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- Title
Small Change: An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Supreme Court Precedents on Federal Appeals Court Decisions in Sexual Harassment Cases, 1993-2005.
- Authors
Walsh, David J.
- Abstract
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its Oncale, Faragher, and Ellerth decisions in 1998. Predictions were offered almost immediately thereafter regarding the effect of these decisions on subsequent sexual harassment cases. The consensus view among legal scholars was that these decisions would make it much more difficult for plaintiffs to prevail by raising new questions about whether harassment was "because of…sex" and by making available an affirmative defense to liability. Drawing on a data set comprised of 581 federal appeals court decisions issued between 1993 and 2005, this article offers an empirical assessment of the extent to which analyses and outcomes of sexual harassment cases changed after 1998. The Supreme Court decisions were indeed not helpful to plaintiffs, but the changes were relatively small and the most dire predictions not realized. This article aims to demonstrate the utility of a systematic, comparative approach to documenting change-or lack thereof-in the law.
- Subjects
UNITED States; SEXUAL harassment laws; LEGAL precedent; UNITED States. Supreme Court; LEGAL judgments; ONCALE v. Sundowner Offshore Services Inc. (Supreme Court case); FARAGHER v. City of Boca Raton (Supreme Court case); EMPIRICAL research
- Publication
Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law, 2009, Vol 30, Issue 2, p461
- ISSN
1067-7666
- Publication type
Article