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Full-Text Articles in Law
Holding Charities Accountable: Some Thoughts From An Ex-Regulator, Catharine P. Wells
Holding Charities Accountable: Some Thoughts From An Ex-Regulator, Catharine P. Wells
Boston College Law School Faculty Papers
This paper recounts a number of lessons learned in the course of serving as the Director of Public Charities for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It incorporates these lessons into a discussion of the proper analysis of charitable organizations. Should charities be analogized to for-profit firms or are they something that is essentially different? The paper argues that they lack many of the attributes of Coasian firms and that they should be considered as “consumption groups” that have different methods of accountability.
Reconsidering Spousal Privileges After Crawford, R. Michael Cassidy
Reconsidering Spousal Privileges After Crawford, R. Michael Cassidy
Boston College Law School Faculty Papers
In this article the author explores how domestic violence prevention efforts have been adversely impacted by the Supreme Court’s new “testimonial” approach to the confrontation clause. Examining the Court’s trilogy of cases from Crawford to Davis and Hammon, the author argues that the introduction of certain forms of hearsay in criminal cases has been drastically limited by the court’s new originalist approach to the Sixth Amendment. The author explains how state spousal privilege statutes often present a significant barrier to obtaining live testimony from victims of domestic violence. The author then argues that state legislatures should reconsider ...
The Gratuities Debate And Campaign Reform – How Strong Is The Link?, George D. Brown
The Gratuities Debate And Campaign Reform – How Strong Is The Link?, George D. Brown
Boston College Law School Faculty Papers
The federal gratuities statute, 18 USC § 201(c), continues to be a source of confusion and contention. The confusion stems largely from problems of draftsmanship within the statute, as well as uncertainty concerning the relationship of the gratuities offense to bribery. Both offenses are contained in the same statute; the former is often seen as a lesser-included offense variety of the latter. The controversy stems from broader concerns about whether the receipt of gratuities by public officials, even from those they regulate, should be a crime. The argument that such conduct should not be criminalized can be traced to, and ...
Dealing With Dumb And Dumber: The Continuing Mission Of Citizen Environmentalism, Zygmunt J.B. Plater
Dealing With Dumb And Dumber: The Continuing Mission Of Citizen Environmentalism, Zygmunt J.B. Plater
Boston College Law School Faculty Papers
Surveying the history of citizen environmentalism in the context of environmental law and politics over the past fifty years, this essay hypothesizes five different categories of corporate, governmental, political, and individual actions that deserve to be called “dumb,” and the societal lessons that have been or could be learned from each. If there is truth to the wistful aphorism that “we learn from our mistakes,” then our society is in position to learn a great deal about our world and how it works, which perhaps provides some ground for hope for the years to come. Environmentalism embodies fundamentally rational and ...
Language, Deals And Standards: The Future Of Xml Contracts, Lawrence A. Cunningham
Language, Deals And Standards: The Future Of Xml Contracts, Lawrence A. Cunningham
Boston College Law School Faculty Papers
eXtensible Markup Language (XML) structures information in documentary systems ranging from financial reports to medical records and business contracts. XML standards for specific applications are developed spontaneously by self-appointed technologists or entrepreneurs. XML’s social and economic stakes are considerable, especially when developed for the private law of contracts. XML can reduce transaction costs but also limit the range of contractual expression and redefine the nature of law practice. So reliance on spontaneous development may be sub-optimal and identification of a more formal public standard setting model necessary. To exploit XML’s advantages while minimizing risks, this Article envisions creating ...
The Notion Of Solidarity And The Secret History Of American Labor Law, Thomas C. Kohler
The Notion Of Solidarity And The Secret History Of American Labor Law, Thomas C. Kohler
Boston College Law School Faculty Papers
“Solidarity,” a term not overly familiar to Americans, sometimes seems to have as many meanings as it has users. The concept became incorporated into American thought during the 19th and 20th century waves of Catholic and Jewish immigration. It provides a European vision of communitarian social order that competes with the “unencumbered self”—America’s unique brand of individualism. Among philosophers, politicians, religious thinkers, and social activists, solidarity theory sought to redefine the then-prevailing views of social bonds. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the American labor movement, which espouses as its core values the principles of unity and ...
The Fed’S New Model Of Supervision For “Large Complex Banking Organizations”: Coordinated Risk-Based Supervision Of Financial Multinationals For International Financial Stability, Cynthia C. Lichtenstein
The Fed’S New Model Of Supervision For “Large Complex Banking Organizations”: Coordinated Risk-Based Supervision Of Financial Multinationals For International Financial Stability, Cynthia C. Lichtenstein
Boston College Law School Faculty Papers
Large internationally active financial institutions, in particular multinational banks, have the capacity to create profound disturbances in the globalized financial markets in the event of failure. For that reason, these entities are supervised and examined in a manner that is completely different than the ordinary business corporation. This piece describes the new methodology that has been developed by the United States' central bank, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or "the Fed" for short, since 1995, for examining what the Fed calls "large complex banking organizations" or LBCOs and indicates how the system in fact carries out ...
"Pre-Negotiation" Counseling: An Alternative Model, Paul R. Tremblay
"Pre-Negotiation" Counseling: An Alternative Model, Paul R. Tremblay
Boston College Law School Faculty Papers
This Article describes an alternative model for the process of legal counseling, a model applicable to a very common counseling experience ignored by the conventional Interviewing and Counseling texts—the experience of obtaining negotiating and settlement authority from a client. Counseling is, of course, a basic lawyering skill taught in law school clinics and in simulation courses. It is one of the most critical elements of good lawyering, and it is a skill which can be taught, and taught through the use of models. Every lawyering skills book available includes instruction about effective counseling. But when one reviews the available ...