Law Commons^™

An International Constitutional Moment, William W. Burke-White, Anne-Marie Slaughter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Gender Differences Become A Trap: The Impact Of China's Labor Law On Women, Charles J. Ogletree, Rangita De Silva De Alwis

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Mormon Question: Polygamy And Constitutional Conflict In Nineteenth-Century America, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

Polygamy makes for fascinating social history and for best-selling potboilers as well. This study by Sarah Barringer Gordon, who teaches both law and history at the University of Pennsylvania, is the first attempt to write a full-length legal history of “the Principle.” It turns out that even in this dry-as-dust genre, polygamy fuels a very dynamic story indeed, one that reveals the rich malleability of the Constitution, the endless resourcefulness of determined guardians of public morality, and the resilience of a peculiar people committed to the practice of plural marriage.

Criminal Law Scholarship: Three Illusions, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The paper criticizes criminal law scholarship for helping to construct and failing to expose analytic structures that falsely claim a higher level of rationality and coherence than current criminal law theory deserves. It offers illustrations of three such illusions of rationality. First, it is common in criminal law discourse for scholars and judges to cite any of the standard litany of "the purposes of punishment" -- just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation of the dangerous, rehabilitation, and sometimes other purposes -- as a justification for one or another liability rule or sentencing practice. The cited "purpose" gives the rules an aura of …

Meeting By Signals, Playing By Norms: Complementary Accounts Of Non-Legal Cooperation In Institutions, Edward B. Rock, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Empirical Analysis And Administrative Law, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Empirical research has been used to study many areas of law, including administrative law. In this article Professor Coglianese discusses the current and future role of empirical research in understanding and improving administrative rulemaking. Criticism of government regulation and calls for regulatory reform have grown in the last few decades. Empirical research is a valuable tool for designing reforms that will truly improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and legitimacy of regulatory governance. Specifically, Professor Coglianese discusses three areas of administrative law that have benefited from empirical research—economic review of new regulations, judicial review of agency rulemaking, and negotiated rulemaking.

Agencies are …

Contract Rights And Civil Rights, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Gender Contests, Susan Frelich Appleton

Scholarship@WashULaw

This contribution for the “Law, Ethics, and Gender in Medicine” column in the Journal of Gender Specific Medicine interrogates the understanding of gender itself, at a time when transgender and intersex issues were just beginning to “come out” in both popular culture and case law. Against this background, the column explores the roles that physicians have played in such gender contests and considers how evolving medical attitudes can help achieve reform.

Osmotic Borders: Thinking Locally, Thinking Globally About The Causes And Effects Of Labor Migration, Roberto L. Corrada

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus defines osmosis both as "any process by which something is acquired by absorption," and as a biological cellular function by which solvents are absorbed through semipermeable partitions. The two articles by Professor Sylvia Lazos and Donna Maeda, which both deal with the causes and effects of labor migration, though on different levels and involving different populations, challenge traditional notions of the physical and metaphysical borders between nation-states.

In "Latina/o-ization" of the Midwest: Cambio de Colores, Professor Sylvia Lazos takes a close look at the increasing migration and presence of Latinas/os in the Midwest, particularly Kansas, …

Excuses And Dispositions In Criminal Law, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Enron And The Dark Side Of Shareholder Value, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Human Rights, Civil Wrongs And Foreign Relations: A "Sinical" Look At The Use Of U.S. Litigation To Address Human Rights Abuses Abroad, Jacques Delisle

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Income Distribution Dynamics With Endogenous Fertility, Daniel L. Chen, Michael Kremer

Faculty Scholarship

Developing countries with highly unequal income distributions, such as Brazil or South Africa, face an uphill battle in reducing inequality. Educated workers in these countries have a much lower birth rate than uneducated workers. Assuming children of educated workers are more likely to become educated, this fertility differential increaases the proportion of unskilled workers, reducing their wages, and thus their opportunity cost of having children, creating a vicious cycle. A model incorporating this effect generates multiple stedy-state levels of inequality, suggesting that in some circumstances, temporarily increasing access to educational opportunities could permanently reduce inequality. Empirical evidence suggests that the …

The Complex Uses Of Sexual Orientation In Criminal Court, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Times may or may not be changing for gay people in the criminal justice system--and for the import of sexual orientation in criminal law. It depends on the nature of the case and, more importantly, exactly whose sexual orientation we are talking about.

Signs of positive change include the recent high profile Matthew Shepard and Diane Whipple cases, in which gay and lesbian homicide victims were mourned not only by the gay community, but also by the entire country. It was no doubt helpful that both Shepard and Whipple presented very appealing images of gay people: each was young, attractive, …

Racial Justice: Moral Or Political?, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

Nearly one hundred years ago, W.E.B. DuBois predicted that the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line. Were he writing today, DuBois might well conclude that in the U.S., the problem of the coming century will be the problem of the color-bind. Although Americans arguably remain "the most 'race-conscious' people on earth," our national conversation about "race" now stands at an impasse. Our ways of talking, or refusing to talk, about race increasingly speak past the racialized dilemmas of educational equity, affirmative action, poverty, welfare reform, housing, lending, labor and employment discrimination, health …

A Broken System, Part Ii: Why There Is So Much Error In Capital Cases And What Can Be Done About It, James S. Liebman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Andrew Gelman, Valerie West, Garth Davies, Alexander Kiss

Faculty Scholarship

There is growing awareness that serious, reversible error permeates America’s death penalty system, putting innocent lives at risk, heightening the suffering of victims, leaving killers at large, wasting tax dollars, and failing citizens, the courts and the justice system.

Our June 2000 Report shows how often mistakes occur and how serious it is: 68% of all death verdicts imposed and fully reviewed during the 1973-1995 study period were reversed by courts due to serious errors.

Analyses presented for the first time here reveal that 76% of the reversals at the two appeal stages where data are available for study were …