Digital Commons Network^™

Exemplary Legal Writing 2021: Four Recommendations, Jed S. Rakoff, Lev Menand

Faculty Scholarship

This is not the first great book that Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of Berkeley Law School, has authored, but it is perhaps his most chilling. For in 308 pages of tightly reasoned detail, he demonstrates beyond cavil how the Supreme Court of recent decades (and well before the addition of the Trump appointees) undertook to undercut most of the reforms by which the Warren Court had sought to reduce police misconduct.

A Human Rights Agenda For The Biden Administration, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

The Biden administration has much to do to restore the United States’ credibility as a human rights leader and to strengthen the human rights system in an era of rising right-wing nationalism, authoritarianism, and competition for global power. In doing so, it needs to lead by example by putting its own house in order, and act with both courage and humility in the face of deep global skepticism and distrust. Specifically, the administration should pursue five stages of engagement on human rights: reverse and revoke measures taken by the Trump administration, reaffirm the United States’ traditional commitments to human rights …

The Constitutional Duty To Supervise, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

The IRS targets Tea Party organizations' applications for nonprofit tax-exempt status for special scrutiny. Newly opened online federal health exchanges fail to function. Officials at some Veterans Administration hospitals engage in widespread falsification of wait times. A key theme linking these examples is that they all involve managerial and supervisory failure. This should come as no surprise. Supervision and other systemic features of government administration have long been fundamental in shaping how an agency operates, and their importance is only more acute today. New approaches to program implementation and regulation mean that a broader array of actors is wielding broader …

Leveraging Paraguay’S Hydropower For Sustainable Economic Development, Perrine Toledano, Nicolas Maennling

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

While internationally Paraguay is known for being the largest hydropower exporter in the world, the domestic economy suffers from regular outages and high system losses. The country is largely dependent on agricultural production, which has led to volatile economic performances in the past resulting from climatic circumstances and commodity price fluctuations. To address these two key policy challenges, the Government of Paraguay has approached The Earth Institute to: 1) explore the potential of a climate risk management system and sustainable agriculture activities to mitigate environmental vulnerability and 2) develop a high-level strategic plan to use Paraguay’s vast hydropower resources for …

Lawyers At The Prison Gates: Organizational Structure And Corrections Advocacy, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

The rise of the public interest law movement ushered in an era of intense debate over the best way to provide legal representation to those unable to afford private counsel. This debate has involved two related dimensions of public interest representation. First, advocates and observers of public interest practice disagree over the proper role of lawyers acting on behalf of poor and underrepresented clients. They offer competing visions of representation spanning a continuum, from providing equal access to the courts for as many poor people as possible, to attacking the causes and effects of poverty and powerlessness.

The second dimension …