Digital Commons Network^™

Keynote Address: International Standard-Setting On The Human Rights Responsibilities Of Businesses, David Weissbrodt

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It is a great honor to be invited to my alma mater to speak at this confer- ence highlighting the human rights responsibilities of transnational corporations and to be selected to receive this year's Stefan A. Riesenfeld Award for my con- tributions in the field of international law.

Remedies For Undocumented Noncitizens In The Workplace: Using International Law To Narrow The Holding Of Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. V. Nlrb, David Weissbrodt

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In Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) back-pay claims of a worker wrongfully discharged for union organizing.1 The Supreme Court's 2002 decision reasoned that the worker should not be able to recover back pay under the NLRA because he was a noncitizen and not entitled to em- ployment. 2 The Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the International Labor Organization (ILO) Freedom of Association Committee have rejected the Hoffman decision and criticized the United States for its discrimination against noncitizens.3

Fair Trials? The Manual For Military Commissions In Light Of Common Article 3 And Other International Law, David Weissbrodt, Andrea W. Templeton

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The United States Department of Defense initiated military commissions as authorized by the Military Commissions Act ("MCA") of 2006 to try "unlawful enemy combatants" detained in the course of the War on Terror. 1 Enacted on October 17, 2006, the MCA's specific purpose is "to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission." 2 Congress passed the MCA as a renewed attempt at convening military commissions in response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 3 where the Court held …

Foreclosure Reform Amid Mortgage Lending Turmoil: A Public Purpose Approach, Prentiss Cox

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Irene Thomas was twenty-one years old when she met a man outside of a nightclub who convinced her that she could make money in real estate. 1 A mortgage broker and others used her credit rating to obtain ten residential properties within a ninety-day period with no money down. 2 Ms. Thomas incurred $ 2.4 million in mortgage debt for these home purchases. 3 Just over a year later, all the properties were in foreclosure after Ms. Thomas failed to make the mortgage payments. 4 The neighborhood on the north side of Minneapolis where these ten properties are located has …

Takings And Trespass: Trespass Liability For Precondemnation Entries, Ann Burkhart

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When the government, a utility company, or another entity with the power of eminent domain enters land before acquiring it, the courts are extremely divided about whether the landowner can sue for trespass or only for inverse condemnation. A court's decision on this issue has tremendous practical implications. For example, it substantially affects the remedies that are available to the landowner, including its right to recover the property. The court's decision also has significant public policy implications because it involves the balance between government sovereignty over land and protection of private property rights. eminent domain, takings, inverse condemnation, trespass, government …

Carbon Sequestration And Sustainability, Alexandra B. Klass, Sara E. Bergan

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This Symposium Essay explores the question of whether the developing technology of geologic carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), which involves capturing CO2 emissions from industrial sources and power plants and sequestering them underground, is consisting with principles of sustainable development. This Essay concludes that while CCS on its own may not be consistent with basic principles of sustainability, it presents a potential opportunity to create sufficiently deep cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to allow the transition to a more sustainable future.

Wipo-Wto Relations And The Future Of Global Intellectual Property Norms, Ruth Okediji

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The intense scholarly debate about the effects of harmonized global intellectual property (IP) rules under the TRIPS Agreement has yet to consider what role an appropriate organizational framework should play in facilitating development of IP norms to address new global challenges. The prevailing assumption has been that the norm-setting role of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will remain unchanged despite the primacy of the TRIPS Agreement and the explicit mandate of the WTO for global IP regulation. Indeed, with respect to the supply of public goods, only the WTO - not WIPO - has the formal legal mandate to …

Employee Primacy, Or Economics Meets Civic Republicanism At Work, Brett Mcdonnell

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This paper argues for employee primacy in corporate governance. "Employee primacy" has two elements: ultimate employee control over the corporation, and an objective function of maximizing employee welfare. In methodology, the argument draws upon both economics, but understood more broadly than in most corporate law scholarship, and upon civic republican ideas. The paper presents four different arguments favoring employee primacy. (1) Employee primacy is likely to create the most surplus within the corporation due to incentive effects and the wealth of information that employees possess. (2) Corporations characterized by employee primacy are more likely to be socially responsible, and hence …

Globalization, Internationalization, And Rankings, Ellen Hazelkorn

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Topics: Financing and Funding, Globalization and Internationalization, International and Foreign Students, Marketization and Commercialization and Academic Quality, Assessment and Accreditation.

Application Of The Fractal Market Hypothesis For Modelling Macroeconomic Time Series, Jonathan Blackledge

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This paper explores the conceptual background to financial time series analysis and financial signal processing in terms of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. By revisiting the principal conventional approaches to market analysis and the reasoning associated with them, we develop a Fractal Market Hypothesis that is based on the application of non-stationary fractional dynamics using an operator of the type
∂² / ∂x² − σ^q(t) * ∂ ^q(t)/ ∂t^q(t)

where σ⁻¹ is the fractional diffusivity and q is the Fourier dimension which, for the topology considered, (i.e. the one-dimensional case) is related to the Fractal …

Discovering William Cook: Ten Sources For Reconstructing The Life Of A Lawyer, Margaret A. Leary

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Ms. Leary uses a case study to describe ten categories of resources for reconstructing a Manhattan lawyer's life. These resources answer questions about his law practice, scholarship, personal life, personality, values, and philanthropy. The case study uses today's resources to look far back into the details of the life of William W. Cook, who gave his fortune to the University of Michigan Law School.

The Human Rights Quagmire Of 'Human Trafficking', James C. Hathaway

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Support for the international fight against "human trafficking" evolved quickly and comprehensively. The campaign launched by the UN General Assembly in December 19981 led to adoption just two years later of the Trafficking Protocol to the UN Convention against Organized Crime.2 U.S. President George W. Bush was among those particularly committed to the cause, calling for collective effort to eradicate the "special evil" of human trafficking, said by him to have become a "humanitarian crisis."3 One hundred and twenty-two countries have now ratified the Trafficking Protocol, agreeing in particular to criminalize trafficking and to cooperate in investigating and prosecuting allegations …

Empirical Research For Public Policy: With Examples From Family Law, Richard O. Lempert

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Perhaps more than in any other field, legal scholarship has aimed directly at influencing public policy. Hence, it is not surprising that empirical scholarship on law related issues often seems to have an agenda that extends beyond the common social science goals of adding to our knowledge base and understanding of human behavior to suggesting to policy makers and practitioners legal and administrative changes that will ameliorate problems they confront and, by the researcher’s lights, make this a better world in which to live.

Business As Usual: The Roberts Court's Continued Neglect Of Adequacy And Equity Concerns In American Education, Osamudia R. James

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No abstract provided.

The Vast Injustice Perpetuated By State And Local Tax Policy, Susan Pace Hamill

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State and local tax policy is one of the most important areas of public policy affecting the lives of the most powerless and vulnerable segments of the population children from low income families Focusing on the funding of primary and secondary education especially in high poverty school districts and the scheme for allocating the tax burden this article empirically proves that all fifty states have unjust state and local tax policy with thirtyone states inflicting an extreme level of injustice on poor children and their families This article argues that the people in most states as well as their political …

Establishing Relations Between Law And Other Forms Of Thought And Language, James Boyd White

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The law does not, and could not, exist in an intellectual or linguistic vacuum. No one believes that the law is or should be impervious to other languages, other bodies of knowledge. In this sense the argument about the 'autonomy' of law is an empty one: law cannot be, should not be, perfectly autonomous, unconnected with any other system of thought and expression; yet it plainly has it own identity as a discourse, it own intellectual and linguistic habits, which it is our task as lawyers to understand and develop. It follows that an essential topic of legal thought is …

The Upc Authorizes Notarized Wills, Lawrence W. Waggoner

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This article reports on a 2008 amendment to the Uniform Probate Code that permits notarization as a method of will execution.

Public Rights, Social Equality, And The Conceptual Roots Of The Plessy Challenge, Rebecca J. Scott

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This Article argues that the test case that gave rise to the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson is best understood as part of a wellestablished, cosmopolitan tradition of anticaste activism in Louisiana rather than as a quixotic effort that contradicted nineteenth-century ideas of the boundaries of citizens' rights. By drawing a dividing line between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and social rights, on the other, the Supreme Court construed challenges to segregation as claims to a "social equality" that was beyond the scope of judicially cognizable rights. The Louisiana constitutional convention of 1867-68, however, had defined …

Preserving The Rule Of Law In America's Jails And Prisons: The Case For Amending The Prison Litigation Reform Act, Margo Schlanger, Giovanna Shay

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Prisons and jails pose a significant challenge to the rule of law within American boundaries. As a nation, we are committed to constitutional regulation of governmental treatment of even those who have broken society’s rules. And accordingly, most of our prisons and jails are run by committed professionals who care about prisoner welfare and constitutional compliance. At the same time, for prisons—closed institutions holding an ever-growing disempowered population—most of the methods by which we, as a polity, foster government accountability and equality among citizens are unavailable or at least not currently practiced. In the absence of other levers by which …

Hearts, Minds, Hands: A Dream Team For Mental Health, Julianne Gold Brunson, Judy Molner, Miriam Nathan Lerner

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Interpreting in a mental health setting with hearing staff members and deaf clientele, the ethical situations fly fast and furious, providing the interpreter with a wealth of war stories with which to regale neophyte students of this dynamic profession. Much has been written to improve the many and varied mental health services being extended to deaf populations. The most commonly described dyads are that of hearing therapist and deaf patient. However, consider the case of a deaf psychologist treating hearing clients. In this instance, the interpreter becomes the liaison between the deaf professional and the hearing patient. When an interpreter …

Jagannath's Saligram: On Bruno Latour And Literary Critique After Postcoloniality, Amit Ray, Evan Selinger

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Bruno Latour has turned to Indian vernacular fiction to illustrate the limits of ideology critique. In examining the method of literary analysis that underlies his appropriation of postcolonial history and culture, we appeal to Edward Said's notion of "traveling theory" in order to discuss critically the aesthetic as well as political stakes of using the technology of the modern novel for the allegorical purposes that Latour has in mind. We argue that Latourian analysis fails to uphold its own rigorous aspirations when it reduces complex literary and cultural representation to universal allegory.

Reviewing The Author-Function In The Age Of Wikipedia, Amit Ray, Erhardt Graeff

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In "Reviewing the Author-Function in the Age of Wikipedia," Amit Ray and Erhardt Graeff examine how wiki technology challenges traditional concepts of authorship and authority in knowledge production. The authors build on poststructuralist theory, particularly Roland Barthes's "Death of the Author" and Michel Foucault's concept of the "author-function," to analyze how wikis destabilize individual authorship in favor of collaborative, community-driven content creation.

The essay argues that wikis represent a fundamental shift from the Romantic notion of the solitary author-genius to what they term the "wiki writing process"—a dynamic system where traditional roles of reader, writer, and editor blur into a …

Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court: Managing Constitutional Conflict In An Authoritarian, Aspirationally Islamic State, Clark B. Lombardi

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No abstract provided.

The Dangers Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Much Ado About Nothing?, Steve P. Calandrillo, Ewa A. Davison

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In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a landmark piece of legislation aimed at protecting copyright holders from those who might manufacture or traffic technology capable of allowing users to evade piracy protections on the underlying work. At its core, the DMCA flatly prohibits the circumvention of “technological protection measures” in order to gain access to copyrighted works, but provides no safety valve for any traditionally protected uses.

While hailed as a victory by the software and entertainment industries, the academic and scientific communities ties have been far less enthusiastic. The DMCA’s goal of combating piracy is …

Proposal For Using A Studio Format To Enhance Institutional Advancement, Shannon Chance

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Universities today need to become quicker on their toes. They must continually scan the environment and seize emerging opportunities – and institutional advancement must lead this effort. An unfortunate number of institutional advancement operations are ill equipped for the task at hand. Many suffer from high staff turnover and overly hierarchical systems that refl ect excessive fragmentation and compartmentalization. They inadvertently perpetuate stifl ing and unnecessary bureaucracy. Organizing advancement efforts around the metaphor of the design studio or creative workshop promises to (a) pool talent, (b) cultivate collaboration, and (c) align diverse but related interests in order to promote fruitful …

Searching For Chefs, Waiters And Restaurateurs In Edwardian Dublin: A Culinary Historian's Experience Of The 1911 Dublin Census Online, Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire

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No abstract provided.

Extending The Reach Of The State Into The Post-Sentence Period: Section 26 Of The Criminal Justice Act 2007, Mary Rogan

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The Criminal Justice Act 2007 heralded a plethora of changes to Irish criminal law and procedure. The law on sentencing was also affected by its provisions. The focus of this article is on section 26 of that Act which introduces a general power on a court to make an order while passing sentence which will take effect on the expiration of a sentence of imprisonment. Under section 26 a court can impose two such orders, the “monitoring” order and the “protection of persons” order. The author assesses the background to the introduction of these dispositions and the potential application and …

The Concept Of The General Will In The Writings Of Rousseau, Sièyes, And Robespierre, Stephen Carruthers

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This paper outlines the views on the General Will of Rousseau, as set out in The Social Contract, and compares them to the views developed by Sieyès in Qu'est-ce que le Tiers état? and by Robespierre, most notably in his speeches delivered during the ‘Reign of Terror’ from the establishment of the Committee of Public Safety on 6 April 1793 to his death on 28 July 1794

Digital Radio Policy In Canada: From Analog Replacement To Multimedia Convergence, Brian O'Neill

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Digital radio policy in Canada has moved from a position of seeking to migrate all radio broadcasting onto a single digital transmission system (Eureka-147) to a multi-platform, cross-media and multimedia approach. The most recent digital radio policy of 2006 suggests a range of new possibilities for radio broadcasting, including multimedia broadcasting, but as a result has compromised the early adoption of the Eureka-147 standard. This paper contrasts the different policy contexts of 1995 and 2006 and argues that the competing technological options for digital audio delivery now pose significant dilemmas for broadcasters and policy makers.

Control And The Protean Career: A Critical Perspective From The Multinational’S International Assignees, Marian Crowley-Henry, David Weir

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Mainstream management literature and research regarding the international career has long focused on the traditional expatriate experience. In this discourse the tendency has been to outline the benefits and issues to be considered for organizations and individuals embarking on international assignments. In contrast this chapter focuses on a special group whose positioning in the structures of employment and organization is in some ways exemplary of developing trends in the global labor force. They are the highly educated permanent expatriates who remain in the host country indefinitely (that is without a pre-determined organizational option of repatriation to their initial home country). …