January Book 2017 | University of Richmond Law Review

COMMENT: Uniform Rules: Addressing the Disparate Rules that Deny Student-Athletes the Opportunity to Participate in Sports According to Gender Identity

Chelsea Shrader*

Grade-school and college playing fields have long been segregated on the basis of sex. For decades, male and female students were afforded the opportunity to participate in interscholastic athletic competitions on teams determined by their biological gender. Recently, an increasing number of high school and college-aged [students are publicly] identifying as transgender (or trans), meaning that their internal sense of their gender identity is different from the gender they were assigned at birth. The emergence of openly transgender students in grade schools and colleges, in general, has resulted in vastly disparate rules promulgated by school districts to address how transgender individuals fit into the traditional operation of the education system.

*J.D. Candidate 2017, University of Richmond School of Law. B.S., B.A. 2012, University of Richmond. I would like to thank the University of Richmond Law Review staff and editors, especially my final editor, Stephanie Serhan, for their assistance in preparing this article for publication. I would also like to thank my parents, Jack and PJ Shrader, for inspiring my love of sports and instilling in me respect for people of all walks of life, and my sisters, Meghan Papineau and Jackie Shrader, for their unconditional love and support.

COMMENT: For the Sake of Consistency: Distinguishing Combatant Terrorists from Non-Combatant Terrorists in Modern Warfare

Alexander Fraser*

The prosecution of Irek Hamidullin in an Article III federal court crystallized the result of years of heated debate amongst legal scholars, the military, and, most importantly, the executive branch. For the first time in the history of the United States, a military detainee enemy combatant was brought from Afghanistan to the United States to stand for a criminal trial in an Article III federal court. The defendant, Irek Hamidullin, was a known associate of the Taliban who orchestrated an attack in Afghanistan in November of 2009 and was captured by American forces thereafter. This concept—bringing a foreign combatant terrorist into our country for a criminal prosecution in a civilian tribunal for war-like conduct that took place on a foreign battlefield—has left many people, even federal judges, confused.

*J.D. Candidate 2017, University of Richmond School of Law. B.S., 2013, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. I would like to thank the University of Richmond Law Review staff and editors, especially Glenice Coombs and Rachel Willer for their assistance. I would also like to thank Professor John Douglass for helping me articulate my arguments and organize them in a logical, persuasive manner. Lastly, I would like to thank Laura Bedson for her impeccable editing skills and suggestions—which gave this piece the clarity that it needed to make sense of this complex legal framework.