Law Commons^™

What Congress's Repeal Efforts Can Teach Us About Regulatory Reform, Cary Coglianese, Gabriel Scheffler

All Faculty Scholarship

Major legislative actions during the early part of the 115th Congress have undermined the central argument for regulatory reform measures such as the REINS Act, a bill that would require congressional approval of all new major regulations. Proponents of the REINS Act argue that it would make the federal regulatory system more democratic by shifting responsibility for regulatory decisions away from unelected bureaucrats and toward the people’s representatives in Congress. But separate legislative actions in the opening of the 115th Congress only call this argument into question. Congress’s most significant initiatives during this period — its derailed attempts to repeal …

A Critique Of Rights In Transitional Justice: The African Experience, Makau W. Mutua

Makau Mutua

Published in Rethinking Transitions: Equality and Social Justice in Societies Emerging from Conflict, Gaby Oré Aguilar & Felipe Gómez Isa, eds.

This chapter interrogates the concept and application of transitional justice as a medium for the reclamation of post-conflict states in Africa. While it argues that transitional justice is an important – often indispensable – process in reconstructing post-despotic and battered societies, it nevertheless casts a jaundiced eye at traditionalist human rights approaches. It contends that individualist, non-collective, or non-community, approaches to transitional justice have serious limitations. It posits that the Nuremberg model, on which the ICTR and ICTY were …

A New Future? The Catholic Church, Grassroots Justice, And Accountability, Regina Menachery Paulose

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Between the 1970s and 1980s, Guatemalans, particularly the indigenous populations, were targets of a state-sponsored genocide. Several years after the genocide, Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi of Guatemala City took the lead in creating the Recovery of Historical Memory Project which was an independent investigation into the events of the genocide. Gerardi was murdered before the report was made public. This paper will briefly discuss Gerardi’s work and his contribution to local justice in Guatemala. The author will then explore what contributions the Catholic Church could make in creating similar fact-finding missions. Could a grassroots mechanism such as the one Gerardi …

Getting To Guilty: The Necessary Shift To Individual Accountability For Corporate Wrongdoing, Paige Wheeler

The Business, Entrepreneurship & Tax Law Review

In September of 2015, Deputy Attorney General, Sally Yates, declared that the Department of Justice would shift its focus to pursuing individual accountability for cases of corporate wrongdoing, This shift reflects a change in directives, as the Department of Justice commonly resolved cases of corporate wrongdoing through the companies themselves prior to what is now commonly known as the Yates Memorandum. The Yates Memorandum centers on the conclusion that one of the most successful ways to tackle corporate misconduct is by making sure that the individuals who are committing the wrongdoing are held accountable for their actions. The Yates Memorandum …

Clash Of The Titans: A Comparative Approach To Reform Of Judicial Accountability In Egypt, Shams Al Din Al Hajjaji

Seattle University Law Review

This Article argues for the reform of judicial accountability rules in Egypt. The lack of a real separation of powers and “checks and balances” between the three powers often leads the judiciary to become a periphery in the executive body, rather than an independent authority that invigilates and monitors any violation of the law. Judges who refuse to comply with executive wishes are often subjected to persecution from the Ministry of Justice and its Judicial Inspection Department, which can reach up to the level of impeachment. The Ministry of Justice uses judicial accountability as a tool of retribution over disobedient …

The Crime Of Conviction Of John Choon Yoo: The Actual Criminality In The Olc During The Bush Administration, Joseph Lavitt

Maine Law Review

At the outset of the administration of President Barack Obama, there is intense debate about whether to prosecute members of the former administration of President George W. Bush. This Article first considers whether officers who were in command and control of the Executive Branch of the government of the United States during the Bush administration can be excused from criminal responsibility on charges of illegal torture, based on their claim to have acted in good faith reliance upon the advice of attorneys employed by the Department of Justice. Focus then turns to the accountability, if any, of those attorneys in …

Looking At Justice Through A Lens Of Healing And Reconnection, Annalise Buth, Lynn Cohn

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion: Expanding Our Conception Of Justice

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Police In America: Ensuring Accountability And Mitigating Racial Bias Feat. Professor Destiny Peery

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Police In America: Ensuring Accountability And Mitigating Racial Bias Feat. Paul Butler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Reforming The Ranks: Policy Initiatives To Ensure Police Accountability & Improve Police And Community Relations

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Building Movement: Racial Injustice, Transformative Justice And Reimagined Policing

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Tailored Judicial Selection, Dmitry Bam

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of The Long Privacy Statement, Mike Hintze

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Crime Spectators And The Tort Of Objectification, Amelia J. Uelmen

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Reports of how some bystanders interact with victims on the scene of an emergency are shocking. Instead of assisting or calling for help, these individuals take pictures or recordings of the victims on their cell phones. This Article concentrates on the question of whether such an interaction with a victim might in certain circumstances constitute a distinct and legally actionable harm. This Article proposes a new tort: exploitative objectification of a person in need of emergency assistance. It works to articulate the moral and legal foundations for an argument that treating a person in need of emergency assistance as an …

Internal Administrative Law, Gillian E. Metzger, Kevin M. Stack

Michigan Law Review

For years, administrative law has been identified as the external review of agency action, primarily by courts. Following in the footsteps of pioneering administrative law scholars, a growing body of recent scholarship has begun to attend to the role of internal norms and structures in controlling agency action. This Article offers a conceptual and historical account of these internal forces as internal administrative law. Internal administrative law consists of the internal directives, guidance, and organizational forms through which agencies structure the discretion of their employees and presidents control the workings of the executive branch. It is the critical means for …

Medicapt In The Democratic Republic Of The Congo: The Design, Development, And Deployment Of Mobile Technology To Document Forensic Evidence Of Sexual Violence, Karen Naimer, Widney Brown, Ranit Mishori

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This review essay provides an overview of the MediCapt app and the steps Physicians for Human Rights has taken to design, develop, and field-test the app in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It also explores advocacy opportunities that the app’s emerging technology may facilitate down the road. This review essay also identifies the many challenges and questions that we have grappled with and lessons learned as we seek to deploy MediCapt in a low-resourced and politically unstable context and take it to scale beyond DRC. Finally, in sharing the details of this case study, we hope to emphasize both …

Who Should Own Police Body Camera Videos?, Laurent Sacharoff, Sarah Lustbader

Laurent Sacharoff

A Comment On Privacy And Accountability In Black-Box Medicine, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Human institutions and activities cannot avoid failures. Anxiety about them often provokes governments to try to prevent those failures. When that anxiety is vivid and urgent, government may do so without carefully asking whether regulation’s costs justify their benefits. Privacy and Accountability in Black Box Medicine admirably labors to bring discipline and rationality to thinking about an important development — the rise of “black-box medicine” — before it causes injuries regulation should have prevented and before it is impaired by improvident regulation. That is, Privacy and Accountability weighs the costs against the benefits of various forms of regulation across the …

Supervising Outsourcing: The Need For Better Design Of Blended Governance, Nina A. Mendelson

Book Chapters

We are long past the “vending machine”-style privatization of government functions – where the government contracts to buy a discrete product or service at a set price, whether aircraft components or landscaping. Government is increasingly enlisting, or collaborating with, private entities for functions long perceived as distinctly public. Private entities may make policy explicitly (through standards that agencies later adopt) or implicitly (through the third party verification of compliance with regulatory objectives). For example, the Department of Health and Human Services relies on the recommendations of an American Medical Association committee of specialist physicians to establish Medicare physician payments, while …

The Settlement Of Investment Disputes: A Discussion Of Democratic Accountability And The Public Interest, Lise Johnson, Brooke Guven

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In this briefing note, CCSI considers the threats to principles of good governance, including government accountability, respect for the rule of law, transparency, and respect for citizens’ rights and interests under domestic law and international human rights norms, that are posed by the settlement of treaty-based investor-state disputes. The authors also consider the exacerbated threats posed by the settlement of disputes that include government counterclaims, and highlight the need for the ISDS reform agenda to include a focus on these issues.

Profile In Public Integrity: Melinda Miguel, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Melinda Miguel served as Florida’s Chief Inspector General from 2007-10 and 2011-17, and has also served as an Inspector General for the Florida Department of Elder Affairs, the Florida Department of Education, the Florida Office of the Attorney General, and the Florida State Board of Administration. She is currently the CEO and President of Melinda Miguel Solutions, a management consulting company.

Who Should Own Police Body Camera Videos?, Laurent Sacharoff, Sarah Lustbader

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Numerous cities, states, and localities have adopted police body camera programs to enhance police accountability in the wake of repeated instances of police misconduct, as well as recent reports of more deep-seated police problems. These body camera programs hold great promise to achieve accountability, often backed by millions of dollars of federal grants.

But so far, this promise of accountability has gone largely unrealized, in part because police departments exercise near-total control over body camera programs and the videos themselves. In fact, the police view these programs chiefly as a tool of ordinary law enforcement rather than accountability — as …

The Civil Redress And Historical Memory Acts Of 2029: A Legislative Proposal, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

During the extant “War on Terror,” U.S. and foreign nationals who did not engage in hostilities were detained and mistreated abroad by the United States or by other countries with the acquiescence of the United States. These individuals were accused of being terrorists or were suspected of associating with terror groups, but they were, in fact, innocent. They were eventually released and were never charged by the United States with any crime. Despite their innocence, the United States has failed to provide them with any form of redress for their mistreatment. The Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations refused to apologize …

Freedom Of Information Beyond The Freedom Of Information Act, David Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows any person to request any agency record for any reason. This model has been copied worldwide and celebrated as a structural necessity in a real democracy. Yet in practice, this Article argues, FOIA embodies a distinctively “reactionary” form of transparency. FOIA is reactionary in a straightforward, procedural sense in that disclosure responds to ad hoc demands for information. Partly because of this very feature, FOIA can also be seen as reactionary in a more substantive, political sense insofar as it saps regulatory capacity; distributes government goods in an inegalitarian fashion; and contributes …

Democratic Experimentalism, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Democratic Experimentalism is an orientation in contemporary legal thought that draws on both the critical impulses of modernist theory and the constructive practice of postbureaucratic organization.

Some of the core ideas of Democratic Experimentalism were formulated long ago, notably by pragmatists in the John Dewey mold, but they have been elaborated in response to social developments of recent decades. A recurring challenge presented by these developments is uncertainty, by which we mean the inability to anticipate, much less to assign a probability to, future states of the world. The constellation of changes that make contemporary economies more innovative produces uncertainty …