscopy, decays, production, and in-medium behavior of c\bar{c}, b\bar{b}, and b\bar{c} bound states have been shown to validate some theoretical approaches to QCD and highlight lack of quantitative success for others. The intriguing details of quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions that have emerged from RHIC have elevated the importance of separating hot- and cold-nuclear-matter effects in quark-gluon plasma studies. This review systematically addresses all these matters and concludes by prioritizing directions for ongoing and future efforts.Comment: 182 pages, 112 figures. Editors: N. Brambilla, S. Eidelman, B. K. Heltsley, R. Vogt. Section Coordinators: G. T. Bodwin, E. Eichten, A. D. Frawley, A. B. Meyer, R. E. Mitchell, V. Papadimitriou, P. Petreczky, A. A. Petrov, P. Robbe, A. Vair