Digital Commons Network^™

Ronald V. Dellums V. George Bush (D.D.C. 1990): Memorandum Amicus Curiae Of Law Professors, Bruce A. Ackerman, Abram Chayes, Lori Fisler Damrosch, John Hart Ely, Erwin N. Griswold, Gerald Gunther, Louis Henkin, Harold Hongju Koh, Philip B. Kurland, Laurence H. Tribe, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

This joint memorandum is submitted to the court hearing Dellums v. Bush. This amicus brief advocates that the President may not order American armed forces to make war without consultation with and approval by Congress. The brief also argues that the case is justiciable.

Constitutional Control Of Military Actions: A Comparative Dimension, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this essay is to examine some aspects of the legal framework for military activity in the internal law of some of the world's most powerful states. The international community has a major stake in the constitutional evolution of member states as regards the authority to decide to go to war. That stake – or those interests, since they are plural (and hold some possibility for contradiction) – can be identified as follows:

(1) to strengthen trends toward constitutionalism generally, by which I mean the concept of governance based on law;
(2) to strengthen trends toward civilian control …

Corporate Successors Under Strict Liability: A General Economic Theory And The Case Of Cercla, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

P undertakes an activity subject to strict liability that creates a risk of harm to others. The activity harms V. Before the harm becomes apparent, however, P sells its assets to S for cash and dissolves. Should V be entitled to compensation from S in P's stead? If the talk of corporate lawyers is to be believed, concern over this seemingly technical question is having a substantial impact on the salability of billions of dollars of productive assets.

With the growth of products liability litigation, state courts have given the issue of successor liability increasing attention over the last decade. …

Toward The Feminization Of Collective Bargaining Law, Gillian L. Lester

Faculty Scholarship

Canadian collective bargaining law is flawed because it fails to address the concerns of a substantial segment of the work force and overlooks women as a rich source of insight into the dynamics of the bargaining environment. The author begins by exploring the problems inherent in the classical contractualist model, arguing that current collective bargaining law reflects these weaknesses and echoes a morality and ideology which are stereotypically masculine. By analyzing the legal and practical structures of collective bargaining, the author illustrates the ways in which the "morality of the workplace" is manifested differently between men and women. The author …

Privatization In Eastern Europe: Impractical, But Not Impossible, Andrzej Rapaczynski

Faculty Scholarship

The most important thing that must be understood by anyone thinking about Eastern European privatization is that the word "privatization," although correct, is somewhat misleading. It is misleading because it brings to mind the operations performed in many other countries where state-owned companies have been sold to private individuals. It is very important to understand that the significance of privatization and the practicality of privatization in Eastern Europe are quite different. The most important thing is that the main task of privatization is not to transfer ownership from one party to another-like that successfully done in England-but rather to create …

Legal Process And Judges In The Real World, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

It is gratifying, reading through a paper and noting here and there points that you might like to make, to find that by the end the author has anticipated them and made them well. This paper sneaks up on you. If at the outset it seems to be accepting that Justice Scalia has a jurisprudence of statutory interpretation that coheres and restrains, by the end it has shown the self-contradictions and decidedly political and institutional stakes in the textualist position the Justice appears to have been carving out for himself.

I am not going to address Professor Zeppos's account of …

Parental Leaves And Poor Women: Paying The Price For Time Off, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents a critique of unpaid "parental" leaves and the parental leave legislation recently passed by Congress.1 Eight states have already enacted parental leave statutes of various kinds.' For the sake of simplicity and uniformity, however, this Article focuses on the proposed federal legislation3 and its anticipated effects on unemployed and underemployed women.4 Specifically, this Article argues that the debate about parental leave 5 has ignored the possibility that the cost of this mandated benefit is likely to be borne by poor, low-skill working women6 who will find that their job opportunities narrow as employers try to shift some …

Interest Group Politics And Judicial Behavior: Macey's Public Choice, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The economic theory of government has lately gained the acceptance in legal circles that it has long enjoyed in political science and economics. The economic theory, also known as "public choice," analyzes and explains government action and private political activity according to the basic assumption of economics, that individuals respond to economic incentives in their environments in a self-interested manner. The economic theory is thus useful descriptively, to explain diverse political phenomena, and prescriptively, to help formulate reform strategy.

The Economic Theory Of Politics And Legal Interpretation In The United States, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Great Writ In Action: Empirical Light On The Federal Habeas Corpus Debate, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

The national debate regarding federal habeas corpus for state prisoners is fueled in the main by ideology. To some, the authority of the federal courts to entertain constitutional challenges to state criminal convictions is the embodiment of all that was right about the Warren Court and the vision that Court offered of a meaningful system of American liberty, underwritten by independent federal tribunals willing and able to check the coercive power of government. By this account, the Bill of Rights is the protean source of safeguards for individual freedom - commanding generous, imaginative, and insightful elaboration by federal courts at …

When Fungible Portfolio Assets Meet: A Problem Of Tax Recognition, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

A pervasive principle in calculating income for Federal tax purposes defers consideration of gain or loss in an investment asset until a recognition event occurs. An investor can watch the value of an investment in common stock rise over a considerable period of time without incurring any tax liability. Similarly, if the value declines, the investor does not take the loss into account. When the investor terminates the investment, the tax computation takes the net accumulated gain or loss into account at that time.

Discussion and controversy concerning this deferral principle, referred to as the realization or recognition requirement,^{1 …}

Mengele's Birthmark: The Nuremberg Code In United States Courts, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Experimentation on human beings is so difficult to justify that the attempt is seldom even made. Usually its justification is simply assumed, and vague notions of progress or national emergency are suggested as sufficient rationales. The United States, a society dedicated to both progress and human rights, has been profoundly ambivalent about human experimentation. On the one hand, we have consistently argued in our ethical codes that the rights and welfare of research subjects must be protected; on the other hand, we have consistently used perceived emergencies, both national and medical, as an excuse to jettison individual rights and welfare …

Fetal Protection And Employment Discrimination - The Johnson Controls Case, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Employers have historically limited women's access to traditionally male, high-paying jobs. In one famous case early in this century, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Oregon law that forbade hiring women for jobs that required more than 10 hours of work a day in factories. The Chief Justice explained that this restriction was reasonable because "healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring" and preserving the physical well-being of women helps "preserve the strength and vigor of the race." This rationale was never particularly persuasive, and women's hours have not been limited in traditionally female, low-paid fields of employment, such as …

Restricting Doctor–Patient Conversations In Federally Funded Clinics, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

We have come to accept, as a matter of both law and medical ethics, that open and honest discussion is crucial to the doctor–patient relationship. We accordingly deplore the practice in Plato's Greece whereby, for slaves, "verbal communication between healer and patient was reduced to a minimum." But restricting conversation between doctor and patient has now become a matter of government policy, again distinguishing patients according to economic class.

Anonymous Bank Accounts: Narco-Dollars, Fiscal Fraud, And Lawyers, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

This Article will focus on how lawyers in countries with a tradition of bank secrecy have played a part in maintaining their clients’ anonymity vis-a-vis bankers. For comparative purposes ` the Article will also comment on the banker’s interest in knowing his or her customer’s identity in a tax context, particularly when the customer claims the benefits of income tax treaties. My modest purpose is to help us all to be more aware of the divergent ethical implications of bank account anonymity

Economic Rents And Essential Facilities, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents an economic analysis of the essential facility doctrine of antitrust. According to this doctrine, a firm or group of firms that possesses exclusive access to a cost-reducing facility must be prepared to share such access on fair terms with competitors.

Litigation Costs And The Economic Theory Of Tort Law, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

The economic theory of tort law has developed along two lines. The first and more traditional is positive theory, which justifies tort doctrine. The second is normative theory, which usually criticizes the operational efficiency of the tort system, and is the focus of this Article. This Article argues that once the dynamics of litigation are properly taken into account, all bets are off on the economic efficiency of tort law. The simple fact that litigation is a costly enterprise provides a rich source of inefficiencies with which the tort system must grapple.

The Long Dying Of Nancy Cruzan, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

With the Nancy Cruzan decision, ¹ the post-Reagan Supreme Court continued recreating America's legal landscape by transferring traditional rights from its citizens to state legislatures and state officials. Attorneys Bopp and Marzen see Cruzan as a cause for celebration. ² The more common view is that it is a hollow acceptance of the technological imperative that requires all Americans to engage in extensive damage control. Given the composition of the Court, constituted by President Ronald Reagan to overrule Roe v. Wade, Bopp and Marzen correctly note that the result in Cruzan was "practically inevitable." But its inevitability does not …

Gestational Surrogacy And The Health Care Provider: Put Part Of The "Ivf Genie" Back Into The Bottle, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Minority Business Development Strategies, Robert E. Suggs

Faculty Scholarship

Minority business set-asides were created as a prophylactic measure to redress discrimination against minority owned business firms. Predominantly minority jurisdictions found them especially attractive because they promised to provide minority firms a share of the procurement dollars expended by these jurisdictions. The Croson decision invalidated Richmond’s ordinance and posed substantial barriers to further enactments. This article proposes an alternative to such set-aides. It argues that the proposed alternative, an Equal Opportunity Rating Agency (EORA), provides a superior business development policy tool and does not have the constitutional vulnerabilities of set-asides. An EORA would operate much like a credit rating agency, …

Rent Appropriation And The Labor Law Doctrine Of Successorship, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

When there is a change of corporate control in a business enterprise a question arises as to whether the new employer should be bound by the predecessor's collective bargaining relationship with the union representing the predecessor's employees. This is known as the successorship problem in labor law.' Successorship doctrine is complex and controversial. Several commentators have attempted to reconcile Supreme Court decisions and to ascertain the assumptions underlying the Court's opinions in this area.2 This Article does not attempt to do this, although paradoxically, the arguments presented may lead to reconciliation of many of the Supreme Court's decisions relating to …

Administrative Failure And Local Democracy: The Politics Of Deshaney, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay is an effort to construct a normative basis for a constitutional theory to resist the Supreme Court's recent decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services.¹ In DeShaney, the Court decided that a local social service worker's failure to prevent child abuse did not violate the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment even though the social worker "had reason to believe" the abuse was occurring. ² Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion for the Court held that government inaction cannot violate due process unless the state has custody of the victim, ³ thus settling a controversial …

Rethinking "Original Intent", David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

Although Dred Scott v. Sandford is one of the Supreme Court's most controversial decisions, it is not often taught or read. But its approach to constitutional interpretation is by no means outdated, and its historical importance has not diminished. So it seems a good example to consider.

Karl Krastin, Ronald B. Brown

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review - Reviewing John Eidsmoe, Christianity And The Constitution: The Faith Of Our Founding Fathers (1987), Stephen R. Alton

Faculty Scholarship

Book Review Extract:

Judging by its title, John Eidsmoe's Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers, appears to promise an historical look at the religious beliefs and backgrounds of America's founders. It does that - and more-with mixed results. To be sure, there is some good in this book: to the extent that it sticks to its nominal purpose and attempts to document the religious beliefs of some of this nation's founding fathers, Eidsmoe's work is useful.

Unfortunately, both the author's scholarship and his motives in writing this book are questionable. His scholarship suffers from his tendency …

Stellar Populations In Shell Galaxies, Stacy S. Mcgaugh

Faculty Scholarship

UBV surface photometry of the shell galaxies Arp 230, NGC 7010, and Arp 223 is presented. We find all to be the result of mergers. In Arp 230, the merger of two spirals reduced a burst of star formation which has declined in strength since the collision. The remnant seems likely to become elliptical. NGC 7010 has very red shells, perhaps redder than the galaxy itself. Evolution of the stellar content of these shells may be important. Arp 223 has shell colors which are slightly bluer than thee main body of the galaxy, consistent with an origin in an Sb. …

Book Review - Reviewing S. Prakash Sinha, What Is Law? (1989), Stephen R. Alton

Faculty Scholarship

Book Review Extract:

The title of S.P. Sinha's book, What Is Law?, is somewhat deceptive, for the author ambitiously tries to do more than merely define the concept of law in well under 300 pages. After the introductory historical and philosophical overview of his initial chapter, Sinha uses the balance of his book to summarize the major theories of law, including how law arises, how it is applied, and why it is important in society. The work is less of an original attempt by its writer to answer the question posed by the title than it is an effort to …

The Use Of Risk Assessment Evidence To Prove Increased Risk And Alternative Causation In Toxic Tort Litigation, Gary E. Marchant, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Due to the difficulties of proving causation in most toxic tort suits, plaintiffs and defendants in toxic tort litigation have begun to develop and use scientifically sophisticated risk assessments as evidence in proving or disproving causation. This use has led to two new trends in tort liability. First, there is the trend in which risk assessment is used by plaintiffs to buttress claims for future injury or increased risk. Second, there is the trend in which risk assessment is used by defendants to establish that other factors caused, in whole or in part, plaintiffs’ injuries.

This article evaluates these two …

Professional Decisions And Ethical Values In Medical And Law Students, Robert L. Schwartz, Agnes G. Rezler, Pamela Lambert, S. Scott Obenshain, Joan Mciver Gibson, David A. Bennahum

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this project is to evaluate and compare the values used by medical and law students when dealing with ethical dilemmas in the professional practice of law and medicine. It is assumed that conflict between doctors and lawyers often arises out of the different values that members of each profession apply to similar dilemmas.

Public Remedies For Private Wrongs: Rethinking The Title Vii Back Pay Remedy, Minna J. Kotkin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.