Law Commons^™

Political Risk Allocation In Egyptian Ppp Projects, Yousef Mohamed Al Amly Llm

Yousef Mohamed Al Amly LLM

Egypt has been recently suffering from several political changes since the revolution of the 25th of January and that has been jeopardizing the political stability required to encourage Investors to invest in financing infrastructures that is deemed to be crucial to help in the prosperity and welfare of the Egyptians. Therefore defining the types of political risks and efficiently allocating them is considered as one of the main keys to encourage more Investors to bid for the future coming PPP projects.

The Reactionary Road To Free Love: How Doma, State Marriage Amendments And Social Conservatives Undermine Traditional Marriage, Scott Titshaw

Scott Titshaw

Much has been written about the possible effects on different-sex marriage of legally recognizing same-sex marriage. This article looks at the defense of marriage from a different angle: It shows how rejecting same-sex marriage results in political compromise and the proliferation of “marriage light” alternatives (e.g., civil unions, domestic partnerships, or reciprocal beneficiaries) that undermine the unique status of marriage for everyone. In the process, it examines several aspects of the marriage debate in detail. After describing the flexibility of marriage as it has evolved over time, the article focuses on recent state constitutional amendments attempting to stop further development. …

Altruism Trumping Privacy Hipaa, Privacy, Big Data Set Benefits, Douglas J. Henderson

DOUGLAS J HENDERSON

The United States Government must administer a publicly held cloud networked Big Data Set of Private Health Information (PHI) in order to utilize Big Data Analytics and allow free data mining of such PHI so that the health care industry can operate most cost effectively while also meeting the health care needs of the aging United States populace with the highest quality of care.

The United Nations And War In The Twentieth And Twenty-First Centuries, Robert Weiner

Robert Weiner

The United Nations was created in 1945 to prevent another world war. It was designed, as the Preamble to the Charter states, to eliminate the scourge of war. The failure to agree on a permanent UN international army meant that the UN had to improvise in dealing with wars. Peacekeeping, which is not mentioned anywhere in the UN Charter, had to be invented. This study investigates how peacekeeping has evolved through four “generations,” culminating in Unsanctioned multinational forces consisting of “coalitions of the willing.” The study also stresses how one of the greatest peacekeeping failures of the UN in the …

Providing A Foundation For Wealth For Wealth Creation And Development In Africa: The Role Of The Rule Of Law, John Mukum Mbaku

JOHN MUKUM MBAKU

PROVIDING A FOUNDATION FOR WEALTH CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: THE ROLE OF THE RULE OF LAW JOHN MUKUM MBAKU ABSTRACT This paper examines the struggle in Africa to alleviate and eventually eradicate poverty. It is argued that the most effective way for African countries to deal with poverty is to create wealth. Unfortunately, these countries have not been able to create the wealth that they need to confront poverty. This is due primarily to the fact that since independence, these countries have not been able to undertake democratic institutional reforms to create and adopt institutional arrangements that guarantee and …

Property And Republicanism In The Northwest Ordinance, Matthew J. Festa

Matthew J. Festa

This Article shows that individual property rights held a central place in the republican ideology of the founding era by examining the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Between the two predominant strains of founding-era political ideology—liberalism and republicanism—the conventional view holds that individual property rights were central to Lockean liberalism, but not to the republican political tradition, where property is thought to have played more of a communitarian role as part of promoting civic virtue and the common good. Republicanism has been invoked in modern debates, and its emphases are present in current ideas such as the important new theory of …

The Emergence Of Private Property Law In China And Its Impact On Human Rights, Mark D. Kielsgard, Lei Chen

Mark D. Kielsgard

ABSTRACT This article investigates the development of private property law in the PRC and its connection to the growth of human rights trends in China. It assesses the vitality of these trends, reviews the relevant historic legal and social background and demonstrates how the introduction of private property in China has fundamentally altered the fabric of its civil society. Drawing upon case studies and statutory analysis, and evaluating them from the perspective of both Chinese and Western scholarship, it analyzes trends driving greater democratic structures by reviewing the self-governance of condominium owners associations and the human rights practices they have …

What's Wrong With Us Political System?, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Procedural Principle: A Normative Morphology For Gauging Threats To Judicial Independence, Tara Price

Tara Price

For more than two hundred years, judicial review has served as the foundation of the American judicial branch. And yet, more than two centuries later, scholars and political figures continue to debate its proper place in American government. Recently, Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich waded into this debate, calling for members of Congress and the President to take stronger actions to check and balance what he termed “judicial supremacy.” Cries for a weakened judicial branch and insistence on the importance of reining in activist judges are becoming commonplace throughout American history.

As Gingrich and many before him have realized, the President …

Marginalized Monitoring: Adaptively Managing Urban Stormwater, Melissa K. Scanlan, Stephanie Tai

Melissa K. Scanlan

Adaptive management is a theory that encourages environmental managers to engage in a continual learning process and adapt their management choices based on learning about new scientific developments. One such area of scientific development relevant to water management is bacterial genetics, which now allow scientists to identify when human sewage is getting into places it should not be. Source-specific bacterial testing in a variety of cities across the United States indicates there is human sewage in urban stormwater pipes. These pipes are designed to carry runoff from city streets and lots, and they send untreated water directly into rivers, streams, …

Changing The Paradigm Of International Criminal Law: Considering The Work Of The United Nations War Crimes Commission Of 1943-1948, Daniel T. Plesch, Shanti Sattler

Daniel T Plesch

Changing the Paradigm of International Criminal Law: Considering the Work of the United Nations War Crimes Commission of 1943-1948 by Dr Dan Plesch and Shanti Sattler This article discusses the precedents of the largely forgotten United Nations War Crimes Commission (U.N.W.C.C.) of 1943-1948. The work of this multinational body should be regarded as a source of customary international law. We seek to introduce the U.N.W.C.C. and the thousands of national trials it supported into modern discourse about the development of international criminal justice and argue why they are relevant to current deliberations. The article concludes that the U.N.W.C.C. has been …

Toward Cyber Peace: Managing Cyber Attacks Through Polycentric Governance, Scott Shackelford

Scott Shackelford

Views range widely about the seriousness of cyber attacks and the likelihood of cyber war. But even framing cyber attacks within the context of a loaded category like war can be an oversimplification that shifts focus away from enhancing cybersecurity against the full range of threats now facing companies, countries, and the international community. Current methods are proving ineffective at managing cyber attacks, and as cybersecurity legislation is being debated in the U.S. Congress and around the world the time is ripe for a fresh look at this critical topic. This Article searches for alternative avenues to foster cyber peace …

Employers United: An Empirical Analysis Of Corporate Political Speech In The Wake Of The Affordable Care Act, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard, Susan Scholz, Raquel Meyer Alexander

Elizabeth A. Weeks

Is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) bad for business? Did the countries' most prominent companies game the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure process to make negative political statements about ObamaCare? Immediately following the ACA's enactment on March 23, 2010, a number of companies drew scrutiny for issuing SEC filings writing off millions – and in AT&T's case, one billion dollars – against expected earnings for 2010 alone, based on a single, discrete tax-law change in the ACA. Congressional and Administration officials accused the firms of being “irresponsible” and using “big numbers to exaggerate the health reform's …

Congressional Disclosure Of Time Spent Fundraising, Robert Brent Ferguson

Robert Brent Ferguson

This Article advocates passage of a law requiring members of Congress to disclose the amount of time they spend fundraising.

In the wake of Citizens United and other court decisions severely limiting lawmakers’ ability to regulate campaign spending, many scholars have turned their focus to campaign finance disclosure laws. According to some, laws requiring campaigns and donors to reveal the source of contributions and expenditures are the last bastion of federal campaign finance law. Yet despite a history of broad acceptance, disclosure laws rest on an increasingly shaky foundation.

The most troubling aspect of current disclosure law is that it …

Congressional Disclosure Of Time Spent Fundraising, Robert Brent Ferguson

Robert Brent Ferguson

This Article advocates passage of a law requiring members of Congress to disclose the amount of time they spend fundraising.

In the wake of Citizens United and other court decisions severely limiting lawmakers’ ability to regulate campaign spending, many scholars have turned their focus to campaign finance disclosure laws. According to some, laws requiring campaigns and donors to reveal the source of contributions and expenditures are the last bastion of federal campaign finance law. Yet despite a history of broad acceptance, disclosure laws rest on an increasingly shaky foundation.

The most troubling aspect of current disclosure law is that it …

Congressional Disclosure Of Time Spent Fundraising, Robert Brent Ferguson

Robert Brent Ferguson

Abstract

This Article advocates passage of a law requiring members of Congress to disclose the amount of time they spend fundraising.

In the wake of Citizens United and other court decisions severely limiting lawmakers’ ability to regulate campaign spending, many scholars have turned their focus to campaign finance disclosure laws. According to some, laws requiring campaigns and donors to reveal the source of contributions and expenditures are the last bastion of federal campaign finance law. Yet despite a history of broad acceptance, disclosure laws rest on an increasingly shaky foundation.

The most troubling aspect of current disclosure law is that …

When The Tenth Justice Doesn’T Bark: The Unspoken Freedom Of Health Holding In Nfib V. Sebelius, Abigail Moncrieff

Abigail R. Moncrieff

There was an argument that Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli could have made—but didn’t—in defending Obamacare’s individual mandate against constitutional attack. That argument would have highlighted the role of comprehensive health insurance in steering individuals’ health care savings and consumption decisions. Because consumer-directed health care, which reaches its apex when individuals self insure, suffers from several known market failures and because comprehensive health insurance policies play an unusually aggressive regulatory role in attempting to correct those failures, the individual mandate could be seen as an attempt to eliminate inefficiencies in the health care market that arise from individual decisions to …

Blind Trusts As A Model For Campaign Finance Reform, Perry A. Pirsch

Perry A Pirsch

BLIND TRUSTS AS A MODEL FOR CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

Perry A. Pirsch, MA

University of Nebraska, 2012

In this thesis, I explore whether blind trusts present a viable option for campaign finance reform. More specifically, would either permitting (voluntary) or requiring (mandatory) anonymous donations for political campaigns allow for fully funded, yet privately funded, campaigns while preventing problems, whether real or perceived, such as buying influence (quid pro quo) or buying access, which are traditionally associated with large campaign donations?

To study this question, I have examined the constitutional origins of the need to fund federal campaigns, Congress’ power to …

Blue Jeans, Chewing Gum, And Climate Change Litigation: American Exports To Europe, Daniel Hare

Daniel Hare

This paper analyzes how American-style climate change litigation might be adopted by the European Union (EU) and projects potential methods by which the EU might employ the U.S. model, if it indeed chooses to take the climate change battle to the courts. By synthesizing existing U.S. case law in the environment and climate change fields, the paper roughly defines the “American model” of climate change litigation as parens patriae actions, oftentimes based in the tort of public nuisance, brought by states and other sovereign entities against polluter-defendants. The structural differences between the common law United States and predominantly civil law …

Hope, Fear And Loathing, And The Post-Sebelius Disequilibrium: Assessing The Relationship Between Parties, Congress, And Courts In Tea Party America, Bruce Peabody

Bruce Peabody

The article examines recent website commentary by members of the U.S. House on the judiciary, court cases, and judicial power. We consider member websites both before and after the just-completed 2011 Supreme Court term. With this unique data at our disposal, we argue that three features of today’s political environment—the rise of the Tea Party, instability in traditional party allegiances to courts, and low voter ratings of the legislature’s institutional performance—have combined to create a moment of disequilibrium when it comes to Congress’s public assessments of the judiciary. We sketch a picture of institutional, partisan, and ideological engagement with the …

Copyright Lawmaking And The Public Choice: From Legislative Battles To Private Ordering, Yafit Lev-Aretz

Yafit Lev-Aretz

On January 18th, 2012, the Web went dark in the largest online protest in history. Two anti-piracy Bills – The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and The Protect IP Act (PIPA) – attracted waves of opposition from the Internet community, which culminated on January 18th into an unprecedented 24-hour Web strike, followed by a decision to shelve the Bills indefinitely. This Article argues that the SOPA/PIPA protest created a new political reality in copyright lawmaking, with the tech industry becoming a very influential actor on the one hand, and social networks lowering mobilization costs of individual users on the other …

In Defense Of Taxpayer Funded Lobbying: Securing An Affirmative Right To Intergovernmental Communication, Andrew Emerson

Andrew Emerson

Recent budget gaps have driven local governments to increase their efforts to secure state and federal funding for priority projects. In reply, activists have advocated for legislative proposals that would deny municipal and county governments the right to use public funds for these purposes, arguing that taxpayer funded lobbying disfranchises individual citizens by spending tax dollars to promote spending that they oppose. Despite a long-term judicial trend that supports local governments’ right to use public funds to engage in lobbying activity, state police powers leave these entities vulnerable to activist-driven legislative initiatives. This paper argues that local governments should respond …

Religion And The Equal Protection Clause, Steven G. Calabresi, Abe Salander

Steven G Calabresi

This article argues that state action that discriminates on the basis of religion is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Doctrine even if it does not violate the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment. State action that discriminates on the basis of religion should be subject to strict scrutiny and should almost always be held unconstitutional. We thus challenge the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez in which a 5 to 4 majority of the Court wrongly allowed a California state school to discriminate against a Christian Legal Society chapter …

Democracy On The High Wire: Citizen Commission Implementation Of The Voting Rights Act, Justin Levitt

Justin Levitt

The Voting Rights Act, often praised as the most successful civil rights statute, is among the most fact-intensive of election regulations. California, the country’s most populous and most diverse state, is among the most challenging terrain for applying the Act. California is also the largest jurisdiction at the vanguard of a burgeoning experiment in indirect direct democracy: allowing lay citizens, not incumbent officials, to regulate the infrastructure of representation.

In 2011, fourteen California citizens strode into the briar patch where citizen institutions intersect the Voting Rights Act. These fourteen comprised the state’s brand-new Citizens Redistricting Commission: an official body of …

The Cooperative As Proletarian Corporation: Property Rights Between Corporation, Cooperatives And Globalization In Cuba, Larry Cata Backer

Larry Cata Backer

Since the 1970s, the issue of the relationship between productive property, the state and the individual has been contested in Marxist Leninist states. While China has moved to a more managerial form of relationship, states like Cuba continue to adhere to more strict principles of state control of productive property. However, in the face of recent financial upheavals and Cuba’s long effort to create alternative forms of regional economic engagement, Cuba’s approach to economic regulation has been undergoing limited change. This essay considers the form and scope of Cuban approaches to economic reorganization in the wake of the adoption of …

Substantive Rights In A Constitutional Technocracy, Abigail Moncrieff

Abigail R. Moncrieff

There are two deep puzzles in American constitutional law, particularly related to individual substantive rights, that have persisted across generations: First, why do courts apply a double standard of judicial review, giving strict scrutiny to noneconomic liberties but mere rational basis review to economic ones? Second, why does American constitutional law take the common law baseline as the free and natural state that needs to be protected? This Article proposes a technocratic vision of substantive rights to explain and justify both of these puzzles. The central idea is that modern substantive rights—the rights to speech, religion, association, reproduction, and parenting—protect …

The Curious Case Of Convenience Casinos: How Internet Sweepstakes Cafes Survive In A Gray Area Between Unlawful Gambling And Legitimate Business Promotions, Steven J. Silver

Steven Silver

Once relegated to the Nevada desert and New Jersey shore, gambling is now everywhere in the United States. State governments strapped for cash and desperate for increased tax revenues are welcoming gambling with open arms as forty-three states sponsor lotteries and twenty-three states house casinos. Despite this gaming boom, the ease of access to casinos has not deterred entrepreneurs from successfully creating an offshoot industry of “convenience casinos.” Convenience casinos are simply Internet cafes that sell Internet time cards attached with instant-win sweepstakes entries, much like the code underneath a Coke bottle or a McDonald’s Monopoly game piece. Although seemingly …

The Lawlessness Of Sebelius, Gregory Magarian

Gregory P. Magarian

After the U.S. Supreme Court in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius held nearly all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act constitutional, praise rained down on Chief Justice John Roberts. The Chief Justice’s lead opinion broke with his usual conservative allies on the Court by upholding the Act’s individual mandate as a valid enactment under the Taxing Clause. Numerous commentators have lauded the Chief Justice for his courage and pragmatism. In this essay, Professor Magarian challenges the heroic narrative surrounding the Chief Justice’s opinion. He contends that the opinion is, in two senses, fundamentally lawless. First, the …

Illuminating Corruption Pathways: Modifying The Fcpa’S “Grease Payment” Exception To Galvanize Anti-Corruption Movements In Developing Nations, Ivan Perkins

Ivan Perkins

The Article proposes a new web-based reporting and publication system for “grease” or “facilitating” payments under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). The FCPA penalizes the bribery of foreign government officials, but contains an exception for facilitating payments, made to expedite “routine governmental actions” such as mail or telephone services. Noting the ambiguities within the exception, many commentators and practitioners have called for its abolition. The Article proposes a different solution: entities making facilitating payments should be required to report these payments to the Department of Justice (“DOJ”). Then, the DOJ would publish this information on a website, with graphics …

Politics As Usual: Black Stereotypes And President Obama's Racialization, Lynnette Jenkins

Lynnette R Jenkins

President Barack Obama attempted to transcend race by running a colorblind campaign and administration. Nevertheless, the President and First Lady Michelle Obama have been racialized by media as the result of stereotyping and white supremacy. This paper will demonstrate that racism is not a relic of the past by drawing parallels between previous racist imagery and current media depictions of Barack and Michelle Obama.