Volume 8, Fall 2010, Issue 1
RICCI V. DESTEFANO: SMOKE, FIRE AND RACIAL RESENTMENT
Leland Ware
Ricci v. DeStefano involved claims that the City of New Haven, Connecticut discriminated against a group of white and Hispanic firefighters who received the highest scores on two civil service examinations. Statutory claims were asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Two separate constitutional claims alleged violations of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. One of these claimed reverse discrimination to the disadvantage of the white and Hispanic firefighters, and the other contended that New Haven created an unlawful racial classification when it declined to promote the white and Hispanic firefighters. View More
PUNITIVE DAMAGES IN ASBESTOS PERSONAL INJURY LITIGATION: THE BASIS FOR DEFERRAL REMAINS SOUND
Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman
In 1991, the federal court system took an important step to slow the tide of asbestos-related bankruptcies that still threatens compensation for the sick. The judge then managing the federal asbestos multidistrict litigation docket (MDL 875), United States District Court Judge Charles Weiner of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, chose to sever and retain jurisdiction over demands for punitive damages while allowing the issues of liability and compensation matters to proceed to trial. Judge Weiner’s practice was affirmed and strongly supported on public policy grounds by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Forward-thinking state court judges who were managing large asbestos personal injury dockets in jurisdictions including New York, Pennsylvania and Baltimore City also chose to defer punitive damages claims to promote sound public policy. View More
William Arthur Wines & Mark E. Linebaugh
The holder of an FCC broadcasting license takes that franchise “burdened by enforceable public obligations.” Among those public-interest obligations is a duty not to transmit indecent material during times when children are likely to be listening. The duty of licensees to refrain from broadcasting indecent materials was first set out in the Radio Act of 1927. The U.S. Code now makes it unlawful to “utter[] any obscene, indecent, or profane language by means of radio communication . . . .” View More
James E. Holloway, Michael Harris, Douglas Schneider, Elaine Seeman, Donald Ensley & James Kleckley
The need for state higher educational agencies and state research universities to perform more than their traditional role requires them to consider taking on the additional role of urging and assisting a municipal, county, or state regional (community) government and businesses to concurrently enhance community growth and integrate and expand economic development. Community, state, and federal policy-makers and business managers can give greater support to this additional role by demanding state research universities and state higher educational agencies (agencies) promote and support broader and useful intellectual collaboration among departments, schools, and colleges (intellectual units). Greater collaboration is needed so that university resources may be harnessed in order to find and develop ends and grounds and create specific public and private means and projects to enhance community growth and expand and integrate economic development. Collaboration among intellectual units within the university must be effectively regulated and managed by these agencies. The reasons are that intellectual collaboration supports community policymakers, business decisionmakers, and public and private managers by making contributions to enhance community growth and to integrate and expand economic development. Specifically, these contributions support and aid the design, coordination, and implementation of government policies and business decisions to enhance public policy and expand business enterprise. Intellectual collaboration must also be consistent with the university’s intellectual and other missions and purposes. Perhaps, “[t]he day of the university as an ivory tower . . . is drawing to a close, and the dawn of one in which it becomes a driver of regional and city economies beckons.” This closing may be unnecessarily premature, but the economic driver is on point where collaboration within the university can expand the university’s traditional mission and focuses this expanded mission on the public policy and business enterprise, driving both community growth and economic development. View More