Law Commons^™

The Tenuous Case For Conscience, Steven D. Smith

Steven D. Smith

If there is any single theme that has provided the foundation of modern liberalism and has infused our more specific constitutional commitments to freedom of religion and freedom of speech, that theme is probably “freedom of conscience.” But some observers also perceive a progressive cheapening of conscience– even a sort of degradation. Such criticisms suggest the need for a contemporary rethinking of conscience. When we reverently invoke “conscience,” do we have any idea what we are talking about? Or are we just exploiting a venerable theme for rhetorical purposes without any clear sense of what “conscience” is or why it …

Globalization And The Environment: Why All The Fuss?, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

The relationship between globalization and environmental policies presents more nuances than the popular paradigm of free trader versus self-serving protectionists, the familiar model of environmentalist battling greedy polluters, or the outmoded view of a progressive multilateral agenda juxtaposed against a parochial, inward-looking domestic one. This piece sets out a structural and analytical framework for addressing the major issues in the field -- including (1) unilateral trade-based measures to protect the environment; (2) science-based tests applied through trade agreements; (3) disciplines on foreign investment that may have a "chilling effect" on environmental regulation; and (4) the relationship between free trade agreements …

Consensual Amorous Relationships Between Faculty And Students: The Constitutional Right To Privacy, Elisabeth A. Keller

Elisabeth Keller

Surveys of college students in the United States revealed that a significant number of students thought they had been victims of some form of sexual harassment. Growing awareness of the magnitude, dimensions, and effects of sexual harassment at educational institutions and the potential for institutional liability have prompted educators to adopt policies to avert such problems. The policies typically prohibit sexual harassment of employees and students and alert the university community to the serious effects of sexual harassment and the potential for student exploitation. Some universities have gone beyond establishing regulations directed at widely litigated problems of sexual harassment and …

Emerging Models For Alternatives To Marriage, Sanford N. Katz

Sanford N. Katz

Perhaps one of the most important changes in family law in the past thirty years has been the inclusion of certain kinds of friendships in the range of relationships from which rights and responsibilities can flow. Domestic partnership laws, a phenomenon of the 1990s, may be seen as a natural development from the judicial recognition of contract cohabitation and the legislative and judicial response to same-sex couples who, unable to meet statutory requirements for marriage, have sought official recognition of their relationships. This essay discusses an aspect of certain kinds of domestic partnership laws-their formal requirements and the extent to …

New Directions For Family Law In The United States, Sanford N. Katz

Sanford N. Katz

This article provides a survey of one major development in family law in the United States that has occurred during the most recent past. This development is the change that has occurred in marriage-like relationships. The article begins with a discussion of contract cohabitation and the extent to which it reflected a change from traditional views of formal or informal marriage as the only legally acceptable model for adults who desired to live together. It shows how contract cohabitation laid the groundwork for the establishment of domestic partnership laws. These laws were first adopted by municipalities and then by states …

Is Free Trade "Free?" Is It Even "Trade?" Oppression And Consent In Hemispheric Trade Agreements, Frank J. Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

In order for free trade as a policy to deliver fully on its social promise, it must be both “free” and “trade.” In fact, it must be free, in the sense of voluntary, to be trade at all. In other words, for normative and practical reasons, free trade requires that global economic relations be structured through agreements which reflect the consent of those subject to them. The neoliberal trading system today only imperfectly lives up to this obligation. In this essay, I will examine the role of consent in trade agreements, drawing on examples from CAFTA as representative of important …

Globalization, Global Community And The Possibility Of Global Justice, Frank J. Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

In this essay, I suggest five ways in which globalization is changing the cosmopolitan/communitarian debate over global justice, by creating, both inter-subjectively and at the regulatory level, the constitutive elements of a limited global community. Members of this global community are increasingly aware of each other’s needs and circumstances, increasingly capable of effectively addressing these needs, and increasingly contributing to these circumstances in the first place. They find themselves involved in the same global market society, and together these members look to the same organizations, especially those at the meta-state level, to provide regulatory approaches to addressing problems of global …

The Embattled Social Utilities Of The Endangered Species Act - A Noah Presumption And Caution Against Putting Gasmasks On The Canaries In The Coalmine, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is once again poised at the brink of what could become an illuminating national debate. The Act’s congressional reauthorization process is likely to provide the first major indicator of what the 105th Congress will or won’t do to environmental law generally. From the turbulent past and present of the ESA, this essay offers some reminders for the impending battles over the Act.

Through The Looking Glass Of Eminent Domain: Exploring The "Arbitrary And Capricious" Test And Substantive Rationality Review Of Governmental Decisions, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The day-to-day realities of different systems of government can be discerned in the way they handle, in theory and practice, clashes between the individual and the collective will. The structure of contemporary American democracy is no exception. It is comprised of a variegated assortment of judicial formulae for balancing the interests of the individual and the state, most of these formulae tracing back with differing degrees of directness to textual bases in the first nine amendments to the federal Constitution or their state constitutional equivalents. One of these basic structural balancings, encountered early on by every student of American law …

Law And The Fourth Estate: Endangered Nature, The Press, And The Dicey Game Of Democratic Governance, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Building upon the story line of a current book project on the Tellico Dam case, this Essay explores a challenging reality of modern public interest lawyering – the critical role of public perceptions and of the Press’s role in shaping them. Most public interest attorneys come to realize that their lawyering must move simultaneously on two different tracks that determine outcomes – law and public opinion. This double task can be difficult and sometimes impossible. Both tracks require the organization and presentation of facts, but the two contexts can be quite different. A legal case requires proof of each technical …

The Place Of Law: The Role And Limits Of Law In Society, Larry Barnett

Larry D Barnett

The Place of Law addresses two questions that are critical to understanding law. Why is law an evidently universal, enduring institution in modern societies? And why do the concepts and doctrines of law differ between jurisdictions (states or nations) at one point in time and vary within a jurisdiction over time? In this stimulating volume, Barnett suggests answers to these questions, and in doing so, he challenges popular assumptions regarding law in structurally complex, technologically advanced, democratic societies. In particular, Barnett questions the assumption that social behaviors central to such societies are effectively controlled by law and the assumption that …

"Introduction" (Chapter 1) Of Stories About Science In Law: Literary And Historical Images Of Acquired Expertise (Ashgate 2011), David S. Caudill

Working Paper Series

This is the introductory chapter of Stories About Science in Law: Literary and Historical Images of Acquired Expertise (Ashgate, 2011), explaining that the book presents examples of how literary accounts can provide a supplement to our understanding of science in law. Challenging the view that law and science are completely different, I focus on stories that explore the relationship between law and science, and identify cultural images of science that prevail in legal contexts. In contrast to other studies on the transfer and construction of expertise in legal settings, the book considers the intersection of three interdisciplinary projects-- law and …

Does Legalzoom Have First Amendment Rights? Some Thoughts About Freedom Of Speech And The Unauthorized Practice Of Law, Catherine J. Lanctot

Working Paper Series

At a time of economic dislocation in the legal profession, it is likely that bar regulators will turn their attention to pursuing lay entities that appear to be engaged in the unauthorized practice of law. One prominent target of these efforts is LegalZoom, an online document preparer that has come under increasing pressure from the organized bar for its marketing and sale of basic legal documents. As regulatory pressure against LegalZoom and similar companies continues to mount, it is worth considering whether there may be unanticipated consequences from pursuing these unauthorized practice claims. In several well-known instances, lay people have …

Reflections On Fair Housing Law, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

This presentation offered reflections on the state of fair housing law in light of numerous studies evaluating its effectiveness. It argues that while enforcement needs to be improved, fair housing advocates must also employ complementary strategies to reform social norms.

Compliance With Advance Directives: Wrongful Living And Tort Law Incentives, Holly Lynch, Michele Mathes, Nadia Sawicki

Nadia N. Sawicki

Modern ethical and legal norms generally require that deference be accorded to patients' decisions regarding treatment, including decisions to refuse life-sustaining care, even when patients no longer have the capacity to communicate those decisions to their physicians. Advance directives were developed as a means by which a patient's autonomy regarding medical care might survive such incapacity. Unfortunately, preserving patient autonomy at the end of life has been no simple task. First, it has been difficult to persuade patients to prepare for incapacity by making their wishes known. Second, even when they have done so, there is a distinct possibility that …

The Gendered Lives Of Legal Aid: Lay Lawyers, Social Workers, And The Bar, 1863-1960, Felice J. Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

The Gendered Life of Legal Aid, 1863-1960 (manuscript in process) will be the first monograph on the history of civil legal aid in the United States. By closely examining the history of legal aid in New York, Chicago, and Boston, it presents a number of arguments with wide-ranging implications and it is animated by a host of conflicts. These include the relationship between legal aid and citizenship, the changing status of domestic relations law, the interactions between lawyers and social workers and their different understandings of the role and nature of law, what services legal aid should provide, and even …

Property Rights And The Demands Of Transformation, Bernadette Atuahene

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cognitive Dissonance In A Recession: Minnesota Gop Attacks Marriage Equality In Land Of "Gayest City In America", Aaron J. Shuler

Aaron J Shuler

Despite a tradition of progressive thinking on civil rights and recent specific gains for gays in Minnesota, the State's Republican party is trying to place an anti-marriage equality amendment on the 2012 ballot.

Beyond Common Sense: A Social Psychological Study Of Iqbal's Effect On Claims Of Race Discrimination, Victor D. Quintanilla

Victor D. Quintanilla

This article examines the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009) from a social psychological perspective, and empirically studies Iqbal’s effect on claims of race discrimination.

In Twombly and then Iqbal, the Court recast Rule 8 from a notice-based rule into a plausibility standard. Under Iqbal, federal judges must evaluate whether each complaint contains sufficient factual matter “to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” When doing so, Iqbal requires judges to draw on their “judicial experience and common sense.” Courts apply Iqbal at the pleading stage, before evidence has been …

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …

Defending Against The Defenders Why I Can Be A Good Prosecutor And A Good Person, Sarah Montana Hart

Sarah Montana Hart

This article discusses the choice to become a prosecutor, specifically in light of the critics of the profession from writers like Paul Butler and Abbe Smith.

Planetarian Identity Formation And The Relocalization Of Environmental Law, Sarah Krakoff

Sarah Krakoff

Local food, local work, local energy production—all are hallmarks of a resurgence of localism throughout contemporary environmental thought and action. The renaissance of localism might be seen as a retreat from the world’s global environmental problems. This paper maintains, however, that some forms of localism are actually expressions, and appropriate ones, of a planetary environmental consciousness. The paper’s centerpiece is an in-depth evaluation of local climate action initiatives, including interviews with participants as well as other data and observations about their ethics, attitudes, behaviors, and motivations. The values and identities being forged in these initiatives form the basis for timely …

Innovations In Governance: A Functional Typology Of Private Governance Institutions, Tracey M. Roberts

Tracey M Roberts

Communities are increasingly looking to private governance institutions, rather than formal government, to set public policy and to manage the environmental and social impacts of globalization. Private governance institutions, sets of rules and structures for governing without government, remain undertheorized despite an expanding literature. Questions remain about why they have arisen, what functions they serve, and whether they are effective. This article advances that literature in several ways. First, the article outlines the inherent limitations of the conventional taxonomy, which groups these institutions based on the identity of their constituent organizations (business interests, civil society, and government entities and their …

Redefining Human Rights Lawyering Through The Lens Of Critical Theory: Lessons For Pedagogy And Practice, Deborah M. Weissman, Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, Davida Finger, Meetali Jain

Deborah M. Weissman

In recent years, human rights clinics have mushroomed across United States law schools, specializing in work ranging from direct representation of asylum seekers in U.S. courts, to international litigation, to project-based advocacy that includes fact-finding visits and production of reports documenting human rights violations throughout the world. Increasingly, those human rights clinics have begun to address human rights within the United States, and not just in places beyond our borders. At the same time, domestic poverty law clinics are increasingly looking to human rights norms in framing some of their advocacy, which often takes the forms of direct legal services, …

Education As A Counterterrorism Tool And The Curious Case Of The Texas School Book Resolution, Diane Webber

Diane Webber

As a case study, this paper reviews a resolution passed by the Texas State Board of Education on September 24, 2010. The resolution rejects certain Social Studies texts that contain what the Board determined were pro-Islamic/anti-Christian distortions…The resolution is itself doing what it complains about – it is showing “chronic partiality to one of the world’s great religions and animus against another.”…At a time when “reciprocal negative perceptions between the Western and Muslim worlds continue to escalate”, it is essential to acknowledge the important role of education to promote tolerance… The knowledge gained from religious tolerance education can then be …

Legal Pluralism In Post-Colonial Africa: Linking Statutory And Customary Adjudication In Mozambique, David Pimentel

David Pimentel

Legal pluralism is a contemporary reality and a challenge in most post-colonial African states, as they grapple with how to preserve the cultural heritage reflected in their customary law and institutions, while attempting to function as modern constitutional regimes. Few of them have found structural solutions for linkages between and mutual co-existence of multiple legal regimes within the same state. The policy that will drive the establishment of proper linkages must be approached with an eye to what the purpose of preserving a legally pluralistic regime, distinguishing the motivations of many—colonists in the past, and political opportunists today—who have exploited …

Disruption And Impossibility: The Unfortunate Resolution Of The Iroquois Land Claims In Federal Courts, Kathryn Fort

Kathryn Fort

In less than five years, the federal appellate courts changed the law so drastically to all but end more than thirty years of modern litigation, reversing years of relative fairness at the district court level. These actions required a fundamental shift in the law of equity: the creation of a new equitable defense for governments against Indian land claims. The first part of this article will give a brief history of the New York land claims, focusing on the Oneida Indian Nation and the Cayuga Indian Nation of New York. While the tribes have been fighting the status of this …

Why Law?, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Fairness, then, not order, is the special domain of law. The accompaniments of law we expect in our society flow less from law itself, and more from our changing understanding of what is fair. As our understanding of fairness changes, we expect the law to change as well. Because fairness criteria have been shown empirically to vary from society to society, we can expect legal diversity to remain an enduring feature of the jurisprudential landscape. But now we know why.

Offsetting And The Consumption Of Social Responsibility, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Article examines the relationship between individual consumption and consumption-based harms by focusing on the rise in consumption offsetting. Carbon offsets are but the leading edge of a rise in consumer options for offsetting externalities associated with consumption. Moving from examples of quasi offsetting to environmental offsetting and the possibility of poverty offset institutions, I argue that offsetting provides a valuable mechanism for individuals to correct for the harms associated with consumption. This Article makes two major contributions to how we understand the relationship between consumption and social responsibility. First, it identifies an emerging offsetting phenomenon in seemingly discrete market …

The New American Civil Religion: Lesson For Italy, Andrew Koppelman

Faculty Working Papers

American civil religion has been changing, responding to increasing religious plurality by becoming more abstract. The problem of increasing plurality is not only an American one. It is also presented in Italy, where civic identity has been centered around a Catholicism that is no longer universal. Perhaps Italy has, in this respect, an American future.