Digital Commons Network^™

In God's Image: The Religious Imperative Of Equality Under Law, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay argues that the principle of equality under law is best grounded in a holistic view of human dignity. Rejecting modem attempts to justify equality by reducing humanity to a particular actual characteristic, it articulates a religious imperative to treat people equally by drawing on biblical as well as modern philosophical sources. The principle "all men are created equal," as celebrated in the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address, draws on this holistic understanding of humanity. This admittedly romantic approach to equality generates a critique of contemporary Supreme Court doctrine, including the prevailing approaches to strict scrutiny, affirmative action, …

The Community Reinvestment Act: Questionable Premises And Perverse Incentives, Keith N. Hylton, Vincent D. Rougeau

Faculty Scholarship

Having just passed the twentieth anniversary of the enactment of the Community Reinvestment Act ^I ("CRA" or "Act"), this is an appropriate time to take stock of the effectiveness of the legislation and to consider whether it continues to be useful as a tool for addressing the problems of neighborhood decline and discrimination in the lending market. Although discrimination in lending and the decline of certain inner-city neighborhoods is a problem that the CRA has not been able to solve, most observers would agree that the situation has improved since the mid-1970s. ² In particular, there has been notable progress …

Globalizing Intellectual Property: Linkage And The Challenge Of A Justice-Constituency, Samuel K. Murumba

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Keeping Problem Tigers From Becoming A Problem Species, Philip J. Nyhus, R L. Tilson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Immutability Of Faith And The Necessity Of Action, Randy Lee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Single-Parent Latinas On The Margin: Seeking A Room With A View, Meals, And Built-In Community, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers the unique challenges of single parent Latinas and and a different way of viewing concerns of single parents. This alternative paradigm uses a holistic approach to the problems I had been pondering, acknowledging their interconnectedness, rather than artificially segmenting them into disjointed issues. I visualized a multi-pronged approach to Latina mothers' many concerns, based on a cohousing model, as modified for the needs of a low-income, racially distinct population of single-parent Latinas. It describes co-housing and proposes that this housing model be more broadly accessible through land use changes and greater acceptance of housing beyond single family …

Charting No Man's Land: Applying Jurisdictional And Choice Of Law Doctrine To Interstate Compacts, Dana Brakman Reiser

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Locating Culture, Identity, And Human Rights Symposium In Celebration Of The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights: Introduction, Catherine Powell

Faculty Scholarship

As we celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the idea of human rights endures. The human rights idea was honored at a conference organized by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, held at Fordham Law School on December 10-12, 1999, to commemorate the first fifty years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The four pieces that follow were presented at the conference as part of a panel addressing one of the central philosophical concerns regarding the human rights project: its universality. While the panel's title, "What is a Human …

Crime In Public Housing: Clarifying Research Issues, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Tamara Dumanovsky, J. Phillip Thompson, Garth Davies

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, crime and public housing have been closely linked in our political and popular cultures. Tragic episodes of violence have reinforced the notion that public housing is a milieu with rates of victimization and offending far greater than other locales. However, these recent developments belie the complex social and political evolution of public housing from its origins in the 1930s, through urban renewal, and into the present.

Stereotypes abound about public housing, its management, residents, and crime rates. In reality, variation is the norm, and it is these variations that affect crime. The study of crime in public …

A New Age Of Federalism, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Federalism has been in the news a lot over the past few years. The Republican-controlled Congress has enacted restrictions on the imposition of unfunded federal mandates on state governments and has passed significant welfare reform, one of the keys to which is greater state freedom in the implementation of welfare programs. The President, although often seen as resisting the more extreme Republican proposals for devolution, is himself something of an advocate for states’ rights. Clinton was a governor before he was President, and in that capacity he experienced a number of frustrations with federal red tape. Perhaps as a result, …

Bioactivity Of Marine Organisms: Relationships With Taxonomy, Geography And Depth., John K. Reed, Susan H. Sennett, Peter J. Mccarthy, Tara P. Pitts, Amy E. Wright, Shirley A. Pomponi

Faculty Scholarship

Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution (HBOI) has a worldwide collection of over 25,000 marine macro-invertebrates and algae representing diverse geographical, latitudinal, and depth (0-3000 ft) ranges. Samples are tested for biological activity in a panel of whole cell and enzyme/receptor assays, including antibacterial, antifungal, cytotoxicity, antitumor, and immunomodulatory assays. Of the taxa sampled, Porifera have the greatest incidence of activity within these screens and especially within the antimicrobial assays. Cnidaria, Chordata (Ascidiacea), Phaeophyta, and Chlorophyta also show strong antimicrobial activity. A comparison of bioactivity and depth of collection indicates that benthic organisms are active throughout the depth range of this study. …

Recommendations For An Environmentally Sound Federal Policy On Western Water, Reed D. Benson

Faculty Scholarship

The organizations and individuals who have produced this report have worked for years to promote environmentally sound federal policy and action with respect to water in the American West. The Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission's (the "Commission") evaluation of these issues presents an excellent opportunity to address long-standing concerns. We believe the Commission can help advance federal policy to promote sustainable use, management and protection of western waters. We begin with a brief look at current water problems in the West from our perspective. We then identify four general priorities for the federal government: taking steps toward restoring more …

Civil Liability For Pure Economic Loss Under American Tort Law, Herbert Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Voicing Differences (Comment), Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

Jane Aiken and Kimberly O'Leary undertake the difficult work of developing specific approaches and techniques for taking account of characteristics such as race/ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, and sexual identity in clinical pedagogy. Carolyn Grose uses outsider narratives and popular culture to challenge the "pre-understanding" of students, and to assist them to accept client stories as true and valid. Focusing on the professional value of striving to promote justice, fairness, and morality identified in the MacCrate Report, Professor Aiken exhorts us to promote justice by unmasking privilege, the invisible package of unearned assets--about which I (we? or you?) was "meant" to remain …

Territoriality, Risk Perception, And Counterproductive Legal Structures: The Case Of Waste Facility Siting, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The siting of hazardous and nuclear waste facilities has proven to be a task of enormous difficulty in our federal system. In this Article, the Author argues that one of the major causal factors for this difficulty is that the legal regime surrounding waste facility siting decisions is not structured in a manner sensitive to the human factors involved. The siting of a hazardous waste facility is likely to generate a negative community response where the imposition of externally made decisions and externally generated wastes fails to take into account the innate human trait of territoriality. Territoriality is a powerful …

Protecting Software And Information On The Internet, Ronald Cass, Steve Bauer, Pamela Samuelson, Maureen A. O'Rourke, Omar Khudari, George S. Takach

Faculty Scholarship

Welcome. My name is Ron Cass. I am Dean of the Law School here at Boston University. This is part of an ongoing series of symposia on the Internet and Internet law. The program has been put together by Michael Baram, of our Center for Law and Technology, and Steve Bauer, of the law firm Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault, which has contributed generously to the series and made it possible to line up a number of speakers. I am going to turn over the program now, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank both Mr. Baram and Mr. …

Privatizing Same-Sex "Marriage" Through Alternative Dispute Resolution: Community-Enhancing Versus Community-Enabling Mediation, Clark Freshman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Three Patterns Of Law: Taxonomy And Change In The World's Legal Systems, Ugo Mattei

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Weightier Than A Mountain": Duty, Hierarchy, And The Consumer In Japan, Anita Bernstein, Paul Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Governing Networks And Rule-Making In Cyberspace, Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

The global network environment defies traditional regulatory theories and policymaking practices. At present, policymakers and private sector organizations are searching for appropriate regulatory strategies to encourage and channel the global information infrastructure (“GII”). Most attempts to define new rules for the development of the GII rely on disintegrating concepts of territory and sector, while ignoring the new network and technological borders that transcend national boundaries. The GII creates new models and sources for rules. Policy leadership requires a fresh approach to the governance of global networks. Instead of foundering on old concepts, the GII requires a new paradigm for governance …

The Local Government Boundary Problem In Metropolitan Areas, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Local government boundaries play an important role in the governance of metropolitan areas by defining local electorates and tax bases and the scope of local regulatory powers and service responsibilities. Yet, the close association of local powers with local boundaries generates spillovers, fiscal disparities, and interlocal conflicts. Real local autonomy is constrained but the local government system fails to provide a means for addressing regional problems. Public choice theorists and political decentralizationists oppose regional governments because of the threat to local autonomy that would result from removing powers from local hands. Richard Briffault's solution to the metropolitan governance problem is …

The Limits Of Borders: A Moderate Proposal For Immigration Reform, Frank H. Wu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Race And Representation After Miller V. Johnson, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the Supreme Court's two approaches to race and representation: the constrained proportionality of the vote-dilution cases and the strict scrutiny of racially motivated districting. Part I traces the development of these two doctrines, examines their conceptual underpinnings, and considers some of the questions the Court will have to answer as it elaborates its new approach to the use of race in the design of electoral systems.

Part II explores the tension between the Court's two approaches. The concern with racial motivation proceeds from an underlying normative assumption about the place of race in politics that is profoundly …

History 'Lite' In Modern American Constitutionalism, Martin S. Flaherty

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Girls And The Getaway: Cars, Culture, And The Predicament Of Gendered Space, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

What does law tell us about our relations to material things? Property theorists maintain that there are no legal relations between persons and things. Things can be owned, transferred, bequeathed, assigned, repossessed, and so on, but such arrangements really describe relationships among different persons with regard to the object rather than relationships between persons and things.

Yet the quality or shape of the legal relations among persons often depends on the cultural meaning of the thing in question, a meaning (or meanings) that exists, in some form anyway, prior to or independent of, legal concepts traditionally attached to things such …

Law, Culture, And Harassment, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Exile On Main Street: Inmate Transfers From Puerto Rico To The Continental United States Violate Due Process, Justin P. Brooks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reel Time/Real Justice, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

Like the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings a few months before, the Rodney King beating, the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers who "restrained" him and the subsequent civil unrest in Los Angeles flashed Race across the national consciousness and the gaze of American culture momentarily froze there. Pieces of everyday racial dynamics briefly seemed clear, then faded from view, replaced by presidential politics and natural disasters.

This Essay examines in more depth what was exposed during the momentary national focus on Rodney King. Two main events – the acquittal of the police officers who beat King and the civil …

Who Rules At Home: One Person/One Vote And Local Governments, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Twenty-five years ago, in Avery v Midland County, the United States Supreme Court extended the one person/one vote requirement to local governments. Avery and subsequent decisions applying federal constitutional standards to local elections suggested a change in the legal status of local governments and appeared to signal a shift in the balance of federalism. Traditionally, local governments have been conceptualized as instrumentalities of the states. Questions of local government organization and structure were reserved to the plenary discretion of the states with little federal constitutional oversight. In contrast, Avery assumed that local governments are locally representative bodies, not simply …

Bank Holding Company Act: Has It Lived Its Life, The , Carl Felsenfeld

Faculty Scholarship

The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 (BHCA) "regulates the acquisition of state and national banks by bank holding companies." The BHCA also regulates the nonbanking activities of bank holding companies and their nonbank subsidiaries. The BHCA was enacted and remains on the books for two fundamental reasons: 1) to prevent undue concentration in banking; and 2) to avoid the mixing of banking with other businesses unrelated to banking (generally called "commerce"). Both of these purposes have been or are being discredited, and it is time to ask whether the BHCA should be repealed. On several levels, banking is combined …