Law Commons^™

When Human Experimentation Is Criminal , L. Song Richardson

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Juveniles' Competency To Stand Trial: Wading Through The Rhetoric And The Evidence, Joseph B. Jr. Sanborn

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Book Review

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Let The Punishment Fit The Crime: Should Courts Exercise The Power Of Appellate Sentence Review In Cases Involving Narcotics And Other Stigmatized Crimes, Lee Dionne

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

An Unholy Alliance: Perceptions Of Influence In Insurance Fraud Prosecutions And The Need For Real Safeguards, Aviva Abramovsky

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Policing: Ensuring Stakeholder Collaboration In The Federal Reform Of Local Law Enforcement Agencies, Kami Chavis Simmons

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Felony Murder Rule In Illinois: The Injustice Of The Proximate Cause Theory Explored Via Research In Cognitive Psychology, Martin Lijtmaer

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Una Visita Al Debate Hart-Dworkin [Revisiting The Hart–Dworkin Debate], Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Writing To Learn Law And Writing In Law: An Intellectual Property Illustration, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This essay, prepared as part of a Symposium on teaching intellectual property law, describes a method of combining substantive law teaching with a species of what is commonly called "skills" training. The method involves assessing students not via traditional final exams but instead via research memos patterned after assignments that junior lawyers might encounter in actual legal practice. The essay grounds the method in the theoretical disposition known generally as "writing to learn." It argues that students are likely to learn intellectual property law effectively if they learn to practice as intellectual property lawyers, and specifically to write as intellectual …

An Empirical Investigation Into Appellate Structure And The Perceived Quality Of Appellate Review, Rafael I. Pardo, Jonathan Remy Nash

Scholarship@WashULaw

Commentators have theorized that several factors may improve the process, and thus perhaps the accuracy, of appellate review: (1) review by a panel of judges, (2) subject-matter expertise in the area of the appeal, (3) other law-finding ability, (4) adherence to traditional notions of appellate hierarchy, and (5) the judicial independence of appellate judges. The considerable discussion that has expounded upon these theories has occurred in a vacuum of abstract generalization. This Paper adds a new dimension by presenting results from an empirical study of bankruptcy appellate opinions issued over a three-year period. The federal bankruptcy appellate structure provides certain …

Shareholder Primacy's Corporatist Origins: Adolf Berle And The Modern Corporation, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constructing A Criminal Justice System Free Of Racial Bias: An Abolitionist Framework, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sight, Sound And Meaning: Teaching Intellectual Property With Audiovisual Materials, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article addresses the author's experience using audiovisual materials from the Georgetown Intellectual Property Teaching Resources database. She used audiovisual materials extensively in class to allow students to see the subject matter of the cases rather than just reading verbal descriptions and enable them to apply the principles they read about to new, concrete examples. Many students in IP courses have special interests in music, film, or the visual arts, and the database allows her--and other teachers--to present materials that engage them. She found that students are more willing to speak up in class when they can see or hear …

Illness And Inability To Repay: The Role Of Debtor Health In The Discharge Of Educational Debt, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

For a debtor to obtain a discharge of student loans in bankruptcy, the debtor must establish that their repayment would impose an undue hardship. This Article presents the results of an empirical study of bankruptcy court doctrine over a ten-year period that involved undue hardship discharge proceedings where the court reported information on the debtor's health status, monthly household income, and monthly household expenses. The data show that a medical condition increased a debtor's odds of being granted a discharge by 140% but that household income and expense levels did not have a statistically significant association with legal outcome. These …

The Utility Of Opacity In Judicial Selection, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

Does too much transparency in the selection of judges undermine the independence of the judiciary? This Essay seeks to provide insight into answering this question by focusing on the opaque process by which federal bankruptcy judges are selected. Part I begins with an account that anchors the concepts of judicial independence and judicial accountability to the concept of judicial quality. It proceeds to situate within this account the selection process, suggesting that the process can function as a form of judicial accountability, albeit one that diminishes judicial quality in those instances where the process becomes politicized. A brief discussion follows …

Has The Erie Doctrine Been Repealed By Congress?, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Disadvantages Of Immigration Restriction As A Policy To Improve Income Distribution, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I argue that tax and transfer policies are more efficient than immigration restrictions as instruments for raising the after tax incomes of the least skilled native workers. Policies to protect these native workers frol1'l immigrant competition in the labor market do no better at promoting distributive justice and are likely to impose a greater economic burden on natives in the country of immigration than the tax alternative. These immigration restrictions are especially costly given the disproportionate burden that they place on households with working women, which discourages fel1'wle participation in the labor force. This burden runs contrary …

Liability Insurance, Moral Luck, And Auto Accidents, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Beginning with the seminal work by Williams and Nagel, moral philosophers have used auto accident hypotheticals to illustrate the phenomenon of moral luck. Moral luck occurs in the hypotheticals because (and to the extent that) two equally careless drivers are assessed differently because only one of them caused an accident. This article considers whether these philosophical discussions might contribute to the public policy debate over compensation for auto accidents. Using liability and insurance practices in the United States as an illustrative example, the article explains that auto liability insurance substantially mitigates moral luck and argues that, as a result, the …

A Study Of Counselor's Legal Challenges And Their Perceptions Of Their Ability To Respond, Mary A. Hermann, Debra Gail Legget, Theodore P. Remley Jr.

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

The authors explore the results of a study that assessed the types and frequency of legal issues encountered by counselors and counselors’ perceptions of their ability to respond to these issues. They also assessed whether the participants’ perceptions were related to practice setting, years of experience, completion of a course in ethics, recent completion of continuing education in ethics or legal issues, state licensure status, certification by the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC), and highest degree earned. Results demonstrate that counselors feel most prepared to deal with situations encountered most often, but that school counselors do not feel as …

The Inevitability Of Conscience: A Response To My Critics, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay by Professor David Luban is written in response to critics of his book, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity.

In part I Professor Luban addresses the primacy that he assigns conscience over the professional role and focuses mainly on the arguments of his critics, Professors Norman Spaulding and W. Bradley Wendel. Part II explores the challenge of pluralism, replying primarily to Professors Katherine Kruse, Spaulding, and Wendel. Part III, in response to Professors Kruse and William Simon, elaborates on the concept of human dignity. Part IV discusses institutions and ethics, focusing on Professors Susan Carle and Simon. The …

Constitutional Possibilities, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What are our constitutional possibilities? The importance of this question is illustrated by the striking breadth of recent discussions, ranging from the interpretation of the United States Constitution as a guarantee of fundamental economic equality and proposals to restore the lost constitution to arguments for the virtual abandonment of structural provisions of the Constitution of 1789. Such proposals are conventionally understood as placing constitutional options on the table as real options for constitutional change. Normative constitutional theory asks the question whether these options are desirable--whether political actors (citizens, legislators, executives, or judges) should take action to bring about their plans …

Incorporation And Originalist Theory, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Does the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution incorporate the Bill of Rights contained in the first eight amendments? And how should an originalist answer that question? This paper focuses on the latter question--the issues of originalist theory that are raised by judicial and scholarly debates over what is called "incorporation."

The inquiry proceeds in six parts. Part I answers the questions: "What is incorporation?" and "What is originalism?" Part II examines the theoretical framework for an investigation of incorporation that operates within the narrow confines of interpretation of the linguistic meaning text based on the assumption that the …

Living On The Edge: The Margins Of Legal Personhood, Symposium Foreword, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

All Faculty Scholarship

In January 2008, at the Association of American Law Schools' annual meeting, the Jurisprudence Section conducted a panel on "The Margins of Legal Personhood." The goal of this panel was to draw (or sever) connections between and among different "marginal" entities: the psychopath, the animal, and the embryo or fetus. As is perhaps immediately apparent, these entities are not marginalized in a political sense, but rather lie at the margins of our moral and legal communities. Prima facie, they may have some, but lack all, of the capacities necessary for full membership. Because they live on the edge, we must …

The Sixth Amendment And Criminal Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Susan R. Klein

All Faculty Scholarship

This symposium essay explores the impact of Rita, Gall, and Kimbrough on state and federal sentencing and plea bargaining systems. The Court continues to try to explain how the Sixth Amendment jury trial right limits legislative and judicial control of criminal sentencing. Equally important, the opposing sides in this debate have begun to form a stable consensus. These decisions inject more uncertainty in the process and free trial judges to counterbalance prosecutors. Thus, we predict, these decisions will move the balance of plea bargaining power back toward criminal defendants.

The Denial Of Emergency Protection: Factors Associated With Court Decision Making, Carol E. Jordan, Adam J. Pritchard, Pamela Wilcox, Danielle Duckett-Pritchard

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

Despite the importance of civil orders of protection as a legal resource for victims of intimate partner violence, research is limited in this area, and most studies focus on the process following a court’s initial issuance of an emergency order. The purpose of this study is to address a major gap in the literature by examining cases where victims of intimate partner violence are denied access to temporary orders of protection. The study sample included a review of 2,205 petitions that had been denied by a Kentucky court during the 2003 fiscal year. The study offers important insights into the …

After The Reasonable Man: Getting Over The Subjectivity Objectivity Question, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article challenges the conventional notion of the “reasonable man.” It argues that we make a category mistake when we adopt the metaphor of a human being as the starting point for analysis of the criminal law and instead offers an alternate approach based on heuristic theory, reconceiving the reasonable man as a heuristic that serves as the site for debate over majoritarian norms. The article posits that the debate over having a purely subjective standard and a purely objective standard obscures the commonsense necessity of having a hybrid standard, one which takes into account the characteristics of a particular …

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Use The Legal Argument – A Critique Of Giorgio Agamben’S Notion Of Law, Leila Brännström

Leila Brännström

Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, and State of Exception are, among other things, efforts to explore the deep structures shaping contemporary tendencies in the development of law and politics. Agamben offers us the diagnosis that we live in a ‘permanent state of exception’ – a situation in which law cannot be distinguished from lawlessness. He also suggests a prescription; we ought to look beyond law and reach for a realm of human activity ‘uncontaminated’ by law. He warns us that if we do not over- come law, we risk the ‘juridico-political’ system transforming itself into ‘a …

Testing An Individual Systems Model Of Response Evaluation And Decision (Red) And Antisocial Behavior Across Adolescence, Reid G. Fontaine

Reid G. Fontaine

This study examined the bidirectional development of aggressive response evaluation and decision (RED) and antisocial behavior across five time points in adolescence. Participants (n5522) were asked to imagine themselves behaving aggressively while viewing videotaped ambiguous provocations and answered a set of RED questions following each aggressive retaliation (administered at Grades 8 and 11 [13 and 16 years, respectively]). Self- and mother reports of antisocial behavior were collected at Grades 7, 9/10, and 12 (12, 14/15, and 17 years, respectively). Using structural equation modeling, the study found a partial mediating effect at each hypothesized mediational path despite high stability of antisocial …

Constitución Como Provisión E Irradiación Constitucional. Sobre El Concepto "Neoconstitucionalismo" (Primera Parte), Leonardo García Jaramillo

Leonardo García Jaramillo

No abstract provided.