Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Urgenda Vs. Juliana: Lessons For Future Climate Change Litigation Cases, Paolo Davide Farah, Imad Antoine Ibrahim

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No abstract provided.

Climate Justice In The Anthropocene And Its Relationship With Science And Technology: The Importance Of Ethics Of Responsibility, Paolo Davide Farah, Alessio Lo Giudice

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Climate change is a global phenomenon. Therefore, globalization is the necessary hermeneutical horizon to develop an analysis of the metamorphosis climate change could cause at a political, social, and economic level. Within this horizon, this Article shows how the relationship between the concept of the Anthropocene epoch and the request for justice allows for framing a climate-justice and intergenerational equity–focused political interpretation of the effects of climate change. In order to avoid reducing such an interpretation to merely an ideological critique of capitalism, the conception of climate justice needs to be grounded in a rational, ethical model. This Article proposes …

Too Much Of A Good Thing? A Governing Knowledge Commons Review Of Abundance In Context, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Madelyn Sanfilippo, Katherine J. Strandburg

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The economics of abundance, along with the sociology of abundance, the law of abundance, and so forth, should be re-framed, linked, and situated in a common context for empirical rather than conceptual research. Abundance may seem to be a new, big thing, between anxiety over information overload, Big Data, and related technological disruptions. But scholars know that abundance is an ancient phenomenon, which only seemed to disappear as twentieth century social science focused on scarcity instead. Restoring the study of abundance, and figuring out how to solve the problems that abundance might create, means shedding disciplinary blinders and going back …

Government By Code? Blockchain Applications To Public Sector Governance, Pedro Bustamante, Meina Cai, Marcela Gomez, Colin Harris, Prashabnt Krishnamurthy, Wilson Law, Michael J. Madison, Ilia Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Tymofiy Mylovanov, Nataliia Shapoval, Annette Vee, Martin B. H. Weiss

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Studies of blockchain governance can be divided into analyses of the governance of blockchains (such as rules and power dynamics within a given network) and governance by blockchains (such as how blockchains can be implemented to improve self-governance of community-based peer production networks). Less emphasis has been placed on applications of distributed ledgers to public sector governance. Our review clarifies that the decentralization and distributive features that enable blockchains to link up loosely connected private organizations and public agencies to improve efficiency and transparency of government transactions. However, most blockchain applications lack clear advantages over the conventional digital recording of …

Blockchain Networks As Knowledge Commons, Ilia Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Martin B. H. Weiss, Michael J. Madison

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Researchers interested in blockchains are increasingly attuned to questions of governance, including how blockchains relate to government, the ways blockchains are governed, and ways blockchains can improve prospects for successful self-governance. Our paper joins this research by exploring the implications of the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to analyze governance of blockchains. Our novel contributions are making the case that blockchain networks represent knowledge commons governance, in the sense that they rely on collectively-managed technologies to pool and manage distributed information, illustrating the usefulness and novelty of the GCK methodology with an empirical case study of the evolution of Bitcoin, …

Nazi Stolen Art: Uses And Misuses Of The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Vivian Grosswald Curran

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U.S. courts in Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”) cases must interpret a comprehensive statute which has been said to stand or fall on its terms. At the same time, in Nazi-looted art cases, they do not ignore entirely the backdrop of the U.S.’ adoption of international principles and declarations promising to ensure the return of such art. To some extent, such an undertaking has been incorporated into a statutory amendment of the FSIA. The years 2021 and 2022 have seen major developments in the FSIA both at the U.S. Supreme Court and in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in …

Fair Play: Notes On The Algorithmic Soccer Referee, Michael J. Madison

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The soccer referee stands in for a judge. Soccer’s Video Assistant Referee (“VAR”) system stands in for algorithms that augment human deciders. Fair play stands in for justice. They are combined and set in a polycentric system of governance, with implications for designing, administering, and assessing human-machine combinations.

Pandemic Surveillance Discrimination, Christian Sundquist

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The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the abiding tension between surveillance and privacy. Public health epidemiology has long utilized a variety of surveillance methods—such as contact tracing, quarantines, and mandatory reporting laws—to control the spread of disease during past epidemics and pandemics. Officials have typically justified the resulting intrusions on privacy as necessary for the greater public good by helping to stave off larger health crisis. The nature and scope of public health surveillance in the battle against COVID-19, however, has significantly changed with the advent of new technologies. Digital surveillance tools, often embedded in wearable technology, have greatly increased …

No-Hire Provisions In Mcdonald's Franchise Agreements, An Antitrust Violations Or Evidence Of Joint Employer?, Andrele Brutus St. Val

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As the archetypical franchisor and industry leader, McDonald’s has come under much public and legal scrutiny in recent years for its business practices and its effects on low-wage and unskilled employees. Its no hire provision—which is a term included in its franchise agreements with franchisees that bars franchisees from hiring each others employees—has been found by economist to suppress wages and stagnate growth. This provision is being challenged under antitrust law while its employment practices are being disputed under labor law. McDonald’s is defending its business practices by presenting two seemingly contradictory defenses. This article explores how McDonald’s position in …

The Technologies Of Race: Big Data, Privacy And The New Racial Bioethics, Christian Sundquist

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Advancements in genetic technology have resurrected long discarded conceptualizations of “race” as a biological reality. The rise of modern biological race thinking – as evidenced in health disparity research, personal genomics, DNA criminal forensics, and bio-databanking - not only is scientifically unsound but portends the future normalization of racial inequality. This Article articulates a constitutional theory of shared humanity, rooted in the substantive due process doctrine and Ninth Amendment, to counter the socio-legal acceptance of modern genetic racial differentiation. It argues that state actions that rely on biological racial distinctions undermine the essential personhood of individuals subjected to such taxonomies, …

Beyond The 'Resiliency' And 'Grit' Narrative In Legal Education: Race, Class And Gender Considerations, Christian Sundquist

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Law schools have been struggling to adapt to the “new normal” of decreased enrollments and a significantly altered legal employment market. Despite the decrease in traditional attorney jobs, as well as the possibility that artificial intelligence systems such as “ROSS” will displace additional jobs in the future, there still remains a significant gap in legal services available to the poor, middle class, and immigrants. The integration of social justice methodologies in the classroom thus has become critically important to the future of legal education and of the very practice of law.

Many commentators on the future of legal education have …

Firepower To The People: Gun Rights & Self-Defense To Curb Police Misconduct, Spearit

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This Article represents a polemic against the most harmful aspects of the policing status quo. At its core, the work asserts the right of civilians to defend against unlawful deadly police conduct. It argues that existing gun and self-defense laws provide a practical and principled basis for curbing police misconduct. It also examines legislative trends in gun laws to show that much of most recent liberalizing of gun rights is a direct response to self-defense concerns sparked by mass public shootings. The expansion of gun rights and self-defense comes at a time when ongoing police killings of Black civilians menace …

Keeping It Real: Why Congress Must Act To Restore Pell Grant Funding For Prisoners, Spearit

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In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA), a provision of which revoked Pell Grant funding “to any individual who is incarcerated in any federal or state penal institution.” This essay highlights the counter-productive effects this particular provision has on penological goals. The essay suggests Congress acknowledge the failures of the ban on Pell Grant funding for prisoners, and restore such funding for all qualified prisoners.

Evolving Standards Of Domination: Abandoning A Flawed Legal Standard And Approaching A New Era In Penal Reform, Spearit

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This Article critiques the evolving standards of decency doctrine as a form of Social Darwinism. It argues that evolving standards of decency provided a system of review that was tailor-made for Civil Rights opponents to scale back racial progress. Although as a doctrinal matter, evolving standards sought to tie punishment practices to social mores, prison sentencing became subject to political agendas that determined the course of punishment more than the benevolence of a maturing society. Indeed, rather than the fierce competition that is supposed to guide social development, the criminal justice system was consciously deployed as a means of social …

Retaliation In The Eeo Office, Deborah L. Brake

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This Article examines a new and as-yet unexplored development in retaliation law under Title VII and other anti-discrimination statutes: the denial of protection from retaliation to the class of employees charged with enforcing their employers’ internal anti-discrimination policies and complaint procedures. Through distinctive applications of traditional retaliation doctrine and newer rules formulated specifically for this class of employees, these workers are increasingly vulnerable to unchecked retaliation by their employers. This troubling trend has important implications for workplace retaliation law and for employment discrimination law more broadly. This Article makes two contributions to legal scholarship. First, it traces the legal doctrines …

How Foreign Firms Transformed Ireland’S Domestic Economy, Paul Donnelly

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Today, Ireland is host to 1,033 multinational corporations. They directly employ 152,785 and account for 70 per cent or €122.5bn of exports. It’s a story that has its roots in the 1940s.

Link Levy To Services- Not Urban Middle Class Assets, Tom Dunne

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Paying any tax is an unwelcome burden, but in Ireland many have a particular aversion to taxes on their homes. We are not alone in this. Elsewhere, taxes on homes are also unpopular; witness the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation which forced the California state government to cut property taxes. Nevertheless, residential property taxes remain an almost universal feature of developed countries because of compelling economic arguments for them. Also, local property taxes are regarded as the best means of funding local government.

Rarely, it seems to me, is there such a distance between what the public wants and …

Stasis And Change In Environmental Law: The Past, Present And Future Of The Fordham Environmental Law Review, Gerald S. Dickinson

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The past twenty years of environmental law are marked as much by legislative stasis as by profound change in the way that lawyers, policymakers, and scholars interact with the field. Although no new federal legislation was passed over the past two decades, much has changed about the field of environmental law. This change is the result of a set of conceptual and legal challenges to the field posed by intellectual and policy movements that took root in the early 1990s. The intellectual and policy movements that have most profoundly shaped the field of environmental law in the past twenty years …

Special Report: Kosovo After The Icj Opinion, Introduction, Ronald A. Brand

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On October 22-25, 2012, judges, government officials, and scholars from Kosovo and the United States gathered at the University of Pittsburgh for a conference on “Kosovo after the ICJ Opinion.” The conference was organized by the Center for International Legal Education (CILE) at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and the University of Prishtina Faculty of Law. It was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, Kosovo; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kosovo; the Forum for Civic Initiatives, Kosovo; the American Society of International Law (ASIL); and the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh …

Avoiding The Mistakes Of The Past, Tom Dunne

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Tom Dunne explores the long term drivers of dysfunction in Ireland's housing markets and what a more sustainable housing system would look like.

Tax Facts, Tom Dunne

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Tom Dunne Clarifies the issues surrounding different forms of property tax

Tax Reform DisCourse, Anthony C. Infanti

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Our tax system is supposed to serve the public good by fairly raising the revenue that we need to fund public expenditures — for example, the common defense, social safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare, etc. But the tax reform debate has shifted away from discussing how best to distribute the burden of these common expenditures and instead has come to focus on how tax reform can be used to spur economic growth. Especially in times of economic crisis, these two goals — equitably funding public expenditures and spurring economic growth — sound equally important and somehow …

Building A World-Class System In Ireland’S Financial Crisis, Ellen Hazelkorn

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Irish higher education faces particular difficulties given the severity of its economic crisis. Like other countries, it is engaged in significant system restructuring coupled with managed policy direction. Where Ireland does differ is in its emphasis on a 'whole of country strategy' and commitment that teaching and research go hand-in-hand. This paper looks at the fortunes and mis-fortunes of Irish higher education.

Contribution Of Tertiary Education To Human Capital Development, Labour Market And Skills In The State Of Victoria, Australia, Ellen Hazelkorn

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This chapter examines how effectively TAFE Institutes and universities in the State of Victoria contribute to meeting the social and economic needs of the population in terms of opportunities to study and relevance of the qualifications offered. It identifies some key achievements and areas for improvement. The chapter closes with a series of recommendations that include the need for a greater system approach to tertiary education in order to support sustainable regional development and the role that the State of Victoria can play in this strategy.

Modernization And Cultural Change In China: Links To The 2008 Summer Olympics, Kevin Brennan

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In 2001, the International Olympic Committee awarded Beijing, China to be host of the 2008 Summer games. Though interesting for multiple reasons, the decision to pick Beijing is intriguing partially because it will be just the third city in the modern era of the Olympics to be located in a Third World country. It has long been argued that hosting the Olympics can lead to significant social and economic changes, especially in non-Western locations. This paper, however, examines a different set of changes linked to the upcoming Olympics in China--the cultural dynamics. The main argument is that the rapid modernization …

Age Concern: The Future Of The Oecd, Richard Woodward

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‘Life’, so the adage has it, ‘begins at 40’. But, as American journalist Helen Rowland wryly observed, ‘so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times’. Such a sentiment should resonate within the Parisian corridors of the Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD) which celebrates its 45th anniversary on 30 September. Rival institutional developments, evolving geo-political realities, hostility from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the absence of a precisely defined mission statement have marred the OECD’s fifth decade and left the organisation struggling to justify its place in …

Land Value Taxation: Persuasive Theory But Practically Difficult, Tom Dunne

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While the theoretical case for Land Value Taxation is regarded as being very persuasive, most people looking closely at the idea form the view that the practical difficulties of introducing it into an established modern economy are compelling. Nevertheless, in Europe and America the ideas put forward by George continue to influence many people discussing issues around land use planning, urban development and methods of funding infrastructure and local government.

The Organisation For Economic Cooperation And Development, Richard Woodward

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This article reviews the role of the OECD, a much cited but little studied institution, in global governance.