Digital Commons Network^™

Medellin V. Dretke: Federalism And International Law, Curtis A. Bradley, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Martin Flaherty

Faculty Scholarship

This is an edited version of a debate held at Columbia Law School on February 21, 2005.

Colored Speech: Cross Burnings, Epistemics, And The Triumph Of The Crits?, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines the Court's recent decision in Virginia v. Black. It argues that Black signifies a different approach to the constitutionality of statutes regulating cross burnings. It shows how the Court's conservatives have essentially accepted the intellectual framework and the mode of analysis suggested previously by the critical race theorists. In particular, this Essay explores the role that Justice Thomas plays in the case. The Essay explains Justice Thomas's active participation as a matter of epistemic authority and epistemic deference.

Judging The Law Of Politics, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

In this Review Essay I explore the rights-structure debate that has captivated the attention of election law scholars. The Essay juxtaposes the recent work of a leading individualist Professor Richard Hasen's new book, "The Supreme Court and Election Law," against the recent work of a leading structuralist, Professor Richard Pildes' recent Foreword to the Harvard Law Review. I argue that even though the rights-structure debate produces much heat, it does not significantly advance the goal of understanding and evaluating the role of the Court in democratic politics. I aim to return election law to a dualistic understanding of the relationship …

A State Of Disarray The Knowing And Voluntary Standard For Releasing Claims Under Title Vii Of The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Under A Critical Race Theory Lens -- Brown V. Board Of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone And Its Troubled Legacy, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Faculty Scholarship

This critical book review argues that James T. Patterson’s narrative in, "Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy," is a mostly balanced historical reflection. Here, the term balanced will refer to giving consideration to both the negative and positive aspects of the phenomenon in question. To advance its thesis, the book review initially offers an overview of Patterson’s historical narrative and evaluation of the Brown legacy. Then the book review analyzes Patterson’s conclusions through a Critical Race Theory lens. Given the focus of Critical Race Theory on race and the law, especially on how …

Induced Autism The Legal And Ethical Implications Of Inoculating Vaccine Manufacturers From Liability, Helia Garrido Hull

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Practicing What We Teach: The Importance Of Emotion And Community Connection In Law Work And Law Teaching, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

Personal satisfaction and fine lawyering go hand in hand. Legal education and the legal system, however, do damage to that coupling. The author suggests that lawyers and law students can thwart personal dysfunction and professional dissatisfaction if we allow ourselves to express joy and sadness. To avoid being depleted by grief and rage, which cannot nourish satisfying law work over time, the article suggests that we attend to connections with others (all others). Lawyers who connect with their own communities may have more tools for crafting solutions for clients whose problems often implicate community. As teachers, the best way to …

Differentiating Types Of Domestic Violence: Implications For Child Custody, Nancy Ver Steegh

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines child custody determinations through the lens of a domestic violence typology. The resulting analysis (1) reconciles competing viewpoints and contradictory evidence about domestic violence; (2) matches families with appropriate child custody court procedures and services such as parent education, mediation, supervised visitation and parent coordination; and (3) exposes serious deficiencies in current domestic violence childcustody statutes.

A New Approach To Health Care Adr: Training Law Students To Be Problem Solvers In The Health Care Context, Linda H. Morton

Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on the use of actual public health problems to train law students in interdisciplinary problem solving. The author describes the planning, structure, challenges and rewards in teaching her clinical course, Problem Solving and Prevention in Healthcare, to students initially reluctant to work collaboratively in teams, intimidated by a broader community context, and hesitant to interact strategically with other professionals.

Globalizing Savigny: The State In Savigny’S Private International Law, And The Challenge Of Europeanization And Globalization, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

How can conflict of laws respond to the challenges from globalization? Some argue that state-based approaches like governmental interest analysis are inadequate, and advocate a return to the approach taken by the German scholar Savigny in the 19th century. The article shows that the assumption is correct: state-based approaches have indeed become problematic. However, a return to Savigny's approach will not help: While Savigny's approach is multilateral and pays little regard to governmental interest, closer analysis reveals how central the state is to his theory. The consequences are shown in an analysis of a recent European case. It follows that …

Lifting The Pall Of Orthodoxy: The Need For Hearing A Multitude Of Tongues In And Beyond The Sexual Education Curricula At Public High Schools, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Faculty Scholarship

When public high schools promote heterosexuality at the cost of denying sexual minority youth the opportunity to learn about minority sexualities, these schools contribute to the disastrous situation in which many sexual minority high school students find themselves. This approach, which many public high schools take, is unnecessarily destructive and warrants prompt change. Instead of helping to perpetuate many of the challenges that sexual minority students face in high school, public high schools can and need to help address these challenges. To establish the case for such a position, this article begins by presenting the plight of many sexual minority …

Private Language, Public Laws: The Central Role Of Legislative Intent In Statutory Interpretation, Lawrence Solan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Monstrous Impersonation: A Critique Of Consent-Based Justifications For Hard Paternalism, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Restricting a person's substantially voluntary, self-regarding conduct primarily for the sake of that person is hard paternalism. Particularly in the public health context, scholars, legislators, and judges are devoting increasing attention to discussing the conditions and circumstances under which hard paternalism is justified. One popular type of argument for the justifiability of hard paternalism takes its normative warrant from the consent of the restricted person.

In this Article, I argue that scholars and policymakers should abandon consent-based arguments for the justifiability of hard paternalism. Such arguments are torn between incoherence and lacking moral force. Very few consent-based arguments successfully resolve …

Is Public Health Paternalism Really Never Justified? A Response To Joel Feinberg, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

n the preeminent scholarly legal treatise on paternalism, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law: Harm to Self, Joel Feinberg argues that hard paternalism is never justified because it is superfluous; all reasonable restriction of self-regarding conduct can be justified on (more palatable) soft paternalistic grounds.

In this article, I argue that Feinberg's strategy seems to work only because he "stretches" soft paternalism to justify liberty limitation that is properly described as hard paternalism. I expose Feinberg's strained appeals, and argue for honesty and transparency regarding the bases for paternalistic liberty limitation. If the rationale for public health restrictions on …

Lawyers, Justice And The Challenge Of Moral Pluralism, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

The debate over whether it serves or undermines the interests of justice for lawyers to temper the zeal of their advocacy based on considerations of morality or justice has largely been polarized between two camps: traditionalists and moralists. Traditionalists defend the amoral role of lawyers, arguing that lawyers should remain moral neutral in their representation of clients. Moralists propose alternative social justice lawyering models, which urge lawyers' morally engagement in their choice of clients, their interpretation of law, and their counseling of clients.

This article revisits the debate by recasting the question at its center. Instead of inquiring what a …

Dependence, Identity, And Abortion Politics, Robin Effron

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Deference Or Bad Law? Why Massachusetts Courts Will Not Impose Municipal Liability For Failure To Enforce Restraining Orders, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

The authors take up the challenge that was thrown down by the Ford v. Town of Grafton court. The first part of this Article examines the somewhat tortured and fascinating history of the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act. It then describes the arguments Catherine Ford made, how the court responded, and why it responded as it did. In Part II, Massachusetts' strong commitment to protecting and assisting victims of domestic violence is examined. A variety of legislative, executive and judicial initiatives that demonstrate commitment are described, but the Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 209A, the restraining order statute, is emphasized. The article …

Look Before You Leap And Keep On Looking: Lessons From The Institutionalization Of Court-Connected Mediation, Bobbi Mcadoo, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

This article will use the institutionalization of general civil mediation into the courts as a case study, with both hopeful and cautionary lessons for policy makers. This article will (1) examine the goals created for court-connected ADR; (2) assess to what extent court-connected mediation has achieved these goals, from the perspective of judges, lawyers, and parties; and (3) and propose reforms of court-connected mediation to better ensure the achievement of justice.

The Trust And Distrust Of Intellectual Property Rights, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In the past, intellectual property issues were considered complex, obscure, and highly technical; they were only of interest and concern to intellectual property attorneys, legal scholars, technology developers, and rightsholders. Thanks to the Internet and new communications technologies, however, intellectual property has now begun to play a more significant role in society.

In December 2003, the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in Geneva. While the conference affirmed the importance of intellectual property rights and free access to information and knowledge, the resulting Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action fail to address …

The Choice Of Tilting System In Land, Benito Arrunada, Nuno Garoupa

Faculty Scholarship

This paper analyzes the choice of the socially optimal titling system assuming rational individual choices about recording, assurance, and registration decisions. It focuses on the enforcement of property rights to land under private titling and the two existing public titling systems, recording and registration. When the reduction in the expected costs of forfeiture balances the higher cost of initial registration, a registration system is more efficient than a recording system. Implications for title assurance, land improvements, and transactions are also considered.

Are Filipina/Os Asians Or Latina/Os?: Reclaiming The Anti-Subordination Objective Of Equal Protection After Grutter And Gratz, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

In this piece, I explore two avenues of political action - self-identification for affirmative action purposes and longer-term solutions to educational inequity - in an attempt to develop a coherent and effective post-Grutter and Gratz strategy for promoting equal educational opportunities consistent with the demands of equal protection. I use the experiences of Filipina/o-Americans as a vehicle for exploring these issues. I hope to show that diversity as the underlying goal of affirmative action fails to capture the core of modern equal protection jurisprudence implicit in Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia: that treating all …

Letting Billions Slip Through Your Fingers: Empirical Evidence And Legal Implications Of The Failure Of Financial Institutions To Participate In Securities Class Action Settlements, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

In a pilot study we published two years ago, we reported that nearly two-thirds of the institutional investors with financial losses in 53 settled securities class actions fail to submit claims. As a consequence of this failure substantial sums they were entitled to receive were given to others. This article presents the results of a much more extensive investigation of the frequency with which financial institutions submit claims in settled securities class actions. We combine an empirical study of a much larger set of settlements with the results of a survey of institutional investors about their claims filing practices. Consistent …

The Limits Of Fourth-Generation Warfare, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Temporal Perspectives: Resolving The Conflict Between Current And Future Investors, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the temporal conflict between current and future investors. Although disclosure can reduce the information asymmetry between a firm and investors in the firm's securities, disclosure itself involves probabilities and difficult judgment choices and often is ambiguous. If a risk is possible though unlikely, should management disclose it? If the risk should be disclosed, how prominently should it be disclosed? These questions highlight the temporal conflict: disclosure of a possible risk harms a firm's current investors, and the more prominent the disclosure, the greater their harm; but failure to disclose the risk, or to give sufficient prominence to …

Behavioral Economics And Health Policy: Understanding Medicaid’S Failure, Barak D. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

This Article employs a behavioral economic analysis to understand why Medicaid has failed to improve the health outcomes of its beneficiaries. It begins with a formal economic model of health care consumption and then systematically incorporates a survey of psychosocial variables to formulate explanations for persistent health disparities. This methodology suggests that consulting the literature in health psychology and intertemporal decision theory - empirical sources generally excluded from orthodox economic analysis - provides valuable material to explain certain findings in health econometrics. More significantly, the lessons from this behavioral economic approach generate useful policy considerations for Medicaid policymakers, who largely …

Foreign Law And The Denominator Problem, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Triage: Reflections On The Debate Over Unpublished Opinions, Mitu Gulati, David C. Vladeck

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Medical Malpractice And The Tort System In Illinois (Report To The Illinois State Bar Association, May 2005), Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

A report to the Illinois State Bar Association of a study examining the incidence, frequency, size of verdicts and other aspects of the medical malpractice system in Illinois. The study looked at statewide data where available, concentrating on Cook and DuPage counties, and Madison and St. Clair counties. The study concludes that the Illinois tort system does not appear to be the cause of the undisputed fact that doctors' liability insurance premiums showed dramatic rises.

A Prescription For Perilous Times (Reviewing Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech In War Time From The Sedition Act Of 1798 To The War On Terrorism (2004)), Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, I argue that Professor Stone has written an important work of constitutional history, not only because of what he has to say, but also because of the time in which he says it. The tragedy of September 11, 2001 generated reactions by every branch of the federal government, as well as by the general public and a host of public-regarding institutions in American society. Each of those reactions has implicated the balance between liberty and security that historically has been tested in this country during times of crisis. 'Perilous Times' lucidly conveys the nation's accumulated lessons of …

Precautionary Regulation In Europe And The United States: A Quantitative Comparison, Jonathan B. Wiener, James K. Hammitt, Brendon Swedlow, Denise Kall, Zheng Zhou

Faculty Scholarship

Much attention has been addressed to the question of whether Europe or the United States adopts a more precautionary stance to the regulation of potential environmental, health, and safety risks. Some commentators suggest that Europe is more risk-averse and precautionary, whereas the US is seen as more risk-taking and optimistic about the prospects for new technology. Others suggest that the US is more precautionary because its regulatory process is more legalistic and adversarial, while Europe is more lax and corporatist in its regulations. The flip-flop hypothesis claims that the US was more precautionary than Europe in the 1970s and early …