Law Commons^™

Current Issues In The Changing Roles And Practices Of Community Economic Development Lawyers, Susan R. Jones

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article, part of a symposium entitled "Lawyering for a New Democracy," explores current issues related to the changing roles of public interest lawyers engaged in Community Economic Development (CED) in a new democracy. After discussing current issues and trends in CED practice, the author concludes that CED is inherently privatized and is becoming more so with the national emphasis on economic self-sufficiency. The author provides lessons from law school clinical practice of enhanced strategic collaborations and highlights current trends and issues involving technology, leadership development, community organizing, asset accumulation, and social capital. Furthermore, leadership development and community organizing are …

The Middle Way: What Contemporary Liberal Legal Theorists Can Learn From Aristotle, Miriam Galston

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

American legal theorists frequently ask whether and how theorists, citizens, lawmakers, judges, and other public officials can attain truth, correctness, or certainty in their legal and moral views. This essay discusses the views of contemporary liberal legal theorists who have attempted to answer these questions in a way that is neither objectivist nor formalist, on the one hand, nor subjectivist or relativist, on the other, referring to authors that make up this group as theorists of the "middle way." The essay suggests areas in which such legal thinkers might profit from studying Aristotle's writings about ethics and politics. Two approaches …

Form Over Substance?: Officer Certification And The Promise Of Enhanced Personal Accountability Under The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Lisa M. Fairfax

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Form Over Substance?: Officer Certification and the Promise of Enhanced Personal Accountability under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 55 Rutgers L. Rev. 1 (2002), argues that the requirement under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (the "Act") that particular officers certify the accuracy of the financial information contained in their company's periodic reports fails to alter significantly existing standards of liability for officers who signed or approved such reports prior to the Act's passage. This failure creates cause for concern about the Act's potential to meet its objectives. Indeed, the certification requirement represents one of the Act's principal symbols of officer personal accountability. By demonstrating …

Doing Well While Doing Good: Reassessing The Scope Of Directors' Fiduciary Obligations In For-Profit Corporations With Non-Shareholder Beneficiaries, Lisa M. Fairfax

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Doing Well While Doing Good: Reassessing the Scope of Directors' Fiduciary Obligations in For-Profit Corporations with Non-Shareholder Beneficiaries, 59 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 414 (2002), explores corporate fiduciary duties in the context of for-profit companies that operate in traditionally non-profit spheres. The rise in "privatization" - a conversion from certain businesses being operated by nonprofit and government entities to operation by for-profit companies - has sparked considerable opposition, particularly when it occurs within industries that deliver some societal good such as health care or education. Opponents claim that for-profit companies cannot pay heed to their social or charitable commitments …

Intergenerational Justice Between Authors In The Digital Age, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Authors' copyright rights have traditionally been limited, because such limitations were believed to be necessary to advance copyright law's constitutionally-mandated utilitarian purpose - "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." But authors today - especially authors of digital works - are increasingly turning to extra-copyright measures, including encryption and "clickwrap" licenses, to customize their rights in their works of authorship. Because such privately-ordered rights are arguably outside of copyright law's framework, they are not necessarily subject to its utilitarian mandate, and need not be made subject to limitations imposed by copyright law on authors' rights. Even though …

But Some Are More Equal: Race, Exclusion, And Campaign Finance, Spencer A. Overton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Proposed campaign finance reforms and critiques of current campaign finance jurisprudence are incomplete because campaign finance reformers overlook social and historical realities related to race. This Article uses race as an analytical factor to develop a more comprehensive understanding of campaign finance. Past state-sanctioned discrimination has contributed to current racial disparities in property. Under the current campaign finance system, these disparities in property shape the racial distribution of political influence no less than poll taxes, literacy tests, or at-large electoral districts. Further, seemingly neutral campaign finance doctrine threatens to lead to future racial disparities in the political distribution of societal …

Parenthood, Genes, And Gametes: The Family Law And Trusts And Estates Perspectives, Naomi R. Cahn

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article proposes a solution to resolve the legal issues that arise from the disposition of eggs, zygotes, and sperm upon divorce or death. I address two overlapping issues in family law and trusts and estates law: (1) whether the partner seeking procreation may use gametic material over the objections of the other partner and (2) how should the use of donated, willed, or marital gametic material affect the legal determination of parenthood?

In family law cases, courts generally rule in favor of the person seeking to avoid procreation, regardless of any evidence as to the intent of the parties. …

Patterns Of Drafting Errors In The Uniform Commercial Code And How Courts Should Respond To Them, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article identifies eight recurring patterns of drafting in the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). For each of these patterns, and for other idiosyncratic errors, the article recommends specific judicial responses. These responses take advantage of many of the UCC's unique characteristics. While the problem of drafting errors in the UCC may seem minor in light of the model code's high overall quality, the suggested responses can lead to a more efficient and effective application of the statute.

Faithless Wives And Lazy Husbands: Gender Norms In Nineteenth Century Divorce Law, Naomi R. Cahn

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The article examines the nature of marriage and the expectations of husbands and wives in nineteenth century America by analyzing trial reports of famous nineteenth century divorce cases. The article argues that the textured history of divorce law in the United States shows how the law has affected gendered marital roles through its regulation of divorce. While fault is no longer the focus of divorce, conformity with gendered expectations remains a central aspect of the marital dissolution legal process. In the nineteenth century, conformity benefitted women; if they were the innocent spouse who had taken care of the children, the …

Remedying Societal Discrimination Through The Government's Spending Power, Michael Selmi

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Supreme Court has long held that the government cannot use affirmative action to remedy societal discrimination, and this restriction has severely limited the efficacy of governmental affirmative action programs. Indeed, it is not too much to suggest that most affirmative action programs that have been invalidated over the last decade would have been upheld if the government were permitted to remedy societal discrimination. This article develops an argument for how the court can - and in fact does - use its spending power to remedy societal discrimination. The argument is based largely on a series of cases involving government …

A Case For The Twenty-First Century Constitutional Canon: Schneiderman V. United States, David Fontana

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article examines a generally underappreciated 1943 Supreme Court case, Schneiderman v. United States. Schneiderman raises a variety of issues related to disparate subjects, such as the role of courts during wartime, the place of the Constitution in the American "civil religion," constitutional limitations on immigration regulation, and so on. Because this case discusses all of these issues (and had a major impact on the evolution of some of these issues), it is a case of substantial importance and interest that has belonged in the constitutional canon for some time. However, this Article argues that, because of the new issues …

Sites Of Redemption: A Wide-Angle Look At Government Vouchers And Sectarian Service Providers, Ira C. Lupu, Robert W. Tuttle

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The constitutional issues presented by the use at religious institutions of government-financed vouchers for social services have been addressed repeatedly, but virtually all of the writing in the field focuses exclusively on educational services. Most of that writing, moreover, takes the overly simple view that voucher programs are linear relationships running from government to recipient to service provider. Proponents of such programs argue that the presence of recipients as intermediate decision-makers breaks the link between the state and religion, and therefore solves the constitutional problem of church-state connection. Opponents argue that use of intermediaries is nothing more than "money-laundering," and …

Sounding The Death Knell For In Loco Parentis, W. Burlette Carter

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The article examines the history of the regulation of student athletes playing intercollegiate athletics through the lens of the in loco parentis doctrine. It argues that the doctrine has been abandoned in the larger college and university context, but continues to survive in the intercollegiate arena. Part I investigates the role of the in loco parentis doctrine in early college and university life. Part II discusses the general demise of the doctrine in the 1960s and 1970s and the resulting expansion of freedoms that came to college and university students. Part III demonstrates how the doctrine is reflected in modern …

Fine-Tuning Acquisition Reform's Favorite Procurement Vehicle, The Indefinite Delivery Contract, Karen Thornton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article provides an assessment of the effectiveness of the efforts to improve efficiency and commercialize government procurement, seven years after the passage of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act. The reforms that abolished inflexible rules and empowered a reduced acquisition workforce have been criticized as allowing agencies to obscure the transparency of traditionally rule-bound federal procurement, using sole source methods and bundling to limit competition. This Article asserts the problems associated with indefinite delivery contracting can be alleviated if more attention is devoted to accountability and enhancing contracting officer participation on the acquisition team.

Festo And The Doctrine Of Equivalents: Implications For Patent Infringement Litigation, Martin J. Adelman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision in Festo Corporation v. Shoketsu Kinzokukogyo Kabushiki Co., Ltd.Overall, “the Federal Circuit failed to expressly limit the application of the doctrine of equivalents to those accused products or processes that were not reasonably foreseeable at the time of the patent, but did limit the doctrine of equivalents by expanding the reach of the doctrine of prosecution history estoppel.” The article notes that the “key issue[s] left unsettled by Festo [are] the status of prosecution history by argument as well as the meaning of an amended limitation.”

The Law Of Environmental 'Ppms' In The Wto: Debunking The Myth Of Illegality, Steve Charnovitz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article explains and appraises the WTO law of Processes and Production Methods (“PPMs”). A better understanding of the law and of how PPMs operate can help governments and stakeholders improve the management of outwardly directed PPMs. Governments presently have divergent views about WTO rules. These diverging views have led to an inside-out debate from which a political consensus cannot easily emerge. This Article examines the relevant WTO case law on the issue of PPMs and concludes that PPMs are, contrary to some commentators, not prohibited by the WTO. Finally, the Article shows how a correct legal reading may enable …

The Seventh Amendment Right To A Civil Jury Trial: The Supreme Court Giveth And The Supreme Court Taketh Away, Joan E. Schaffner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article examines the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence relating to the historic Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. I describe the three-prong analysis that the Court employs, analyze the Court’s decisions that analyze the jury trial, and conclude that the Court’s decisions are consistent with its Seventh Amendment line of cases in which it emphasizes the preservation of the basic right to jury under the first inquiry, while it de-emphasizes the essence and scope of that right under the second and third inquiries.

Trans-Parliamentary Associations In Global Functional Agencies, Steve Charnovitz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article examines a new phenomenon, transparliamentary activism that focuses on particular international issues or international organizations. For example, the Parliamentary Conference on the World Bank. Such parliamentary organizing has a political significance beyond the usual transnational NGO activities because parliamentarians are elected officials. The transparliamentary activism discussed here differs from the traditional interparliamentary association going back over a hundred years. The article discusses the recent developments in the World Trade Organization and the World Bank.

Review Of Rulemaking, Participation And The Limits Of Public Law In The Usa And Europe By Theodora Th. Ziamou And Review Of Governing By Numbers: Delegated Legislation And Everyday Policy-Making, By Edward C. Page, Francesca Bignami

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article reviews two books: Rulemaking, Participation and the Limits of Public Law in the USA and Europe by Theodora Th. Ziamou and Governing by Numbers by Edward C. Page. In Rulemaking, Ziamou compares the law of rulemaking in the United States, Germany, Greece, and England. Ziamou covers the distinction between administrative rules and other administrative acts, the constitutional law of rulemaking, rulemaking procedure, the ability of private organizations to adopt rules that bind themselves and third parties, and judicial review. Readers are left with a better understanding of American and European rulemaking but may not be convinced that Europe …

Rational Custom, Edward T. Swaine

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article agrees with recent papers that rational choice analysis may be a useful heuristic for customary international law, which is plagued by an incoherent approach to state interests. The theory's initial application, however, has been flawed and unduly truncated, and I provide additional illustrations from game theory and of customary rules to illustrate the point. Rational choice analysis not only explains why certain customary international law may legitimately be regarded as obligatory, thus redeeming an important legal institution, but also indicates important directions for reform.

The Cultural Life Of Capital Punishment: Surveying The Benefits Of A Cultural Analysis Of Law, Reviewing Austin Sarat, 'When The State Kills: Capital Punishment And The American Condition', Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Austin Sarat's 'When the State Kills' seeks to explore the interrelationship between capital punishment and American culture. Utilizing scholarly approaches drawn from sociology, literary criticism, cultural studies, and political science, Sarat illuminates the ways in which the official legal regime of capital punishment creates, reflects, and reinforces broader cultural attitudes about crime and punishment. Moreover, he argues that the destructive long-term cultural consequences of the death penalty provide a reason for abolition over and above any criminological or doctrinal arguments against the practice.

Thus, 'When the State Kills' not only offers a powerful intervention in the ongoing death penalty debate, …

Communicating Governance: Will Plain English Drafting Improve Regulation?, Steven L. Schooner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration showed little interest in adopting Vice President Gore's ambitious, high profile National Performance Review (NPR) agenda. One area, however, where the Bush administration would do well to embrace the NPR's efforts is the plain language initiative. While it would be hyperbole to suggest that the NPR's efforts dramatically improved the clarity of the government's written communication (including statutes, regulations, policies, instructions, etc.), some progress was made. Yet it will take some time before a commitment to writing in plain, clear, precise English becomes a cultural (or governmental) norm. Even though …

Access And Aggregation: Privacy, Public Records, And The Constitution, Daniel J. Solove

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this article, Professor Solove develops a theory to reconcile the tension between transparency and privacy in the context of public records. Federal and state governments maintain public records containing personal information spanning an individual's life from birth to death. The web of state and federal regulation that governs the accessibility of these records generally creates a default rule in open access to information. Solove contends that the ready availability of public records creates a significant problem for privacy because various bits of information when aggregated paint a detailed portrait of a person's life that Solove refers to as a …

Conceptualizing Privacy, Daniel J. Solove

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this Article, Professor Solove develops a new approach for conceptualizing privacy. He begins by examining the existing discourse about conceptualizing privacy, exploring the conceptions of a wide array of jurists, legal scholars, philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists. Solove contends that the theories are too narrow or too broad. With a few exceptions, the discourse seeks to conceptualize privacy by isolating one or more common essential or core characteristics of privacy. Expounding upon Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance, Solove contends that privacy is better understood as drawing from a common pool of similar characteristics. Rather than search for an overarching …

Digital Dossiers And The Dissipation Of Fourth Amendment Privacy, Daniel J. Solove

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this article, Professor Solove examines the increasing information flow from the private sector to the government, especially in light of the response to September 11, 2001. In today's Information Age, private sector entities are gathering an unprecedented amount of personal information about individuals, and the data is increasingly being accessed by government law enforcement officials. This government information gathering takes place outside the bounds of the Fourth Amendment, since the Supreme Court held in Smith v. Maryland and United States v. Miller that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to records held by third parties. Law enforcement officials can, …

Historic Preservation Grants To Houses Of Worship: A Case Study In The Survival Of Separationism, Ira C. Lupu, Robert W. Tuttle

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The movement in the law of the Religion Clauses from Separationism, which requires distinctive treatment of religious institutions, to Neutralism, which prohibits such distinctive treatment, has been proceeding for the past twenty years. In some legal contexts, however, this movement has occurred erratically or incompletely, and normative questions remain about whether this paradigm change should proceed with respect to all relevant issues. In this paper, we test the positive and normative implications of the shift by exploring in detail a particular, heretofore unexamined legal context - government grants to active houses of worship for historic preservation. Many states have schemes …

The Distinctive Place Of Religious Entities In Our Constitutional Order, Ira C. Lupu, Robert W. Tuttle

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Although much has been written on the special place of "religion" in American law, there has been considerably less commentary on the distinctive quality of religious institutions as compared with their secular counterparts. The current law of the Religion Clauses, and the characteristics of institutions as compared to religiously motivated individuals, however, suggest that institutions deserve discrete attention. In this paper, a revised version of the Donald Giannella Memorial Lecture recently delivered at Villanova Law School, the authors focus on three different legal contexts in which questions of distinctiveness of religious institutions arise - their exemption from civil rights law …

The Transformation Of The U.S. Financial Services Industry, 1975-2000: Competition, Consolidation And Increased Risks, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The structure of the U.S. financial services industry has fundamentally changed during the past quarter century. Rapid improvements in information technology and the creation of innovative financial instruments have produced a dramatic increase in competition and spurred deregulation, thereby eroding traditional barriers that separated banks from securities firms and life insurance companies. In response to these trends, major banks, securities broker-dealers and life insurers have aggressively expanded by merging with their direct competitors and by acquiring firms in other financial sectors. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 has encouraged this consolidation trend by authorizing the creation of financial holding companies that …

Behavioral Finance And Investor Governance, Charles B. Craver

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The efficient market hypothesis is a special case in finance. It explains only tiny fractions of observed phenomena. Perhaps its major contribution is a formal definition of an ideal market world, to which policy formulations may be directed and against which they can be measured. Indeed, it seems unlikely that the infirmities of market action ever will be so minuscule as to render the EMH more than a special case, though it may explain more in the future than it does now. However things evolve, during the evolutionary course the shackles of the EMH should be unloosed from corporate and …

Transitional Justice In Afghanistan: The Promise Of Mixed Tribunals, Laura T. Dickinson

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In the wake of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, how to apprehend, question, and punish the perpetrators remains a difficult question to answer. Moreover, the question of where, and how, to try suspects raises a series of deeper questions about the role of criminal accountability in times of conflict and war.

Scholars in the emerging field of transitional justice do not focus on the question of terrorism specifically, however, they study the ways in which societies that are attempting to confront past and lingering mass atrocities do so through a variety of means: …