Law Commons^™

Paul V. The Clintons, Et Al: Fec Complicity And A Plea For Real And Present Campaign Finance Reform, Ellis Washington

Ellis Washington

This Article is an analysis of current legislation, case law and election law policy regarding campaign finance disclosure rules and the need for a truly independent Federal Election Commission to efficiently enforce existing election laws. Admittedly, this article isn’t as theoretical as other scholarly works on this subject, however, since campaign finance reform is a rather complex subject, I didn’t want to get caught up in the endless minutiae of legislative and court opinion other than a general review in the context of the case at bar as well as the present state of campaign finance reform policy. I also …

Re-Reading Weber In Law And Development: A Critical Intellectual History Of "Good Governance" Reform, Chantal Thomas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The "Weberianism" of the modern age derives from the influence of three theoretical concepts in Weber's work. First, Weber described the development of "logically formal rationality" in governance as central to the rise of Western capitalist democracy. Second, Weber posited that Protestant religious ethics had helped to promote certain economic behaviors associated with contemporary capitalism. Third, Weber identified the rise of bureaucratic governance, as the primary means of realizing logically formal rationality, as distinctly modern.

This essay examines the influence of these basic insights on discourse on legal reform in developing countries. The prioritization of legal and institutional reforms to …

Self-Incrimination Doctrine Is Dead; Long Live Self-Incrimination Doctrine: Confessions, Scientific Evidence, And The Anxieties Of The Liberal State, Kenworthey Bilz

Kenworthey Bilz

Confessions have historically been the most compelling evidence the state could offer at a criminal trial. However, improvements in forensic technologies have led to increased use of scientific evidence, such as DNA typing, pattern-recognition software, location tracking devices, and the like, with very impressive rates of reliability. The reliability of these methods has become so impressive, in fact, that it should lead to a reduced reliance on confessions (and other nonscientific evidence, such as eyewitness identifications) in criminal prosecutions. However, this does not mean that the doctrine of self-incrimination, which regulates the acquisition and use of confessions, will no longer …

Families Redefined: Kinship Groups That Deserve Benefits, Jane E. Cross, Charlene Smith, Nan Palmer

Jane E Cross

In Families Redefined: Kinship Groups that Deserve Benefits, the authors examine 1) the nature of kinship families, 2) the benefits accorded to married couples, 3) kinship families that lack protection and benefits, 4) the impact of denying kinship protection and benefits, 5) the use of contract law in kinship relationship and 6) using legislation to benefit kinship relationships.

This exploration of expanding family law protections to kinship groups addresses a series of interrelated topics. The first two sections of the article explore the characteristics and creation of kinship families in different societies. The third section addresses the legal benefits provided …

A Unified Theory Of 28 U.S.C. § 1331 Jurisdiction, Lumen N. Mulligan

Lumen N. Mulligan

Title 28, section 1331 of the United States Code provides the jurisdictional grounding for the majority of cases heard in the federal courts, yet it is not well understood. The predominant view holds that section 1331 doctrine both lacks a focus upon congressional intent and is internally inconsistent. I seek to counter both these assumptions by re-contextualizing the Court’s section 1331 jurisprudence in terms of the contemporary judicial usage of “right” (i.e., clear, mandatory obligations capable of judicial enforcement) and cause of action (i.e., permission to vindicate a right in court). In conducting this reinterpretation, I argue that section 1331 …

If They Could Only Eat Efficiency: How Airline Deregulation And The Bankruptcy Code Joined Forces To Undermine Airline Workers And What Can Be Done About It, Ashton S. Phillips

Ashton S. Phillips `

As a species of mass transportation, the airline industry is incapable of making a sustained profit in an unregulated economy. Without regulation, easy access to reorganization and government subsidies only facilitate bloated supply in the air travel market. Bloated supply leads to decreased market price of airfare. This decrease helps consumers, but it doesn't help airlines achieve profitability. Under the current legal scheme, if airlines can't achieve profitability, airline workers will continue to subsidize the industry with radically decreased pay and lost retirement benefits. If Congress increases airline workers' rights in bankruptcy and merger contexts, their positions will be temporarily …

Happy To Be Equal, Shay Gurion

Shay Gurion

The public discourses regarding happiness are burgeoning in current times, especially in the fields of positive psychology and philosophy. However, policy oriented disciplines, such as economics and law, seem to almost suspiciously, avoid this discussion, leaving one of life's most important aspects, academically and politically, unexplored. This paper tries to fill this void by offering an explanation to why humans beings are equally happy and how does this provide us with a rational basis for human equality and a corresponding perception of human rights. The explanation offered in this paper of why people are equally happy lies greatly on the …

The Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Class Action Lawsuit: Can States Claim It As Unclaimed Property?, Ethan Millar, John Coalson

Ethan Millar

This article analyzes the potential application of state unclaimed property laws to unclaimed settlement proceeds in a state or federal court class action. This article concludes that, in a federal court class action, federal law rather than state law should apply to the disposition of unclaimed settlement proceeds under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, the Erie doctrine, and other authorities. Thus, since federal law grants the district court broad discretion to approve settlements and determine the manner of disposing of unclaimed settlement proceeds, the court is not bound by state unclaimed property laws which may otherwise require those proceeds …

The Continuing Threshold Test For Free Exercise Claims, Andy G. Olree

Andy G Olree

When a claimant challenges some governmental law or action under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, courts have long required the claimant to make out a prima facie case that the government has burdened the exercise of the claimant’s sincerely held religious beliefs. This requirement has been referred to as the threshold test for free exercise claims, since claimants must make this showing as a threshold matter before courts will proceed to evaluate the burden and the governmental interest at stake under some standard of scrutiny. This Article argues that, while the U.S. Supreme Court has recently adopted …

The Duty Of Treatment: Human Rights And The Hiv/Aids Pandemic, Noah B. Novogrodsky

Noah B Novogrodsky

This article argues that the treatment of HIV and AIDS is spawning a juridical, advocacy and enforcement revolution. The intersection of AIDS and human rights was once characterized almost exclusively by anti-discrimination and destigmatization efforts. Today, human rights advocates are demanding life-saving treatment and convincing courts and legislatures to make states pay for it. Using a comparative Constitutional law methodology that places domestic courts at the center of the struggle for HIV treatment, this article shows how the provision of AIDS medications is reframing the right to health and the implementation of socio-economic rights. First, it locates an emerging right …

Not In My Backyard: On The Morality Of Responsibility-Sharing In Refugee Law, Tally Kritzman-Amir

Tally Kritzman-Amir

In this article I argue that the responsibility for protecting of refugees should be shared between the states of the world, rather than allocated in a random manner to the first country of asylum. I will start by explaining why the protection and provision of assistance to refugees is a responsibility-sharing problem. I will turn to discussing the moral considerations which should lead to responsibility-sharing efforts in the context of refugee migration. Then I will offer specific criteria to govern the allocation of responsibility to each country, which should be balanced and weighed against each-other in each refugee crisis, to …

"Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?", Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

"Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?", Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

"Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?", Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

"Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?", Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

"Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?", Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

Nudging For Liberty: Values In Libertarian Paternalism, Michael S. Mcpherson, Matthew A. Smith

Michael S. McPherson

In their recent book, Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein argue persuasively that default rules, framing effects, etc., can be used to promote people's welfare. Through a range of empirical examples, we show that it is possible and often preferable to promote values other than welfare. For example, in certain situations default rules can be used to promote people’s exercise of liberty, the equality between citizens, or any other number of values. The core of the paper is showing that these examples do not devolve into welfare, and thereby enhancing the range of options open to policy makers.

"Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?", Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

The Emergence Of Transnational Constitutionalism: Its Features, Challenges And Solutions, Wen-Chen Chang, Jiunn-Rong Yeh

Wen-Chen Chang

Globalization and regional remapping have made unprecedented challenges to traditional understandings of constitutional and international laws. Not only constitutions may function across national borders but also international treaties and regional cooperative frameworks may deliver constitutional or quasi-constitutional functions. This paper aims at theorizing recent developments of transnational constitutionalism by examining its features, functions and characteristics. We find that transnational constitutionalism features transnational constitutional arrangements, transnational judicial dialogues and global convergence of national constitutions. Notwithstanding main functions in facilitating a global market, the development of transnational constitutionalism nevertheless undermines accountability, democracy and rule of law at both domestic and transnational levels. …

Public Awareness Of Human Rights: Distortions In The Mass Media, Eric Heinze, Rosa Freedman

Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London

This article examines distortions of human rights reporting in the mass media. We examine human rights coverage in four of the most influential newspapers, two from the US and two from the UK. The US papers are The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The British papers are The Financial Times and The Guardian.

Most current scholarship on international human rights draws its information from specialized sources, such as the published reports of intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations. Wholly absent has been any systematic study of the mass media. To date, no one has examined the dominant media agencies, …

Reassessing The Dialogic Possibilities Of Weak-Form Bills Of Rights, Christine A. Bateup

Christine A Bateup

In recent years, weak-form bills of rights have generated much excitement in contemporary constitutional scholarship because they are believed to create a new balance between parliamentary and judicial supremacy based on inter-branch “dialogue” between courts and legislatures. Few scholars, however, have examined the foundational question of whether judges and legislators can actually be expected to behave in a way that realizes the dialogic potential of weak-form instruments. This Article takes a new approach to this question, applying the insights of positive theory to engage in a comprehensive assessment of the behavior we can realistically expect of courts and legislatures in …

Maximizing Social Influence To Minimize Carbon Emissions: Law And Social Norms In Collective Action, Jed S. Ela

Jed S Ela

Legal scholars have long argued that informal social norms can solve collective action problems, as long as these problems occur in close-knit groups. This “group knittedness hypothesis” may suggest that social norms, by themselves, will not be able to solve the world’s largest collective action problem: anthropogenic climate change. Yet recent scholarship has taken the group knittedness hypothesis too far, suggesting that any attempt to manage social influences in large, loose-knit groups is likely to be relatively ineffective.

In fact, social norms can shape individual behavior even in loose-knit groups, and climate policies that ignore norms may miss important opportunities …

"Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?", Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

Implications Of The Uk Companies Act 2006 For Institutional Investors And The Corporate Social Responsibility Movement, Gordon L. Clark, Eric R. W. Knight

Eric R Knight

Non-governmental organisations, activists, and the public-at-large hold large firms accountable on many issues including their environmental footprints and the social standards of their suppliers around the world. For those coming from European social democratic traditions, stakeholders have a legitimate voice in the affairs of the corporation especially in two-tiered governance regimes that separate supervision from management. Notwithstanding attempts to re-write their proper roles and responsibilities, the Anglo-American corporation is widely believed to be the medium for the accumulation of shareholder value.

Recently, however, a counter-argument has emerged suggesting that the UK Companies Act 2006 broke with this tradition to embrace …

The Partially Prudential Doctrine Of Mootness, Matthew I. Hall

Matthew I Hall

The conventional understanding of mootness doctrine is that it operates as a mandatory bar to federal court jurisdiction, derived from the “cases or controversies” clause of the United States Constitution, Article III. In two crucial respects, however, this Constitutional model—which was first adopted by the Supreme Court less than 45 years ago—fails to account for the manner in which courts actually address contentions of mootness. First, the commonly-applied exceptions to the mootness bar are not derived from the “cases or controversies” clause and cannot be reconciled with the Constitutional account of mootness. Second, courts regularly consider and resolve mootness issues …

"Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?", Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

Crime And Moral Condemnation, John H. Bogart

John H Bogart

“Crime and Moral Condemnation” considers the relationship between enforcement of criminal law and moral condemnation of conduct by examining the enforcement of California’s feticide statute over a 50 year period in Sacramento. The article focuses in particular on the trial of Dr. T. Wah Hing, one of only three persons prosecuted during the period, and for whom a full trial transcript exists. The article suggests that abortion was not the object of widespread moral condemnation for reasons in addition to the paucity of prosecution, and that enforcement of the feticide statute was more the result of action by the California …

The Reagan Administration And The Rehnquist Court's New Federalism: Understanding The Role Of The Federalist Society, Amanda L. Hollis-Brusky

Amanda Hollis-Brusky

This article takes to task and complicates the narrative advanced by Professor Dawn Johnsen in her 2003 Indiana Law Review Article, “Ronald Reagan and the Rehnquist Court on Congressional Power: Presidential Influences on Constitutional Change.” Using evidence drawn from an in-depth examination of the speeches and writings of actors associated with both the early Federalists and the Reagan Administration, archival documents from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, as well as data gathered from personal interviews, this study presents a richer, more nuanced, and more complete narrative of the impact of the Reagan Revolution on the New Federalism. In sum, it …

State Actors Beating Children: A Call For Judicial Relief, Deana Ann Pollard Sacks

Deana A Pollard

Controversy over public school corporal punishment is at an all-time high. On August 20, 2008, the Human Rights Watch/ACLU brought public attention to the issue by releasing its report on corporal punishment of children in American public schools. Lawsuits challenging this state action on constitutional grounds continue to be filed, as advocates seeking to ban school paddling refuse to accept that beating students is constitutionally permissible, despite their repeated losses in the federal courts, and the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the issue again on June 23, 2008. Ignoring the uproar, nearly half of the United States continue to employ …

An Intellectual History Of Judicial Activism, Craig Green

Roger Craig Green

This Article seeks to transform how readers view judicial activism. From newsrooms to confirmation hearings, judicial activism is a uniquely potent and popular epithet condemning judicial misconduct. By contrast, most legal scholars either eschew activism-talk as too vague, or they adopt unsound definitions of the term as (i) any exercise of judicial review or (ii) any unfavorable result. These trends have segregated normative debates over judicial activity, with solidly unfortunate results.

This Article reclaims the term judicial activism by exploring the concept of judicial activism that underlies it. One goal of this Article is to dispel widespread misperceptions about judicial …