Digital Commons Network^™

Sect And Superstition: The Protestant Framework Of American Codification, Kellen R. Funk

Faculty Scholarship

Elite lawyers who debated codification in the nineteenth-century United States treated codification as inseparable from a liberal Protestant textualism that had taken hold in the early national era. Legislators declared codification to be the necessary final step of the Protestant Reformation and frequently characterized common law lawyers as beholden to ‘superstition’ and ‘priestcraft’. Their opponents denounced the codifiers’ idea that texts alone could adequately convey common meanings and delighted to point out the endlessly fracturing glosses on supposedly ‘clear’ texts that divided the positivists into an ever-increasing number of sects.

Many works have addressed the relationship between populism and positivism …

Mindful Debiasing: Meditation As A Tool To Address Disability Discrimination, Elizabeth F. Emens

Faculty Scholarship

Antidiscrimination law is at a critical juncture. The law prohibits formal and explicit systems of exclusion, but much bias nonetheless persists. New tools are needed. This Article argues that mindfulness meditation may be a powerful strategy in the battle against disability discrimination. This Article sets out eight reasons that disability bias is particularly intractable. The Article then draws on empirical, philosophical, and scholarly sources to identify mechanisms through which mindfulness meditation can address these dynamics. The Article concludes by presenting concrete doctrinal implications of bringing mindfulness to bear on disability discrimination. This Article thus contributes to the established fields of …

Money That Costs Too Much: Regulating Financial Incentives, Kristen Underhill

Faculty Scholarship

Money may not corrupt. But should we worry if it corrodes? Legal scholars in a range of fields have expressed concern about “motivational crowding-out,” a process by which offering financial rewards for good behavior may undermine laudable social motivations, like professionalism or civic duty. Disquiet about the motivational impacts of incentives has now extended to health law, employment law, tax, torts, contracts, criminal law, property, and beyond. In some cases, the fear of crowding-out has inspired concrete opposition to innovative policies that marshal incentives to change individual behavior. But to date, our fears about crowding-out have been unfocused and amorphous; …

Hate Speech, Public Assurance, And The Civic Standing Of Speakers And Victims, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

Jeremy Waldron and James Weinstein have opened up a promising line of inquiry regarding the legitimacy and propriety of hate speech regulation. In doing so, they have succeeded in reinvigorating a subject that had grown academically formulaic even while becoming alarmingly more salient politically and culturally. Together they have enriched our understanding with their specificity of argumentation, intellectual courage, fairminded attentiveness to critics and counter-arguments, comparative law perspective, and genuine originality of conception. I find that each has shown me at least one significant problem in the other’s analysis, a symmetry that I consider a tribute to both.

Informants & Cooperators, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

The police have long relied on informants to make critical cases, and prosecutors have long relied on cooperator testimony at trials. Still, concerns about these tools for obtaining closely held information have substantially increased in recent years. Reliability concerns have loomed largest, but broader social costs have also been identified. After highlighting both the value of informants and cooperators and the pathologies associated with them, this chapter explores the external and internal measures that can or should be deployed to regulate their use.

Leading With Conviction: The Transformative Role Of Formerly Incarcerated Leaders In Reducing Mass Incarceration, Susan Sturm, Haran Tae

Faculty Scholarship

This report documents the roles of formerly incarcerated leaders engaged in work related to reducing incarceration and rebuilding communities, drawing on in-depth interviews with 48 of these leaders conducted over a period of 14 months. These “leaders with conviction” have developed a set of capabilities that enable them to advance transformative change, both in the lives of individuals affected by mass incarceration and in the criminal legal systems that have devastated so many lives and communities. Their leadership assumes particular importance in the era of the Trump Presidency, when the durability of the ideological coalitions to undo the failed apparatus …

In Memoriam – Marvin A. Chirelstein, Barbara Aronstein Black, Stephen B. Cohen, Michael J. Graetz, Roberta Romano, Carol Sanger, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Marvin Chirelstein was my good friend long before he was my colleague, and Ellen is one of my closest friends-it's a friendship that's lasted through oh! so many ups and downs for all of us for oh! so many years. As a sign of how good a friend I considered Marvin, I will report that he is the only person I have ever permitted to call me Babs!

Corporate Inversions And The Unbundling Of Regulatory Competition, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Several prominent public corporations have recently embraced a noteworthy (and newsworthy) type of transaction known as a "tax inversion." In a typical inversion, a U.S. multinational corporation ("MNC") merges with a foreign company. The entity that ultimately emerges from this transactional cocoon is invariably incorporated abroad, yet typically remains listed in U.S. securities markets under the erstwhile domestic issuer's name. When structured to satisfy applicable tax requirements, corporate inversions permit domestic MNCs eventually to replace U.S. with foreign tax treatment of their extraterritorial earnings – ostensibly at far lower effective rates.

Most regulators and politicians have reacted to the inversion …

Risk As A Proxy For Race: The Dangers Of Risk Assessment, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Actuarial risk assessment in the implementation and administration of criminal sentencing has a long history in this country – a long and fraught history. Today, many progressive advocates promote the use of actuarial risk assessment instruments as part of a strategy to reduce the problem of "mass incarceration." Former Attorney General Eric Holder has called on the U.S. Sentencing Commission to hold hearings to further consider the matter of risk assessment and prediction tools in sentencing and parole.

The objective – to reduce our massive over-incarceration in this country – is critical and noble. But risk assessment tools are simply …

Governing Interdependent Financial Systems: Lessons From The Vienna Initiative, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

Financial markets have become globally interdependent, yet their governance has remained national at the core. This friction encumbers crisis management and distorts incentives for crisis prevention. The Vienna Initiative, formed to manage the fallout from the global crisis in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), offers an alternative coordinated, multi-stakeholder governance framework. A critical prerequisite for such a regime is a coordinating agent, or ‘anchor tenant’, that is deeply vested in the stability of transnational financial systems, but does not directly compete with market actors or regulators. Lessons for more effective governance of financial interdependence are discussed.

About Abortion: The Complications Of The Category, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

My subject this afternoon is abortion, a subject that for the last 40 years has embedded itself in American consciousness, American politics, and American culture with remarkable durability and reach. Looking only at the first decade of this century – from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, to use two presidential landmarks – abortion has been central to how Americans conceptualize, debate, and sometimes resolve all sorts of things: foreign aid, health care reform, high school sex education, and judicial nominations to the Supreme Court. Abortion has been at the heart of disputes over what products Walmart keeps on its …

Regulatory Fictions: On Marriage And Countermarriage, Elizabeth F. Emens

Faculty Scholarship

Debates about marriage currently capture much public attention. Scholars have pushed beyond the question of whether gays are worthy of marriage to ask whether marriage is worthy of gays. The present moment of questioning marriage in its current form may be brief Thus, we should take this opportunity to imagine the widest possible range of alternatives to our current marriage regime – what I call countermarriage regimes. This Essay draws on two unlikely sources of legal innovation to expand our thinking about marriage alternatives: literature and anti-gay law. Literature offers an array of countermarriage regimes, including exploding marriage, three-strikes marriage, …

"European Copyright Code" – Back To First Principles (With Some Additional Detail), Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The "Wittem Group" of copyright scholars has proposed a "European Copyright Code," to "serve as an important reference tool for future legislatures at the European and national levels." Because, notwithstanding twenty years of Directives and a growing ECJ caselaw, copyright law in EU Member States continues to lack uniformity, the Wittem Group’s endeavor should be welcomed, at least as a starting point for reflection on the desirable design of an EU copyright regime. Whether or not the proposed Code succeeds in influencing national or Community legislation, it does offer an occasion to consider the nature of the rights that copyright …

Litigation & Professional Responsibility: Is Overlawyering Overtaking Democracy?, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

Welcome everyone. We're going to get started. I'm David Schizer, the Dean of Columbia Law School. I'm here to moderate the panel, and our panel's title is, of course, "Is Overlawyering Overtaking Democracy?"

Now, as the moderator I get to ask questions, and I'm going to start with a question of the audience. My question is, aside from me, how many people here have seen Jerry Seinfeld's new animated movie, Bee Movie? I've a six-year-old daughter, which explains why I did – okay, a couple of people. For the rest of the audience's benefit, I should tell you the …

Advancing The Rule Of Law: Report On The International Rule Of Law Symposium Convened By The American Bar Association November 9-10, 2005, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

The American Bar Association hosted the first International Rule of Law Symposium in Washington, D.C. on November 9-10, 2005. The Symposium brought together representatives from all over the world who share a common interest in advancing the rule of law as a means to tackle major obstacles that hamper social and economic growth and development around the globe. Some were ministers and government officials, others entrepreneurs and business people, yet others represented non-governmental organizations or employees of multilateral donor organizations. The topics addressed at the Symposium were equally far reaching in scope, covering everything from poverty alleviation and improving public …

The President And Choices Not To Enforce, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

The executive branch is often called upon to assess how a particular statute it is charged to administer fits within the larger framework of the law. Professor Dawn Johnsen's thoughtful analysis addresses an important subset of these challenges: situations in which the President believes a particular statute is inconsistent with one or another provision of the Constitution and, therefore, should not be enforced. My purpose here is to explore the context of executive non-enforcement more broadly, in a way that may help in understanding the particular problem she addresses.

Issues of constitutional structure and function are among the most daunting …

Siegecraft And Surrender: The Law And Strategy Of Cities And Targets, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

The razing of Jericho; the sack of Magdeburg; the siege of Leningrad; the fire-bombing of Dresden. Ever since civilizations began organizing permanent economic settlements, cities and towns have occupied a central role in warfare and in our images of war." On almost every page of historical writings," remarked Grotius, "you may find accounts of the destruction of whole cities, or the leveling of walls to the ground, the devastation of fields, and conflagrations." A driving force behind the evolution and development of cities has been defense and security. As a result, how-ever, cities have become a primary target or object …

Homosexuals, Torts, And Dangerous Things, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

Negligent, intentional, and strict liability torts. From a canonical standpoint, whatever else one might teach, it is not a first-year torts course if these three concepts are not covered. Torts has a canon, even a Restatement. Yet a canon evolves only after some criteria of value has been established such that privileged texts can be identified according to some authoritative standard. In other words, a canon is the result of a process by which a rule of recognition identifies authoritative texts.

At what point can we say that torts became a field and an intact legal subject, the canon …

Curriculum Vitae (Feminae): Biography And Early American Women Lawyers, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

In this review, Carol Sanger examines the recent surge of interest in the lives of early women lawyers. Using Jane Friedman's biography of Myra Bradwell, America's First Woman Lawyer, as a starting point, Professor Sanger explores the complexities for the feminist biographer of reconciling for herself and for her subject conflicting professional, political, and personal sensibilities. Professor Sanger concludes that to advance the project of women's history, feminist biographers ought not retreat to the comforts of commemorative Victorian biography, even for Victorian subjects, but should instead strive to present and accept early women subjects on their own complex terms.

The Single European Act: A Constitution For The Community?, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

If proof were needed that the European Economic Community is still the product of a careful tempering of integrationist impulses with preoccupations of national sovereignty, the recently ratified Single European Act (Single Act or Act) amply supplies it. Although the Single Act represents the most comprehensive revision to date of the Treaty of Rome (EEC Treaty), which established the European Economic Community (European Community or Community), it also reflects the continuing vitality of the view that functional change within the Community takes priority in time over structural and institutional reform. Rather than place European integration on a new set of …

Immigration Reform And Control Of The Undocumented Family, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), Congress' attempt to clean up the problem of illegal immigration in the United States, puts a great number of undocumented alien families, mostly Mexican, to a hard test. Under IRCA's amnesty provisions, every alien must individually meet the eligibility requirements, such as having lived in the United States since before January 1, 1982. But many aliens who satisfy these requirements have spouses or children who do not. Thus, while eligible aliens may adjust to a legal immigration status, their ineligible family members must either leave the United States or remain illegally, …

Commercial Arbitration In The Eighteenth Century: Searching For The Transformation Of American Law, Eben Moglen

Faculty Scholarship

Some recent writing on the history of American law, notably that of Morton Horwitz, has observed a "transformation" in the early years of the nineteenth century as a new legal culture replaced the pre-commercial regime and altered rules of law in favor of the commercially active founders of industrial capitalism. In the course of this transformation, Horwitz argues, merchants and lawyers identified possible grounds for an "alliance," in which the lawyers gained social status and a monopoly in adjudicative institutions, while the commercial classes gained a system of law which subsidized their interests at the expense of other classes in …

Judicial Scrutiny Of "Benign" Racial Preference In Law School Admissions, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Racial preferences for blacks generate ambivalence in those who care about racial equality and also believe that individuals should be judged "on their own merits." This ambivalence is reflected in divergent "equal protection" values, the value of eliminating barriers to equality imposed on minority groups and that of distributing the burdens and benefits of social life without reference to arbitrary distinctions. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that after Marco DeFunis, Jr. challenged the constitutionality of racial preferences for admission to a state law school, the Supreme Court's resolution of the issue was awaited with intense interest and some trepidation. For …