Law Commons^™

Of Duncan, Peter And Thomas Kuhn, John Henry Schlegel

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Environmental Certification Systems And U.S. Environmental Law: Closer Than You May Think, Errol E. Meidinger

Journal Articles

Many industrial organizations are committing to achieve improved environmental performance through non-governmentally instituted environmental certification programs. Such programs typically define the environmental standards that firms must meet as well as the organizational mechanisms required to achieve and "certify" compliance. Well known examples include the chemical industry's "Responsible Care" program, the International Organization for Standardization's "ISO 14000" environmental management program, and the Forest Stewardship Council's well-managed forests program.

Because of their ostensibly private and voluntary nature, environmental certification programs are often presumed to be separate and distinct from law. In fact, however, they are deeply intertwined with law, and seem likely …

Justice Under Siege: The Rule Of Law And Judicial Subservience In Kenya, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

The piece examines the tortured history of the judiciary in Kenya and concludes that various governments have deliberately robbed judges of judicial independence. As such, the judiciary has become part and parcel of the culture of impunity and corruption. This was particularly under the one party state, although nothing really changed with the introduction of a more open political system. The article argues that judicial subservience is one of the major reasons that state despotism continues to go unchallenged. It concludes by underlining the critical role that the judiciary has to play in a democratic polity.

The Opinion Volume 53 Issue 2 – January 2, 2001, The Opinion

The Opinion Newspaper (all issues)

The Opinion newspaper issue from 2001. Original publishing date unknown.

Insurer Moral Hazard In The Workers' Compensation Crisis: Reforming Cost Inflation, Not Rate Suppression, Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal Articles

This article challenges the standard story of the insurance crisis that led to the near-collapse and major reform of a number of states’ workers’ compensation programs in the 1980s and 1990s.

In the prevailing account, insurance costs rose due to expanding costs of benefits for injured workers’, much of which was blamed on wasteful or abusive "moral hazard" by workers and their lawyers and doctors. Because state regulators had substantial power to control insurance rates, this account claims governments tried to suppress prices in the face of rising benefit costs in a misguided attempt to avoid political trade-offs between labor …

Subjectship, Citizenship, And The Long History Of Immigration Regulation, Robert J. Steinfeld

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Opinion Volume 53 Issue 1 – January 1, 2001, The Opinion

The Opinion Newspaper (all issues)

The Opinion newspaper issue from 2001. Original publishing date unknown.

J. Shand Watson's Theory And Reality In The International Protection Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

"The Most Glorious Story Of Failure In The Business": The Studebaker-Packard Corporation And The Origins Of Erisa, James A. Wooten

Journal Articles

The Studebaker-Packard Corporation occupies a distinctive place in the lore of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. No single event is more closely associated with ERISA than the shutdown of the Studebaker plant in South Bend, Indiana. Soon after the plant closed in December 1963, Studebaker terminated the retirement plan for hourly workers, and the plan defaulted on its obligations. The plight of Studebaker employees quickly emerged as a symbol of the need for pension reform. This article examines the history of the Studebaker-Packard Corporation to understand why and how the shutdown came to play a role in …

Savages, Victims, And Saviors: The Metaphor Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

This article critically looks at the human rights project as a damning three-dimensional metaphor that exposes multiple complexes. It argues that the grand narrative of human rights contains a subtext which depicts an epochal contest pitting savages, on the one hand, against victims and saviors, on the other. The savages-victims-saviors (SVS) construction lays bare some of the hypocrisies of the human rights project and asks human rights thinkers and advocates to become more self-reflective. The piece questions the universality and cultural neutrality of the human rights project. It calls for the construction of a truly universal human rights corpus, one …

Keeping The Government's Hands Off Our Bodies: Mapping A Feminist Legal Theory Approach To Privacy In Cross-Gender Prison Searches, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

The power of privacy is diminishing in the prison setting, and yet privacy is the legal theory prisoners rely upon most to resist searches by correctional officers. Incarcerated women in particular rely upon privacy to shield them from the kind of physical contact that male guards have been known to abuse. The kind of privacy that protects prisoners from searches by guards of the opposite sex derives from several sources, depending on the factual circumstances. Although some form of bodily privacy is embodied in the First, Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, prisoners challenging the constitutionality of cross-gender searches most commonly …

Braking The Merger Momentum: Reforming Corporate Law Governing Mega-Mergers, James A. Fanto

Buffalo Law Review

This Article articulates a legal reform that is designed to rein in the number of value-decreasing stock-for-stock megamergers-the signature transaction of the 1990s and the beginning years of the new millennium-by causing board members to question more critically a mega-merger proposal when they are asked to approve it and even to continue to reevaluate their approval of a merger until its closing. The Article first describes the current merger wave and highlights reports of emerging problems in mega-mergers and the relevant economic data indicating that a majority of the transactions are value-decreasing for shareholders both in the short and long …

Downtown Code: A History Of The Uniform Commercial Code 1949-1954, Allen R. Kamp

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Women At War: An Evolutionary Perspective, Kingsley R. Browne

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Theory Of Law As Literature, Dennis Patterson

Buffalo Law Review

Book review of Guyora Binder & Robert Weisberg's Literary Criticisms of Law

Protecting The Performers: Setting A New Standard For Character Copyrightability, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Copyright law protects expressions of ideas, but not the idea itself. Legal disputes over characters arise in the continuum between an idea for a character that has not been expressed at all, and an idea that has been given complete form and shape. The inconsistent common law tests developed to assess character copyrightability demonstrate the difficulty in pinpointing where the dividing line between an undeveloped idea and a sufficiently expressed character should be set. This Article offers a new paradigm for determining character copyrightability, particularly in the case of characters shaped through live performance, that tracks the Hegelian concept of …

Banking, Antitrust, And Derivatives: Untying The Antitying Restrictions, Christian A. Johnson

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Campaign For Fiscal Equity V. State: A Template For Education Transformation In New York, Andrew A. Washburn

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Data Wars: How Superseding Forsham V. Harris Impacts The Federal Grant Award Process, Elizabeth G. Adelman

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Why Retire The Feminization Of Poverty Construct?, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

The "feminization of poverty" concept should be retired, if it has not already been so. It should be retired, even though the concept has been extremely powerful as a discursive construct. In a phrase, the idea captured a seemingly universal phenomenon, inspired theoretical research into the nexus between women and poverty, and summoned coalitions of women by marking an agenda for, and among, women across the boundaries of race, ethnicity, and nationality. In short, it has been a war cry, demanding and framing analyses of women's poverty, and justifying and inspiring women's collective action. Nevertheless, the feminization of poverty construct …

Mirror, Mirror: Using Non-Traditional Reflective Exercises, Kim Diana Connolly

Other Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Human Rights International Ngos: A Critical Evaluation, Makau Wa Mutua

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 7 in NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance, Claude E. Welch, Jr., ed.

The Human rights movement can be seen in a variety of guises. It can be seen as a movement for international justice or as a cultural project for “civilizing savage” cultures. In this chapter, I discuss a part of that movement as a crusade for a political project. International nongovernmental human rights organizations (INGOs), the small and elite collection of human rights groups based in the most powerful cultural and political capitals of the West, have arguably been the most influential component of …

Transgressing The Border Between Protection And Empowerment For Domestic Violence Victims And Older Children: Empowerment As Protection In The Foster Care System, Susan Vivian Mangold

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Re-Interpreting The Effect Of Rights: Career Narratives And The Americans With Disabilities Act, David M. Engel, Frank W. Munger

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.