Law Commons^™

To Democratize Algorithms, Ngozi Okidegbe

Faculty Scholarship

Jurisdictions increasingly employ algorithms in public sector decisionmaking. Facing public outcry about the use of such technologies, jurisdictions have begun to increase democratic participation in the processes by which algorithms are procured, constructed, implemented, used, and overseen. But what problem is the current approach to democratization meant to solve? Policymakers have tended to view the problem as the absence of public deliberation: agencies and courts often use algorithms without public knowledge or input. To redress this problem, jurisdictions have turned to deliberative approaches designed to foster transparency and public debate.

This Article contends that the current approach to democratization is …

25th Annual Open Government Summit: Your Guide To The Access To Public Records Act & Open Meetings Act, Peter F. Neronha, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Jazz Improvisation And The Law: Constrained Choice, Sequence, And Strategic Movement Within Rules, William W. Buzbee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article argues that a richer understanding of the nature of law is possible through comparative, analogical examination of legal work and the art of jazz improvisation. This exploration illuminates a middle ground between rule of law aspirations emphasizing stability and determinate meanings and contrasting claims that the untenable alternative is pervasive discretionary or politicized law. In both the law and jazz improvisation settings, the work involves constraining rules, others’ unpredictable actions, and strategic choosing with attention to where a collective creation is going. One expects change and creativity in improvisation, but the many analogous characteristics of law illuminate why …

A Hague Parallel Proceedings Convention: Architecture And Features, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

In Paul Herrup and Ronald A. Brand, A Hague Convention on Parallel Proceedings, 63 Harvard International Law Journal Online 1(2022), available at https://harvardilj.org/2022/02/a-hague-convention-on-parallel-proceedings/ and https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3894502, we argued that the Hague Conference on Private International Law should not undertake a project to require or prohibit exercise of original jurisdiction in national courts. Rather, the goal of current efforts should be to improve the concentration of parallel litigation in a “better forum,” in order to achieve efficient and complete resolution of disputes in transnational litigation. The Hague Conference is now taking this path. As the Experts Group and Working Group …

The 24th Annual Open Government Summit: Your Guide To The Access To Public Records Act & Open Meetings Act, Peter F. Neronha, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Professor Gonzalez Is 2020 Rhode Island Lawyer Of The Year 01/11/21, Barry Bridges, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (October 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Fall 2020 Reopening: The Faq 07-09-2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Comparative Method And International Litigation 2020, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

In this article, resulting from a presentation at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law, I apply comparative method to international litigation. I do so from the perspective of a U.S.-trained lawyer who has been involved for over 25 years in the negotiations that produced both the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters. The law of jurisdiction and judgments recognition is probably most often taught in a litigation context. Nonetheless, that law has as much or more …

Law Symposium: Adjudicating Sexual Misconduct On Campus: Title Ix And Due Process In Uncertain Times, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Snapback, Version 2.0: The Best Solution To The Problem Of Snap Removal, Arthur D. Hellman

Testimony

The forum defendant rule, embodied in 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)(2), prohibits removal of civil actions based on diversity of citizenship jurisdiction “if any of the parties in interest properly joined and served as defendants is a citizen of the State in which such action is brought.” Pointing to the phrase “properly joined and served,” defendants have argued that § 1441(b)(2) does not bar removal of a diversity action if a citizen of the forum state has been joined as a defendant but has not yet been served. The stratagem of removing before service to avoid the prohibition of § 1441(b)(2) …

Snapback! A Narrowly Tailored Legislative Solution To The Problem Of Snap Removal, Arthur D. Hellman

Testimony

“Snap removal” is a stratagem used by defendants in civil litigation as an end run around the forum defendant rule. That rule, embodied in 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)(2), prohibits removal of civil actions based on diversity of citizenship jurisdiction “if any of the parties in interest properly joined and served as defendants is a citizen of the State in which such action is brought.” Focusing on the phrase “properly joined and served,” defendants have argued that § 1441(b)(2) allows removal of a diversity action when a citizen of the forum state has been joined as a defendant but has not …

Ancient Worries And Modern Fears: Different Roots And Common Effects Of U.S. And Eu Privacy Regulation, David Thaw, Pierluigi Perri

Articles

Much legal and technical scholarship discusses the differing views of the United States and European Union toward privacy concepts and regulation. A substantial amount of effort in recent years, in both research and policy, focuses on attempting to reconcile these viewpoints searching for a common framework with a common level of protection for citizens from both sides of Atlantic. Reconciliation, we argue, misunderstands the nature of the challenge facing effective cross-border data flows. No such reconciliation can occur without abdication of some sovereign authority of nations, that would require the adoption of an international agreement with typical tools of international …

Backlash Against International Courts In West, East And Southern Africa: Causes And Consequences, Karen J. Alter, James T. Gathii, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This paper discusses three credible attempts by African governments to restrict the jurisdiction of three similarly-situated sub-regional courts in response to politically controversial rulings. In West Africa, when the ECOWAS Court upheld allegations of torture by opposition journalists in the Gambia, that country’s political leaders sought to restrict the Court’s power to review human rights complaints. The other member states ultimately defeated the Gambia’s proposal. In East Africa, Kenya failed in its efforts to eliminate the EACJ and to remove some of its judges after a decision challenging an election to a sub-regional legislature. However, the member states agreed to …

From Orphans To Families In Crisis: Parental Rights Matters In Maine Probate Courts, Deirdre M. Smith

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the sources of the contemporary problems associated with the adjudication of parental rights matters in Maine’s probate courts and identifies specific reforms to address both the structural and substantive law problems. The Article first reviews the development of Maine’s probate courts and their jurisdiction over parental rights matters. It traces the expansion of jurisdiction over children and families from a limited role incidental to the administration of a decedent’s estate to the current scope: a range of matters that may result in the limitation, suspension, or termination of the rights of living parents. Maine probate courts now …

Challenges To Forum Non Conveniens, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This paper was originally prepared for a Panel on Regulating Forum Shopping: Courts’ Use of Forum Non Conveniens in Transnational Litigation at the 18th Annual Herbert Rubin and Justice Rose Luttan Rubin International Law Symposium: Tug of War: The Tension Between Regulation and International Cooperation, held at New York University School of Law, October 25, 2012. The doctrines of forum non conveniens and lis alibi pendens have marked a significant difference in approach to parallel litigation in the common law and civil law worlds, respectively. The forum non conveniens doctrine has recently taken a beating. This has come (1) in …

Mass Torts And Universal Jurisdiction, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

The technologies of the present era mean that injuries have become more massive in dimension. Mass torts affect greater numbers of people and larger geographical areas. Consequently, they can cross borders, affecting the populations of multiple countries. One of the two mechanisms in tort law for remedying mass catastrophes. restricted to cases involving jus cogens violations (namely, violations of human rights so grave as to be against international customary law, or the "law of nations"), is universal jurisdiction pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).

Despite the distinctive official restriction of universal jurisdiction to the criminal law domain in civilian …

Party Autonomy And Access To Justice In The Uncitral Online Dispute Resolution Project, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has directed its Working Group III to prepare instruments that would provide the framework for a global system of online dispute resolution (ODR). Negotiations began in December 2010 and have produced an as-yet-incomplete set of procedural rules for ODR. It is anticipated that three other documents will be prepared, addressing substantive principles to be applied in ODR, guidelines and minimum requirements for ODR providers and neutrals, and a cross-border mechanism for enforcement of the resulting ODR decisions on a global basis.

The most difficult issues in the ODR negotiations are centered …

The Constitution And The American Federal System, Robert A. Sedler

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Another Voice For The 'Dialogue': Federal Courts As A Litigation Course, Arthur D. Hellman

Articles

The traditional course in "Federal Courts" - built on the model established by the great Hart and Wechsler casebook - focuses on issues of federalism, separation of powers, and institutional competence. That focus provides a powerful intellectual model for organizing the materials that make up the field of study, and it is hard to imagine anyone teaching a Federal Courts course today without drawing heavily on that model. But the traditional model is deficient in one important respect. Most of the students who take a Federal Courts course do so because they think it will help them to practice law …

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 …

Law, Psychology & Morality, Kenworthey Bilz, Janice Nadler

Faculty Working Papers

In a democratic society, law is an important means to express, manipulate, and enforce moral codes. Demonstrating empirically that law can achieve moral goals is difficult. Nevertheless, public interest groups spend considerable energy and resources to change the law with the goal of changing not only morally-laden behaviors, but also morally-laden cognitions and emotions. Additionally, even when there is little reason to believe that a change in law will lead to changes in behavior or attitudes, groups see the law as a form of moral capital that they wish to own, to make a statement about society. Examples include gay …

The Domestic Influence Of International Criminal Tribunals: The International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia And The Creation Of The State Court Of Bosnia & Herzegovina, William W. Burke-White

All Faculty Scholarship

International criminal tribunals are often criticized for having minimal influence on the states over which they exercise jurisdiction. This article argues that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has had a far more positive impact on domestic governance in Bosnia & Herzegovina than previously assumed by both the academic and policy communities. The article develops a theoretical model to explain the impact of international criminal tribunals on domestic governance and tests that model against the ICTY¹s influence in Bosnia. More specifically, the article advances the claim that the nature of the tribunal¹s jurisdictional relationship with domestic judicial institutions …

From Federalism To Intersystemic Governance: The Changing Nature Of Modern Jurisdiction, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

At heart, this introductory essay aspires to encourage scholars who write in widely divergent areas, yet share a focus on the changing nature of jurisdiction, to engage one another more closely. From Jackson's study of "convergence, resistance, and engagement" among courts, Kingsbury's study of "global administrative law," and Bermann's analysis of "transatlantic regulatory cooperation," to Resnik's evaluation of "trans-local networks," Weiser's account of "cooperative federalism" in telecommunications law, and Thompson's concept of "collaborative corporate governance," a related set of questions is ultimately at stake: How ought we understand the reach of any given decision-maker's jurisdiction? What are the implications of …

Creating A Roadmap For Achieving Intergenerational Environmental Justice, Clifford Rechtschaffen

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Clifford Rechtschaffen, Professor of Law and Director, JD Environmental Law Program; Co-Director, Environmental Law and Justice Clinic, Golden Gate University School of Law

5 pages.

The Role Of International Arbitrators, Susan Franck

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

With the advent of the global economy, arbitration has become the preferred mechanism for resolving international disputes. Today international arbitrators resolve billions of dollars worth of disputes.' Arbitration has taken on such prominence in the international context that commentators express "little doubt that arbitration is now the first-choice method of binding dispute resolution" and has "largely taken over litigation."'

Cisg Article 31: When Substantive Law Rules Affect Jurisdictional Results, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

No abstract provided.

Keep Your Hands Off My (Dead) Body: A Critique Of The Ways In Which The State Disrupts The Personhood Interests Of The Deceased And His Or Her Kin In Disposing Of The Dead And Assigning Identity In Death, Mary Clark

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Appointing Federal Judges: The President, The Senate, And The Prisoner's Dilemma, David S. Law

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

This paper argues that the expansion of the White House's role in judicial appointments since the late 1970s, at the expense of the Senate, has contributed to heightened levels of ideological conflict and gridlock over the appointment of federal appeals court judges, by making a cooperative equilibrium difficult to sustain. Presidents have greater electoral incentive to behave ideologically, and less incentive to cooperate with other players in the appointments process, than do senators, who are disciplined to a greater extent in their dealings with each other by the prospect of retaliation over repeat play. The possibility of divided government exacerbates …