Law Commons^™

"Anticipatory Self-Defense" And Other Stories, Jeanne M. Woods, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

We argue that the specious justification for the invasion of Iraq -- a war based on a pretext of anticipatory self-defense -- necessarily exacerbates the inherent tendency of war to dehumanize and humiliate the enemy. This tendency is particularly evident in the variant of anticipatory self-defense that we have denominated as "capacity preemption," a type of claim that by definition depends upon characterizations of the opponent as utterly inhuman.

The Bush Doctrine tells a timeless story of self-defense. This story is shaped by an identifiable and predictable narrative structure, one that is able to transform the morally outrageous -- an …

What Is A Tragedy Of The Commons? Overfishing And The Campaign Spending Problem, Shi-Ling Hsu

Shi-Ling Hsu

Over the thirty-seven years since its publication, Garden Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" has clearly become one of the most influential writings of all time. The tragedy of the commons is one of those rare scholarly ideas that has had an enormous impact in academia and is also commonly used outside of academia. In legal scholarship, the tragedy of the commons has been used to characterize a wide variety of resource problems, including intellectual property rights, overcrowding of telecommunications spectra, air and water pollution, and of course, the classic environmental commons problem, overfishing. But I suggest this embarrassment of citation …

On The Role Of Cost-Benefit Analysis In Environmental Law, Shi-Ling Hsu

Shi-Ling Hsu

Legal scholarship on the role of cost-benefit analysis in environmental law is often stimulating, but does not seem to be changing anybody's mind. The entrenchment of a camp of detractors and a camp of advocates of cost-benefit analysis parallels the impasse that has stymied environmental law for over a decade. Professors Lisa Heinzerling and Frank Ackerman have co-authored a book that captures most of the arguments from the detractor side, and have done so skillfully and powerfully. However, this review criticizes the book's contribution to perpetuating this intellectual stalemate. The book does this by focusing on an environmental theory of …

Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities, And Organizational Maintenance: The U.S. Supreme Court, 1955 To 1994, Jeff L. Yates, Andrew B. Whitford, William Gillespie

Jeff L Yates

In this study, we examine agenda setting by the U.S. Supreme Court, and ask the question of why the Court allocates more or less of its valuable agenda space to one policy issue over others. Our study environment is the policy issue composition of the Court's docket: the Court's attention to criminal justice policy issues relative to other issues. We model the Court's allocation of this agenda space as a function of internal organizational demands and external political signals. We find that this agenda responds to the issue priorities of the other branches of the federal government and the public. …

The Political Economy Of Violence: Toward An Understanding Of The Gender-Based Murders Of Ciudad Juarez, Deborah M. Weissman

Deborah M. Weissman

This article provides an interpretive account of the political economy of violence localized in Cd. Juarez, Mexico. It examines the socioeconomic conditions attending decades during a period of rapid transformation to an export economy as the environment in which violence against women has assumed endemic proportions. The serial murders of women have been alternately problematized as deeds of criminal deviants, as a reactionary gendered responses to women replacing men in the wage labor force, and as the failure of the state to exercise local authority. This article argues for a more comprehensive analysis that includes the above theories without bracketing …

The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster