Digital Commons Network^™

From The Streets To The Chamber: Social Movements And The Mining Ban In El Salvador, Rose J. Spalding

Rose J. Spalding

Following an extended anti-mining campaign, El Salvador became the first country to adopt a legal ban on all forms of metallic mining. This article uses process tracing to map direct, indirect and mediated linkages between the anti-mining mobilization and the formal adoption of a mining prohibition by the national legislature in 2017. It draws on 78 interviews with campaign activists, legislators, government officials, business leaders and legal teams, and combines this information with legislative documents and reports, public opinion data, legal documents from an investment dispute filed against the Salvadoran government, and blogs and website of the Mesa Nacional Frente …

Protecting Biodiversity In British Columbia: Recommendations For Developing Species At Risk Legislation, Alana R. Westwood, Sarah P. Otto, Arne Mooers, Chris Darimont, Karen E. Hodges, Chris Johnson, Brian M. Starzomski, Cole Burton, Kai M. A. Chan, Marco Festa-Bianchet, Shaun Fluker, Sumeet Gulati, Aerin L. Jacob, Dan Kraus, Tara G. Martin, Wendy J. Palen, John D. Reynolds, Jeannette Whitton

Chris Darimont, PhD

British Columbia has the greatest biological diversity of any province or territory in Canada. Yet increasing numbers of species in British Columbia are threatened with extinction. The current patchwork of provincial laws and regulations has not effectively prevented species declines. Recently, the Provincial Government has committed to enacting an endangered species law. Drawing upon our scientific and legal expertise, we offer recommendations for key features of endangered species legislation that build upon strengths and avoid weaknesses observed elsewhere. We recommend striking an independent Oversight Committee to provide recommendations about listing species, organize Recovery Teams, and monitor the efficacy of actions …

A Decent Home For Every Family? Housing Policy Initiatives Since The 1980s, Sondra J. Fogel, Marc T. Smith, Anne R. Williamson

Sondra Fogel

Afandamental economic and social principle embedded in the American psyche remains the value of shelter. However, housing policy is the result of a complex exchange among economic, political, and social agendas competing for attention within the multiple levels of local, state, and federal governments. This article intends to capture what we consider afea of the significant initiatives since 1980 that reflect these tensions and comprise our current housing policies and directions. Furthermore, we suggest additional housing issues that may need to be addressed by the next presidential administration.

Touching, Tapping, And Talking: The Formation Of Contracts In Cyberspace, Mark E. Budnitz

Mark E. Budnitz

No abstract provided.

Hidden Law: Taking The Comments More Seriously, Melissa T. Lonegrass

Melissa T. Lonegrass

No abstract provided.

Francois Vergniolle De Chantal, L'Impossible Présidence Impériale: Le Contrôle Législatif Aux Etats-Unis, David R. Mayhew

David Mayhew

Strategic Institutional Positioning: How We Have Come To Generate Environmental Law Without Congress, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Reforming Property Law To Address Devastating Land Loss, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

Tenancy-in-common ownership represents the most widespread form of common ownership of real property in the United States. Such ownership under the default rules also represents the most unstable ownership of real property in this country. Thousands of tenancy-in-common property owners, including members of many poor and minority families, have lost their commonly-owned property due to court-ordered, forced partition sales as well as much of their real estate wealth associated with such ownership as a result of such sales. Though some scholars and the media have highlighted how thousands of African-Americans have lost an untold amount of property and substantial real …

A Fresh Look At Title Vii: Sexual Orientation Discrimination As Sex Discrimination, Anthony Michael Kreis

Anthony Michael Kreis

A Model Regime Of Privacy Protection (Version 2.0), Daniel J. Solove, Chris Jay Hoofnagle

Chris Jay Hoofnagle

This version incorporates and responds to the many comments that we received to Version 1.1, which we released on March 10, 2005.

Privacy protection in the United States has often been criticized, but critics have too infrequently suggested specific proposals for reform. Recently, there has been significant legislative interest at both the federal and state levels in addressing the privacy of personal information. This was sparked when ChoicePoint, one of the largest data brokers in the United States with records on almost every adult American citizen, sold data on about 145,000 people to fraudulent businesses set up by identity thieves. …

A Model Regime Of Privacy Protection (Version 1.1), Daniel J. Solove, Chris Jay Hoofnagle

Chris Jay Hoofnagle

Privacy protection in the United States has often been criticized, but critics have too infrequently suggested specific proposals for reform. Recently, there has been significant legislative interest at both the federal and state levels in addressing the privacy of personal information. This was sparked when ChoicePoint, one of the largest data brokers in the United States with records on almost every adult American citizen, sold data on about 145,000 people to fraudulent businesses set up by identity thieves.

In the aftermath of the ChoicePoint debacle, both of us have been asked by Congressional legislative staffers, state legislative policymakers, journalists, academics, …

Legisprudence And The Limits Of Legislation תורת החקיקה וגבולות החקיקה, Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

A Comparative Examination Of Counter-Terrorism Law And Policy, Laurent Mayali, John Yoo

Laurent Mayali

This article conducts a comparative analysis of U.S. and European counter-terrorism law and policy. Recent attacks vy ISIS in the U.S., France, and Germany have revealed important differences between American and European approaches. Before September 11, 2001, the United States responded to terrorism primarily with existing law enforcement authorities, though in isolated cases it pursued military measures abroad. In this respect, it lagged behind the approach of European nations, which had confronted internal terrorism inspired vy leftwing ideology or separatist goals. But after the 9-11 attacks, the United States adopted a preventive posture that aimed to pre-empt terrorist groups before …

Statutory Constraints And Constitutional Decisionmaking, Anthony O'Rourke

Anthony O'Rourke

Although constitutional scholars frequently analyze the relationships between courts and legislatures, they rarely examine the relationship between courts and statutes. This Article is the first to systematically examine how the presence or absence of a statute can influence constitutional doctrine. It analyzes pairs of cases that raise similar constitutional questions, but differ with respect to whether the court is reviewing the constitutionality of legislation. These case pairs suggest that statutes place significant constraints on constitutional decisionmaking. Specifically, in cases that involve a challenge to a statute, courts are less inclined to use doctrine to regulate the behavior of nonjudicial officials. …

Business Lobbying As An Informational Public Good: Can Tax Deductions For Lobbying Expenses Promote Transparency?, Michael Halberstam, Stuart G. Lazar

Stuart Lazar

The view that “lobbying is essentially an informational activity” has persistently served the suggestion that lobbying provides a public good by educating legislators about policy and the consequences of legislation. In this article, we link a proposed tax reform with a substantive disclosure requirement to promote the kind of “information subsidy” that serves the public interest, while mitigating – at least to some extent – the distortion that may result from the imbalance of financial resources on the business side and other institutional contraints identified in the literature. We argue that corporate lobbying should be encouraged – by allowing business …

Symposium On A Free Press And A Fair Trial - Introduction, Donald W. Dowd

Donald W. Dowd

No abstract provided.

Dialogue On State Action, Martin A. Schwartz, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Businesses Are People Too? Anomalies In Widening The Ambits Of "Consumer" Under Consumer Credit Law, Francina Cantatore, Brenda Marshall

Francina Cantatore

The Government’s Green Paper on National Credit reform canvasses the possibility of affording small businesses the same degree of protection as consumers under consumer credit legislation. Such a step will enable manufacturing businesses with fewer than 100 employees, and other businesses with fewer than 20 employees, to be treated as “consumers” with all the concomitant privileges that this classification implies, including the ability to rely on hardship provisions when unable to pay their debts. Small businesses already benefit from hardship provisions under compulsory external dispute resolution (EDR) scheme Rules imposed on consumer credit providers, with some anomalous results. The definition …

Businesses Are People Too? Anomalies In Widening The Ambits Of "Consumer" Under Consumer Credit Law, Francina Cantatore, Brenda Marshall

Francina Cantatore

The Government’s Green Paper on National Credit reform canvasses the possibility of affording small businesses the same degree of protection as consumers under consumer credit legislation. Such a step will enable manufacturing businesses with fewer than 100 employees, and other businesses with fewer than 20 employees, to be treated as “consumers” with all the concomitant privileges that this classification implies, including the ability to rely on hardship provisions when unable to pay their debts. Small businesses already benefit from hardship provisions under compulsory external dispute resolution (EDR) scheme Rules imposed on consumer credit providers, with some anomalous results. The definition …

New Hampshire Juvenile Sex Trafficking Survivor Urges Representatives To Vote Against Decriminalized Prostitution, Darlene Pawlik, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Sex Industry Advocates Aim To Decriminalize Prostitution In New Hampshire, Kelly Roy-Williams, Lisa Thompson, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Fifth Colonial Frontier Legal Writing Conference Drafting Statutes And Rules Pedagogy, Practice, And Politics (Foreword), Jan M. Levine

Jan M. Levine

Evaluating Katrina: A Snapshot Of Renters’ Rights Following Disasters, Eloisa Rodriguez-Dod, Olympia Duhart

Eloisa C Rodríguez-Dod

Hurricane Katrina destroyed the homes of many people living in parts of the Gulf Region. The storm displaced as many as 800,000 victims and it is still difficult for them to return home. Consequently, many homeowners have turned to renting because of the slow recovery process. Renters face added difficulties; they are often the last in line for government benefits and other assistance. There is much hostility towards the rights of renters, creating even more difficulties for them. This article focuses on the difficulties evacuee renters faced in New Orleans following the disaster. This article discusses legislation and attempted legislation …

It’S Not A Small World After All: Regulating Obesity Globally, Eloisa Rodriguez-Dod

Eloisa C Rodríguez-Dod

The rate of obesity and overweight among the world population has increased dramatically over the past several years in both adults and children. Childhood obesity is a critical health care concern. There have been well-publicized efforts to regulate children‘s obesity both in the U.S. and abroad through such measures as mandated nutritional school lunch programs. This article focuses, however, on a less examined area of regulation—the recent worldwide efforts to curb obesity among adults. The regulations discussed in this article include measures proposed or adopted by either administrative agencies or legislative bodies, whether on a local or national level. The …

Private Law In The Gaps, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Private law subjects like tort, contract, and property are traditionally taken to be at the core of the common law tradition, yet statutes increasingly intersect with these bodies of doctrine. This Article draws on recent work in private law theory and statutory interpretation to consider afresh what courts should do with private law in statutory gaps. In particular, it focuses on statutes touching on tort law, a field at the leading edge of private law theory. This Article's analysis unsettles some conventional wisdom about the intersection of private law and statutes. Many leading tort scholars and jurists embrace a regulatory …

Does Parental Autonomy Require Equal Custody At Divorce?, Margaret F. Brinig

Margaret F Brinig

This paper considers the affect of amendments to state divorce laws that strengthen their joint custody preference. It does so in the context of suits by noncustodial parents challenging substantive custody standards not requiring equal custody at divorce. The complaint is that most custody laws, by using a best interests standard rather than equally dividing custodial time, violate substantive due process. Further, two states, Iowa and Maine, have recently amended their custody legislation to strongly presume joint physical custody.

After setting out the constitutional problem and describing the legislation in some detail, this paper tests the effects of the change …

Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for …

Is Carolene Products Dead--Reflections On Affirmative Action And The Dynamics Of Civil Rights Legislation, Daniel A. Farber, Philip P. Frickey

Daniel A Farber

No abstract provided.

Linguistic Legislation And Transnational Commercial Activity: France & Belgium, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Thomas Carbonneau

For French and francophonic people, the continued vitality of their linguistic heritage is an integral part of their sense of national identity and cultural cohesiveness. The truth of this statement has been corroborated recently by legislative enactments in France and in Belgium which prescribe and/or recommend the use of French in certain private commercial and governmental activity taking place within these countries. This legislation represents an attempt to provide a partial remedy to what has been perceived generally as the syntactical and lexical "contamination" of the French language resulting from the dominance of English or, more precisely, American English, in …

דיני החקיקה (The Law Of Lawmaking), Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov