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Hannah Arendt Meets Qanon: Conspiracy, Ideology, And The Collapse Of Common Sense, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A June 2020 survey found one in four Americans agreeing that “powerful people intentionally planned the coronavirus outbreak.” In fall 2020, seven percent said they believe the elaborate and grotesque mythology of QAnon; another eleven percent were unsure whether they believe it. November and December 2020 found tens of millions of Americans believing in election-theft plots that would require superhuman levels of coordination and secrecy among dozens, perhaps hundreds, of otherwise-unconnected and unidentified miscreants.

Conspiracy theories are nothing new, and they raise a question that preoccupied Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism: whatever happened to common sense? Arendt …

The International Governance Of Refugee Work: Reflections On The Jordan Compact, Jennifer Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

For the past seventy years, separate international regimes have governed the economic lives of refugees and labor migrants. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) oversees all aspects of refugee resettlement, including livelihoods, while the International Labor Organization (ILO) is charged with addressing the labor rights of migrants. This division has become increasingly problematic as international actors have sought to move refugees into employment arenas from which they have been largely excluded since the end of WWII. This article uses a case study of the 2016 EU-Jordan Compact to illustrate the risks inherent in positioning refugees as workers in …

Posthuman Dignity And The Problem Of The Body, Zachary R. Calo

Scholarly Works

This essay examines the anthropology of transhumanist and posthumanist thought, focusing on human dignity and the role of embodiment. It posits that posthumanism views the body as a barrier to achieving dignity rather than an intrinsic site of dignity, advocating for transcending biological limits towards a more dignified existence. The discourse contrasts transhumanist and bioconservative perspectives on dignity, emphasizing that dignity is not an inherent trait but is achieved through technological enhancement and the redefinition of embodiment, impacting contemporary ethical considerations in biotechnology.

Christian Dignity And The Overlapping Consensus, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

This Article rejects arguments by Christian leaders, scholars, and others who lament the secularization of the West and urge Christian dignity as the foundation of universal human rights. It argues instead that only a secular conception of dignity free of Christian metaphysics can create an overlapping consensus in support of human rights.

Part I describes the roots of Christian dignity in medieval theology and status. Part II briefly recounts how the Renaissance and Enlightenment re-centered the end of dignity from knowing God to knowing oneself, while the Reformation’s extension of original sin to the intellect left Catholicism as the primary …

Debunking “De Minimis” Violations Of Prisoners’ Religious Rights: Further Problems With The Supreme Court’S “Hands Off” Approach, Samantha Sparacino

Touro Law Review

Circuits are split as there continues to be an inconsistent application of Supreme Court doctrine stemming from the notion of the separation of church and the state. Imprisonment does not strip a wrongdoer of his constitutionally guaranteed rights and protections. Some Circuits have held that a minor, or de minimis, interpretation of an inmate’s religious rights can constitute a substantial burden under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. In the absence of clear direction from the Supreme Court, I propose that courts should refrain from determining the value of a religious belief or practice as it relates …

Benevolent Exclusion, Anna Offit

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The American jury system holds the promise of bringing commonsense ideas about justice to the enforcement of the law. But its democratizing effect cannot be realized if a segment of the population faces systematic exclusion based on income or wealth. The problem of unequal access to jury service based on socio-economic disparities is a longstanding yet under-studied problem—and one which the uneven fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated. Like race- and sex-based jury discrimination during the peremptory challenge phase of jury selection, the routine dismissal of citizens who face economic hardship excludes not only people but also the diversity …

Cetacean Cultural Rights: A Third Generation Of Rights At Sea, David Peña-Guzmán

Animal Law Review

This Article discusses the cultural rights of cetaceans, as articulated in the 2010 Declaration on the Rights of Cetaceans. It argues that these rights qualify as "third-generation rights," meaning groups of cetaceans -- as opposed to individuals -- have the right to the protection of their respective cultures. The Article begins with an account of the history of third-generation rights in international human rights law. It then examines how the concept of third-generation rights can carry over into the animal rights movement. The article proposes three criteria for determining whether a group qualifies for third-generation rights. Then, it demonstrates that …

Monopolizing Whiteness, Erika K. Wilson

Faculty Publications

In racially diverse metropolitan areas throughout the country, school district boundary lines create impermeable borders, separating affluent and predominantly white school districts from low-income, predominantly nonwhite school districts. The existence of predominantly white and affluent school districts in racially diverse metropolitan areas has material consequences and symbolic meaning. Materially, such districts receive greater educational inputs such as higher per-pupil spending, higher teacher quality, and newer facilities than their neighboring more racially diverse districts. Symbolically, owing to the material and status-based value attached to whiteness, the districts are also viewed as elite, which creates a magnetic effect that draws white affluent …

Gender Violence, The Carceral State, And The Politics Of Solidarity, Deborah M. Weissman

Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article examines gender violence committed by the State. It does so within the context of recent initiatives to address abusive police practices to demonstrate that issues of gender violence have been omitted from reform efforts. To that end, it provides a critical review of anti-carceral campaigns, including recent challenges to “stop-andfrisk” practices. Litigation addressing abusive police conduct has failed to identify stop-and-frisk as a particular form of gender violence. Similarly, community campaigns to oversee police body-worn camera policies have overlooked the differential ways in which survivors of gender violence are impacted by these police devices. This …

Law In The Shadows Of Confederate Monuments, Deborah R. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

Hundreds of Confederate monuments stand across the United States. In recent years, leading historians have come forward to clarify that these statues were erected not just as memorials but to express white supremacist intimidation in times of racially oppressive conduct. As public support for antiracist action grows, many communities are inclined to remove public symbols that cause emotional harm, create constant security risks and dishonor the values of equality and unity. Finding a lawful path to removal is not always clear and easy. The political power brokers who choose whether monuments will stay or go often do not walk daily …

Tributes To Family Law Scholars Who Helped Us Find Our Path: Dorothy E. Roberts, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Professor Dorothy Roberts is a legacy builder and an inspiration for women, African American scholars, youth, and ordinary folks who want to make a difference in the lives of others. Her work in the field of family, race, and gender law is nothing short of prolific. She is a powerhouse whose research and advocacy reach across law into the fields of Africana studies, sociology, anthropology, medicine, psychology, political science, business, economics, and human rights. She is one of the first female professors to unpack how the law interfaces with Black women in various roles—as mother, wife, partner, daughter, caretaker, worker, …

Reckoning: Dialogue About Racism, Antiracists, And Business & Human Rights, Erika George, Jena Martin, Tara Van Ho

Faculty Articles

Video of George Floyd's death sparked global demonstrations and prompted individuals, communities and institutions to grapple with their own roles in embedding and perpetuating racist structures. The raison d'tre of Business and Human Rights (BHR) is to tackle structural corporate impediments to the universal realization of human rights. Yet, racism, one of the most obvious of such barriers, has been a blind spot for BHR. While the field has contended with gender inequality, there have only been tokenistic nods to intersectional harms caused by business activities. The failure to address racism seriously undermines both the promise of BHR generally and …

Talking Back In Court, M. Eve Hanan

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Human Right To Workplace Safety In A Pandemic, Ruben J. Garcia

Scholarly Works

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unique challenges for immigrant workers many of whom occupy jobs most at risk in the pandemic: heath care, janitorial services, and mass transit. This Article encourages the extension of human rights instruments protecting health and safety in the workplace to all workers, particularly immigrant workers. Garcia analyzes the options available for workers who confront unsafe working conditions under existing law. Expanding the language of “human right” will allow for greater scrutiny of actions taken by the government and employers. Garcia encourages statutory changes to OSHA and the NRLA, test cases, filing complaints under trade agreements, …

Catalan Identity And Paradiplomacy Strategy In Catalonia’S Independence Movement, Windy Dermawan, Akim Akim

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

This article seeks to analyse how Catalan identity, within the context of its conflict with the Spanish government, contributes to its foreign relations with the global public through paradiplomacy. This article uses qualitative research method with literature study. It finds that Catalonia, as one of Spain’s autonomous regions, have a distinct history, language, and culture from other Spanish regions. To protect their identity, there have been an emergence of movement for greater Catalan autonomy, even independence. This conflict reached climax on 1 October 2017 when the Catalan government initiated an independence referendum amongst Catalan people, with the majority voted for …

The Role Of Global Civil Society At The Local Level In Climate Change Mitigation: A Case Study Of Earth Hour’S Activities In Malang, Najamuddin Khairur Rijal

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

This study examines the role of global civil society at the local level in climate change mitigation. Climate change issue is one of the global issues that is responded at the local level, as the impact of the problem concerns the universal livelihood of the world’s population. This study focuses on Earth Hour’s activities in the Malang region as a part of a global civil society. This research uses global civil society and its role in environmental governance as the analytical framework. The data are collected through documentation studies and interviews. The results show that Earth Hour Malang’s activities have …

Between Control And Empowerment: Local Government And Acknowledgement Of Adat Villages In Indonesia, Tine Suartina

Indonesia Law Review

The local government’s acknowledgment of adat (customary) communities and adat villages, as regulated in the Village Law 6/2014 , appear to signal an increasing recognition of adat law. However, the current acknowledgment practices and adat village formalizations have become areas of legal contestation between adat communities and state-national and local governments. Despite the resurgence of formal legal pluralism, those acknowledgment and accommodation mechanisms are double-edged. They involve control and empowerment as emphasized in Hellman’s framework applied to analyze the dilemma in a plural society regarding cultural politics. On the one hand, the acknowledgment and accommodation mechanisms conducted through an official …

Anti-Lgbtq Hate: An Analysis Of Situational Variables, Jill Kehoe

Journal of Hate Studies

The current study aimed to augment the scant body of literature on anti-LGBTQ hate by providing an in-depth examination of anti-LGBTQ hate incident situational characteristics including offender substance use, number of offenders, crime location, and victim-offender relationship. Analysis of situational dynamic variables provided support for the notion that anti-LGBTQ hate is a distinct type of criminal incident. Significantly increased levels of offender substance use, crimes perpetrated by multiple offenders, crimes perpetrated by acquaintances, and crimes taking place in open spaces substantiates the theory that anti-LGBTQ hate is qualitatively unique, typified by different characteristics than other forms of crime. The data …

Peyote Crisis Confronting Modern Indigenous Peoples: The Declining Peyote Population And A Demand For Conservation, James D. Muneta

American Indian Law Journal

Once abundant, the wild growing peyote cactus plants in Texas and Mexico are being drastically reduced and becoming scarce. Peyote, a slow growing cactus contains the hallucinogenic drug mescaline, is a sacred sacrament used in the Native Americans Church (NAC). It is also used religiously by various Indian tribes throughout the country of Mexico. Although peyote is classified as a controlled substance under federal and state laws, U.S. Congress granted NAC members a “peyote exemption” pursuant to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to legally use peyote for religious purposes. In U.S. v. Boyll, the federal district court interpreted the …

Her Story: Ecuadorian Women In New York City, Benjamin Chambers

Capstones

My Capstone Project is an 80-photo reportage about women of Ecuadorian origin living in New York City, including text and video elements. The project is broken down into a general introduction; four photo stories each with captions and story text; and two videos. The project is entitled:

HER STORY: ECUADORIAN WOMEN IN NEW YORK CITY

https://www.chambersphotojournalist.com/capstone/

Paradises Lost? The Constitutional Politics Of “Indian” Enfranchisement In Canada, 1857–1900, Coel Kirkby

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Enfranchisement was the legal process for an individual or community to end their legal status as “Indians” under the Indian Act. The Canadian government hoped it would break up bands before assimilating them into settler society. This article aims to excavate the untold story of this attempt to extinguish special “Indian” status in the nineteenth century. It first traces enfranchisement as part of a Victorian discourse of civilization and as a specific Canadian legal process for the assimilation of “Indian” subjects. It then uses new archival sources to tell the untold story of the politics of enfranchisement over the second …

“Segs And The City” And Cutting-Edge Aesthetic Experiences: Resolving The Circuit Split On Tour Guides’ Licensing Requirements And The First Amendment, Marie J. Plecha

University of Chicago Legal Forum

No abstract provided.

A New Governance Approach To Regulating Human Genome Editing, John M. Conley, Arlene M. Davis, Gail E. Henderson, Eric T. Juengst, Karen M. Meagher, Rebecca L. Walker, Margaret Waltz, Jean Cadigan

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Technologies Of Language Meet Ideologies Of Law, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Herding History: Law And The Transformation Of Collective Subjectivities In The Dairyspheres Of Ukraine, Monica Eppinger

Journal of Food Law & Policy

In response to the limitations of socialism and capitalism in meeting basic needs, this article explores the alternative version of modernity offered in post-Soviet Ukraine and its agriculture. Tracing a century of fundamental transformations through the story of milk, it finds a history that troubles universalized framings of indigeneity and colonialism. This article argues that under socialism milk became a product of collectivized effort and a reservoir of household resilience; and then, with post-Soviet disintegration of some forms of collective life and emergence of others, that milk has come to delineate spheres of both collective action and individual striving. This …

Comparing Corporeal Lineups To Photo Arrays, Andrew J. Costello, Blair Hoplight, Maria Lombardo

Journal of Criminal Justice and Law

An eyewitness identification study of a simulated theft of a laptop in a lecture hall was conducted in a northeastern university. After five days, 148 subjects attempted to identify the suspect from either a lineup or a photo array. Corporal lineups and video lineups were conducted in addition to traditional static photo arrays and a new “dynamic photo array” consisting of the use of front, left profile, and right profile images presented in an animated sequence within the standard six-pack photo array. No significant differences between correct identification, misidentification, and non-selection were found between any of the identification methods used. …

Resilience Theory And Wicked Problems, Robin Kundis Craig

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article posits, first, that resilience theory offers important insights into our understanding of wicked problems and, second, that to understand the value of resilience theory to wicked problems, we should start by going back to the context of Rittel’s and Webber’s 1973 delineation of the ten characteristics of a “wicked problem.” Rittel and Webber were in fact among the vanguard of researchers beginning to articulate the realization that social and ecological systems—now social-ecological systems (“SESs”)—do not follow the predictable and mechanistic rules of Newtonian physics. As a result, SESs do not yield, at least not over the long term, …

Designing Law To Enable Adaptive Governance Of Modern Wicked Problems, J. B. Ruhl, Barbara A. Cosens A. Cosens, Niko Soininen, Lance Gunderson

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article contributes to the development of adaptive governance theory by articulating and situating the role of formal law and government as the facilitator, but not central controller, of adaptive governance. To advance the understanding of adaptive governance, we argue that it can be understood in the broader context of scholarship covering the observed emergence of new governance, the efforts to develop theoretical understandings through decentered theory, and the refinement of constitutional understanding through democratic experimentalism. Synthesis of these three themes in turn informs the role of law and government in working with emergent governance responses to complexity to manage …

Designing Law To Enable Adaptive Governance Of Modern Wicked Problems, Barbara A. Cosens, J.B. Ruhl, Niko Soininen, Lance Gunderson

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the twenty-first century, our planet is facing a period of rapid and fundamental change resulting from human domination so extensive it is expected to be visible in the geologic record. The accelerating rate of change compounds the global social-ecological challenges already deemed “wicked” due to conflicting goals and scientific uncertainty. Understanding how connected natural and human systems respond to change is essential to understanding the governance required to navigate these modern wicked problems. This Article views change through the lens of complexity and resilience theories to inform the challenges of governance in a world dominated by such massive and …

The Future Is Urban: The Progressive Renaissance Of The City In Eu Law, De Maartje Visser

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

For much of the European integration process, local authorities have been on the legal margins. Yet many amongst this group, and cities in particular, consider themselves as important players in realising the Union’s overarching policy objectives. This view is slowly but surely fi nding traction with the EU’s political institutions. This article suggests that the future architecture of the European Union’s (EU’s) operating system will evince a rapprochement between the socio-economic clout of local authorities, notably cities, and their legal-political recognition at Union level. It further suggests that there is room for greater conceptual clarity along two lines when interrogating …