Employee Rights Supreme Court essays

Employee Rights Supreme Court essays Saint Clair Adams had been hired as a sales counselor by Circuit City Stores, Inc., in California. As a condition of employment, he was required to sign an agreement that any disputes that arose between Adams and his employer would be settled by arbitration. Despite that, Adams sued Circuit City Stores, Inc., in state court for various discrimination complaints. The Ninth Court of Appeals in California held that "Title VII disputes cannot be made subject to compulsory arbitration agreements" as they do not constitute interstate commerce' as specified in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). (King, 2001, Jones Day Web site) The facts in the case, as it began, are simple: Adams signed an employment contract that demanded arbitration rather than lawsuits to settle issues between employer and employee. When such an issue arose, however, Adams decided to pursue it in court rather than seek arbitration. Circuit City Stores, Inc., acted to compel Adams to enter into arbitration. The Ninth Circuit Court, contrary to the majority of other Circuit Courts, held that the FAA was written in such a way as to exclude all employment agreements from the reach of the demands of the FAA. The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit Court's decision, saying that in fact the only agreements not subject to arbitration under FAA pertained to seamen and When the case got to the Supreme Court, it was clear that Adams wanted the Court to find with the Ninth Circuit Court, which would open the way for Adams to litigate the employment issues. Circuit City Stores, Inc., wanted the Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit Court so that it could settle the dispute through arbitration. At that point, the facts of the case as originally filed were almost irrelevant. It did not matter what the specific EEOC violation by Circuit City Stores, Inc. might have been. What mattered at that point w...

Abolitionist Pamphlet Campaign

Abolitionist Pamphlet Campaign In the summer of 1835 the growing abolitionist movement attempted to influence public opinion in the slave states by mailing thousands of anti-slavery pamphlets to addresses in the South. The material inflamed southerners, who broke into post offices, seized bags of mail containing the pamphlets, and made a spectacle of burning the pamphlets in the streets as mobs cheered. The interference with the postal system created a crisis at the federal level. And the battle over use of the mails  illuminated how the issue of slavery was splitting the nation decades before the Civil War. In the North, calls to censor the mails were naturally seen as a violation of Constitutional rights. In the slave states of the South, the literature produced by the American Anti-Slavery Society was viewed as a dire threat to southern society. On a practical level, the local postmaster in Charleston, South Carolina, requested guidance from the postmaster general in Washington, who essentially dodged the issue. After a spasm of demonstrations in the South, in which effigies representing abolitionist leaders were burned as anti-slavery pamphlets were thrown into bonfires, the battleground moved on to the halls of Congress. President Andrew Jackson  even mentioned the mailing of the pamphlets in his annual message to Congress (the forerunner of the State of the Union Address). Jackson advocated suppressing the literature by having federal authorities censor the mails. Yet his approach was challenged by an eternal rival, Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who advocated for local censorship of federal mail. In the end, the campaign of the abolitionists to mail pamphlets southward was essentially abandoned as being impractical. So the immediate issue of censoring the mails died out. And the abolitionists  changed tactics and began to concentrate on sending petitions to Congress to advocate for the end of slavery. Strategy of the Pamphlet Campaign The idea of mailing thousands of anti-slavery pamphlets into the slave states began to take hold in the early 1830s. The abolitionists couldnt send human agents to preach against slavery, as they would be risking their lives. And, thanks for the financial backing of the Tappan brothers, wealthy New York City merchants who had become devoted to the abolitionist cause, the most modern printing technology was made available to spread the message. The material produced, which included pamphlets and broadsides (large sheets designed to be passed around or hung as posters), tended to have woodcut illustrations depicting the horrors of slavery. The material may look crude to modern eyes, but in the 1830s it would have been considered fairly professional printed material. And the illustrations were particularly inflammatory to southerners. As slaves tended to be illiterate (as was generally mandated by law), the existence of printed material showing slaves being whipped and beaten was seen as particularly inflammatory. Southerners claimed the printed material from the American Anti-Slavery Society was intended to provoke slave uprisings. And knowing the abolitionists had the funding and personnel to turn out printed material of substantial quality was disturbing to pro-slavery Americans. End of the Campaign The controversy over censoring the mails essentially ended the pamphlet campaign. Legislation to open and search the mails failed in Congress, but local postmasters, with the tacit approval of their superiors in the federal government, still suppressed the pamphlets. Ultimately, the American Anti-Slavery Society came to realize that a point had been made. And the movement began to concentrate on other initiatives, most prominently the campaign to create strong anti-slavery action in the House of Representatives. The pamphlet campaign, within about a year, was essentially abandoned.