Two New Articles related to Homelessness by Sara Rankin

The articles are here:

Sara Rankin, A Homeless Bill of Rights (Revolution), working paper 2014.  Abstract below:

This Article examines an emerging movement so far unexplored by legal scholarship: the proposal, and in some states, the enactment of a Homeless Bill of Rights. This Article presents these new laws as a lens to re-examine storied debates over positive and social welfare rights. Homeless bills of rights also present a compelling opportunity to re-examine rights-based theories in the context of social movement scholarship. Specifically, could these laws be understood as part of a new “rights revolution”? What conditions might influence the impact of these new laws on the individual rights of the homeless or the domiciled? On American rights culture and consciousness?

The Article surveys current efforts to advance homeless bills of rights across eight states and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico and evaluates these case studies from a social movement perspective. Ultimately, the Article predicts that these new laws are more likely to have an incremental social and normative impact than an immediate legal impact. Even so, homeless bills of rights are a critical, if slight, step to advance the rights of one of the most vulnerable segments of contemporary society. Perhaps as significantly, these new laws present an opportunity for domiciled Americans to confront our collective, deeply-rooted biases against the homeless.

Sara Rankin, Invidious Deliberation: The Problem of Congressional Bias in Federal Hate Crime Legislation, Rutgers L. Rev. forthcoming.  Abstract below:

The intersection of power and prejudice can control the shape of statutory law, and yet a dearth of legal scholarship investigates it. Invidious Deliberation addresses that deficit. It tackles the problem of prejudice in Congressional deliberations at a particularly critical point: when Congress decides which groups to protect under federal hate crime legislation. The Article contends that Congress’s own bias may exclude the most vulnerable groups from hate crime protection.

To illustrate the point, this Article systematically reviews over two decades of Congressional decisions with respect to expansions of the Hate Crime Statistics Act, a “gateway” for groups seeking protection under federal hate crime legislation. The review concludes that Congress exhibited greater resistance to constructing animus against gays, lesbians, and the homeless as morally or legally wrong, especially in comparison to the other covered groups. Invidious Deliberation argues this Congressional resistance is not attributable to an equitable, principled deliberation process; instead, it is an expression of “unrecognized” bias against unpopular groups. To mitigate the impact of Congressional bias, this Article proposes that Congress explicitly and consistently use a set of principled criteria — such as suspect classification factors — to assess candidate groups.