Law Commons^™

Table Of Mimetic Influences Related To Steve Charnovitz, “What The World Trade Organization Learned From The Ilo,” In Adelle Blackett & Anne Trebilcock Eds., Research Handbook On Transnational Labour Law (Edward Elgar, Forthcoming 2015), Steve Charnovitz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This table shows how the features of the ILO complaint procedures originating in 1919 became a model for the dispute settlement procedures written into the Charter of the International Trade Organization (ITO) in 1948 and the Dispute Settlement Understanding of the World Trade Organization.

Duty To Rescue? Exploring Legal Analysis Through The Lens Of Photojournalists’ Storytelling Dilemmas, Iselin Magdalene Gambert

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In depicting scenes of tragedy, what happens when photojournalists become the story? Do photojournalists have a duty to rescue those they photograph? Should they? This article will use a series of iconic images – and the stories of the photojournalists behind the camera – to illustrate how exploring these questions can be a provocative vehicle through which to engage new law students in legal writing and analysis. The article focuses on an exercise that centers around a fictional “Duty to Rescue” statute modeled after European statutes of the same kind. The exercise is anchored by four images – three still …

Book Review: The Invisible Soldiers: How America Outsourced Our Security By Ann Hagedorn, Steven L. Schooner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This review discusses Ann Hagedorn's book, which addresses the post-millennial proliferation of arms-bearing contractors that has roiled the human rights community and catalyzed a global conversation about the nature and future of modern warfare. Hagedorn’s perspective and insights on arms bearing contractors, democracies, and empires—intensely personal, yet thoughtfully cognizant of policy, political theory, and philosophy—should interest readers new to the field, as well as those well versed in the issues. Outsourcing the use of force is sufficiently important to the future of democratic states that this book—as well as the growing corpus of literature it adds to—merits serious contemplation.

Prizes! Innovating, Risk Shifting, And Avoiding Contracts And Grants, Steven L. Schooner, Nathaniel E. Castellano

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This short piece introduces prizes (or prize contests), which have become the darling of the Obama administration. Public managers increasingly find prizes more attractive than the more conventional and heavily regulated vehicles that they replace, contracts and grants. The paper explains some of the advantages of this increasingly popular approach and signals a cautionary note, particularly to contestants. Unfortunately, the government has not yet provided a straightforward means for contestants to obtain meaningful review if and when disputes arise. Accordingly, the authors suggest that, while shifting risk to the private sector is fair game, contest-sponsoring agencies should respect the private …

(E)Racing Trayvon Martin, Cynthia Lee

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this essay, Cynthia Lee celebrates the 25th anniversary of Critical Race Theory (CRT) by writing about the pitfalls of the ideal of colorblindness. She starts by analyzing Devon Carbado's seminal article on CRT and the Fourth Amendment, (E)Racing the Fourth Amendment. She focuses on Carbado's critique of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's embrace of colorblindness in Florida v. Bostick, the case in which the Supreme Court modified the test for a seizure of the person. Lee uses Carbado's article as a springboard for critiquing the embrace of colorblindness by legal decision-makers involved in George Zimmerman's 2013 murder trial. Zimmerman …

Why Who Does What Matters: Governmental Design, Agency Performance, The Cfpb And Ppaca, William E. Kovacic

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

How should the federal government be organized – and who (i.e., which departments, agencies, bureaus, and commissions) should do what? The issue is not new: President James Madison addressedgovernmental organization in his 1812 State of the Union Address, and in the last century, it is the rare President that does not propose to reorganize some part of the federal government. Indeed, on numerous occasions during the past century, virtually every part of the federal government has been repeatedly reorganized and reconfigured. In previous work, we examined the dynamics that influencethe assignment of regulatory duties to an agency, how those dynamics …

Contemporary Trusts And Estates - An Experiential Approach, Naomi R. Cahn, Jerome Borison, Susan N. Gary, Paula A. Monopoli

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this essay in a special issue dedicated to teaching trusts and estates, the co-authors of Contemporary Trusts & Estates: An Experiential Approach (2d. ed. Aspen 2014) reflect on how the teaching of trusts and estates can integrate policy, practice, doctrine, and centuries of tradition. They describe the genesis of their problem-based casebook and the influence of the Carnegie Report on their choice of pedagogic framework. Each of the co-authors embraced the fundamental principles advocated by the Carnegie Report, which counsels that legal education should integrate "theoretical and practical legal knowledge and professional identity." This essay goes on to outline …

Look Up And Around: Musings On Mentors, Role Models, And Professionalism, Steven L. Schooner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In response to NCMA's request that its Board of Advisors explain how we ended up as leaders in contract management, this article offers a rather simple over-arching suggestion for successful professionals andfuture leaders: look up and around. The article encourages readers to identify mentors, embrace the strengths of their role models, and open themselves up to learn from others, evolve, and grow. The article discusses, among other things, education, networking, professional development (and, of course, writing),and the power of optimism.

A Holistic Look At Agency Enforcement, Robert L. Glicksman, David L. Markell

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The law review literature has long-recognized that effective enforcement is an essential component of effective regulation. Yet much of the literature focuses on one aspect of the enforcement challenge or another. For example, the underlying theory about optimal levels of enforcement has received considerable attention, as have topics such as the relative merits of using deterrence-based versus cooperation-based approaches and the use of citizen suits.

The purpose of this article is to fill a gap in the law review literature by considering agencies’ enforcementand compliance promotion function holistically. In doing so, the article approaches the challenge from an “inside-out” perspective, …

The Trans Panic Defense: Masculinity, Heteronormativity, And The Murder Of Transgender Women, Cynthia Lee, Peter Kar Yu Kwan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

When a heterosexual man is charged with murdering a transgender woman with whom he has been sexually intimate, an increasingly common defense strategy is to assert what has been called the trans panic defense. The defendant claiming trans panic will say that his discovery that the victim was biologically male (when he thought the victim was biologically female) provoked him into a heat of passion and caused him to lose his self-control. If the jury finds that the defendant was actually and reasonably provoked, it can acquit him of murder and find him guilty of the lesser offense of voluntary …

Second Amendment, Constitutional Dysfunction Or Necessary Safeguard?, Robert J. Cottrol

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Essay was delivered at the Boston University School of Law Symposium titled “America’s Political Dysfunction: Constitutional Connections, Causes, and Cures.” The Essay challenges the assumption that the Second Amendment historically has provided a barrier to a desirable policy result: radical gun control or gun prohibition. It also challenges the assumption that such a policy is indeed desirable. The Essay traces the history of judicial engagement with the Second Amendment, including the Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncement recognizing the right to bear arms as an individual right in Heller and McDonald, and lower federal courts’ subsequent application of this right. …

From Legal Pluralism To Global Legal Pluralism, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Legal pluralists have long recognized that societies consist of multiple overlapping normative communities. These communities are sometimes state-based but sometimes not, and they are sometimes formal, official, and governmental, but again sometimes they are not. Scholars studying interactions among these multiple communities have often used the term “legal pluralism” to describe the inevitable intermingling of these normative systems.

In the past decade or so, a new application of pluralist insights has emerged in the international and transnational realm. This new legal pluralism research was born in the decades following the collapse of the bi-polar Cold War order in 1989. During …

A Concise Guide To Using Dictionaries From The Founding Era To Determine The Original Meaning Of The Constitution, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article explains how dictionaries published in the Founding Era may provide evidence of the original meaning of the Constitution. In addition, the Article identifies and discusses six potential problems with relying on definitions from these dictionaries, and cautions that these potential problems must be considered when using Founding Era dictionaries either to make claims about the Constitution’s original meaning or to evaluate claims about original meaning made by others. Finally, the Article includes an Appendix describing nine English language dictionaries and four legal dictionaries from the Founding Era that the Supreme Court has cited in constitutional cases, and indicates …

The European Procurement Directives And The Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (T-Tip): Advancing U.S. - European Trade And Cooperation In Procurement, Christopher R. Yukins

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Regulatory efforts on both sides of the Atlantic, in anti-corruption and procurement, are become more interdependent, as the two systems, U.S. and European, evolve in parallel. That convergence continued as the European Union finalized its new directives on procurement, and the United States and Europe moved forward in negotiating a comprehensive free trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP), which would (among other things) address barriers to trade in procurement. This piece reviews the T-TIP agreement’s potential impact on procurement, in the near and long term. The European T-TIP negotiators are likely to demand greater access to sub-central …

The People's Justice?, David Fontana

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Over the past few decades, the liberal Justices on the Supreme Court have made their most notable extrajudicial communications about the Constitution in academic venues discussing academic issues. This has limited their appeal to broader audiences. In this Essay -- written for a symposium at Yale Law School on Justice Sotomayor's first five years on the Court -- David Fontana explores the distinctive path that Justice Sotomayor has pursued. Justice Sotomayor has spoken to academic audiences, as past liberal Justices have. What is most notable about JusticeSotomayor, though, is that she has also appeared in locations and addressed issues that …

Inconsistent Jury Verdicts, Stephen A. Saltzburg

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article examines United States v. Moran-Toala, 726 F.3d 334 (2d Cir. 2013), to illustrate what happens when a trial judge explicitly instructs a jury that its verdict need not be consistent.

Reading Transcripts, Stephen A. Saltzburg

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article examines the reading of transcribed chat-room conversations to jurors in United States v. Tragas, 727 F.3d 610 (6th Cir. 2013), and whether some reading approaches utilized by the prosecutor were impermissible theatrical performance, improper summary, or improper vouching.