Law Commons^™

A Swing State Voter’S Epiphany, Erin Ryan

Erin Ryan

This op-ed forecasts redemption for the fractured American electorate based on deep election-day kindnesses in politically divided southeastern Virginia.

Reporting On Palin: Negotiations In Political Theater, Erin Ryan

Erin Ryan

Designing Transparency: The 9/11 Commission And Institutional Form, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

Surpassing the low expectations established by previous investigatory commissions and overcoming the political and legal obstacles created by the Bush administration's opposition to its creation, the 9/11 Commission accomplished what appeared to be the impossible: an authoritative investigation, a widely-read final report, and direct influence on significant legislation. This Article argues that the 9/11 Commission represents an important institutional model for encouraging or forcing the Executive Branch to disclose information about an especially significant and controversial past event or future decision. It suggests that Congress or the President consider establishing such commissions when information held by the Executive Branch can …

The Immigration Paradox: Alien Workers And Distributive Justice, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

The immigration of relatively unskilled workers poses a fundamental problem for liberals. While from the perspective of the economic welfare of natives, the optimal policy would be to admit these aliens as guest workers, this policy would violate liberal ideals. These ideals would treat these workers as equals, entitled to access to citizenship and to the full set of public benefits provided to citizens. If the welfare of incumbent residents determines admissions policies, however, and we anticipate the fiscal burden that the immigration of the poor would impose, then our welfare criterion would preclude the admission of relatively unskilled workers …

Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing.

To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …

Presidential Debates And Deliberative Democracy, Charles W. Collier

UF Law Faculty Publications

Consider democracy in America through the lens of the presidential debates. It is not a pretty picture. From a high point in the nineteenth century (for example, the lengthy Lincoln-Douglas Senate campaign debates of 1858) a declining trajectory can be traced to the present day, with a marked acceleration in the Age of Television. To our polity's discredit, the presidential debate has long since ceased to be a dialogue that might shed light on the candidates' true powers of deliberation. The key to reversing this long decline, I believe, lies in an unlikely place: in the structural features of the …

Agenda: Shifting Baselines And New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, And The Transformation Of The American West, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

The Center’s 29th annual conference will focus on the changes in the West resulting from rapid population growth, development, disrupted historical weather patterns and the effects of those changes on land, water, and energy resources. Speakers and panelists will address the adaptability of the legal and political institutions and how the transformation of the West may foreshadow fundamental changes to these institutions.

The agenda includes panel discussions that will address:

• Water for the 21^st Century —the big questions in Western water and rethinking Western water law.
• The Future of Energy —practical and sophisticated solutions to overcome the energy …

Sport And Politics, Christine Bell

Human Rights & Human Welfare

I found the reflection interesting, but unsurprising. Protestors use the Olympic spotlight (or should we say torch?) to shine on China’s flaws, and China tries to re-direct or extinguish its beams.

Dear President Bush: Leaving A Legacy On The Federal Bench, Carl Tobias

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is The Ban On Participation In Political Campaigns By Charities Essential To Their Vitality And Democracy? A Reply To Professor Tobin, Johnny Rex Buckles

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Impact Of The Marriage Amendments: Can Public Employers Offer Domestic Partner Benefits To Their Gay And Lesbian Employees?, Tiffany C. Graham

Working Paper Series

The article focuses on an issue that is shaping up to be the new front in the same-sex marriage wars: whether applying the terms of the more broadly-constructed amendments to public employers will bar them from offering domestic partner benefits to their gay and lesbian employees. The first part of the article offers an overview of domestic partner benefits plans and discusses the manner in which they are currently being threatened by the more broadly-constructed marriage amendments. The second part takes a close look at the litigation in National Pride at Work v. Michigan. This case represents the first time …

A Primary Human Challenge, Carroy U. Ferguson

Carroy U "Cuf" Ferguson, Ph.D.

We may ask why, at both the individual and collective levels, it has seemed so difficult for us to choose to evolve our human games with Joy. There is no one answer for such a question, for each of us has the gift of free will. I will suggest, however, that built into our human games is what I call a primary human challenge. That primary human challenge is a dynamic tension, flowing from our creative urge for the freedom “to be” who we really are in our current physical form, and simultaneously to embrace our responsibility for our Being-ness.

Unconscious Bias And The 2008 Presidential Election, Gregory S. Parks, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The 2008 presidential campaign and election will be historic. It marks the first time a Black person (Barack Obama) and a woman (Hillary Clinton) have a real chance at winning the Presidency. Their viability as candidates symbolizes significant progress in overcoming racial and gender stereotypes in America. But closer analysis of the campaigns reveals that race and gender have placed enormous constraints on how these two Senators can run their candidacy. This is not surprising in light of the history of race and gender in voting and politics in America. But what is perhaps more surprising is how the campaigns …

Close To Crucial: The H-2b Visa Program Must Evolve, But Must Endure, Lindsay M. Pickral

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Bias Is Bipartisan: Teaching About The Democratic Process In An Intellectual Property Law Republic, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Introduction]: Intellectual property law courses offer law professors the opportunity to teach a subject area rich with complicated statutory and court-made doctrines about which students do not usually have strong or extensively delineated moral views. I It also gives everyone in the classroom a refreshing break from the traditional partisanship of political party politics. Identification as a Democrat or Republican does not provide too much guidance or create too many expectations about a person's views of intellectual property issues, freeing classroom debates from the constrictions that political loyalties impose in so many other contexts.

Friction By Design: The Necessary Contest Of State Judicial Power And Legislative Policymaking, Michael L. Buenger

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

YOUR BLUES AIN’T LIKE MINE is an excellently written, fictionalized account of the lives of several people set in the fifties as a rural Mississippi community reacts to impending school racial desegregation and the killing of a fifteen year old black boy who had the misfortune of speaking French in the direction of a white woman. I’ve used this book to facilitate discussion on issues of race, gender, the law, class, and politics in several of my law school classes such as Race and the Law, Gender and the Law, and Civil Rights.

Structure And Integrity, Susan Carle

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In this Review Essay of David Luban's Legal Ethics and Human Dignity, I argue that although Professor Luban has not had much to say until now about "structural" concerns - namely, how lawyers' locations within institutions that organize access to power shape or should shape those lawyers' conduct - in his most recent work, another approach slips in as a supplement to his individualist framework. In this emerging supplement, structural concerns become increasingly important. Although individual integrity continues to matter most in Professor Luban's world view, it increasingly matters in the context of structural relations in which lawyers' ethical duties …

Only Skin Deep: The Cost Of Partisan Politics On Minority Diversity Of The Federal Bench: Why Care Whether Judges Look “Like America” If, Because Of Politics, A “Voice Of Color” Has Become A “Whisper Of Color”?, Sylvia R. Lazos

Scholarly Works

This article explores the difficulties encountered in diversifying the federal bench and why the partisanship of the confirmation process decreases the diversity of viewpoints on the bench. Presidents value diversity in nominating judges. While Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had very contrasting political styles and judicial philosophies, the judges appointed by these two presidents now account for almost 80% of the current active federal minority judges. There has been progress in the area of descriptive diversity; currently 18% of the active federal bench is made up of minority judges according to data compiled from the Judicial Center. However, there …

Shareholder Primacy's Corporatist Origins: Adolf Berle And The Modern Corporation, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Temporary Accidents?, Elizabeth Magill

All Faculty Scholarship

Review of Steven P. Croley, Regulation and Public Interests: The Possibility of Good Regulatory Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).