Sexual Harassment- Nit-picking Definition Of
Q: Sexual harrasment" does not take place outside of the workplace.
As a general rule, even offensive speech is protected when it is
not related to employment.* At Pennsic, you can say or display
whatever you want within the bounds of community standards. For
example: on market day, one of the merchants holds a ring toss.
The pole is a statue of a satyr with an enormous phallus. If I had
something like that in my office, it would be harassment by
creating a hostile work environment. At Pensic, it is simply a bit
of perioid fun, or bad taste, depending on your p.o.v.
I have posed this question to the reference librarians
here (who are also lawyers), "Can sexual harassment, by legal
definition, take place outside the workplace?
A: Harassment is defined in Black's Law Dictionary as 1) Black's is an excellent reference, but it is a perilous guide. It is like using the OED as the sole source for etymological research. (OR, as my old Civ. Pro. prof used to say: "You know the court doesn't have a leg to stand on when the opinion quotes Black's." 1a) As an example, look up the term "Qui Tam" in Black's. See if, from this definition, you can find the authority for Qui Tam actions in the U.S. and whether you can institute a common law Qui Tam action for pollution. (Qui Tam being one of the few areas I know fairly well.) For extra-credit: from Black's deduce what Constitutional challenges have been raised against qui tam. For bonus points, please derive the legislative and regulatory histories (if any). If you can get all that from Black's, I will cheerfuly grant your arguement without need for further citation. My point, I will say again, is not to mock. It is siply to demonstrate the limitations of Black's as a research tool. 2) "Harassment" is different from "sexual harassment" as "assault" is different from "sexual asault." They share common elements, but one cannot go directly from one definition to the next. 3) Another limitation on Black's is that it gives the most general definition for multi-state purposes. As you may have noted, the definition is from the "model penal code." The various model codes were crafted by groups of lawyers. They are not law in and of themselves. rather, the American Legal Institute (ALI) and various other organizations try to encourage states to adpopt these model codes to increase consistency between the states. Sometimes this is very succesful (Just about all jurisdictions use