Law Commons^™

When Dispute Resolution Begets Disputes Of Its Own: Conflicts Among Dispute Professionals, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As the processes comprising, alternative, or as we now say, "appropriate" dispute resolution mature and enter new phases of use, new issues have emerged to demonstrate that professionals engaged in providing dispute resolution services have disputes and conflicts among themselves. This Article reviews some of those conflicts and issues and suggests some resolutions for these disputes between dispute resolvers.

Introduction: What Will We Do When Adjudication Ends? A Brief Intellectual History Of Adr, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I begin by thanking the UCLA Law Review, and particularly Darrin Mollet and Bryce Johnson, for seeing the timeliness of the topic of alternative dispute resolution and organizing this Symposium-collecting some of the best thinkers, writers, and practitioners in the field to discuss, among other things, the economics of ADR, the role of lawyers, courts, and judges in ADR, and the application of ADR to a variety of substantive legal and regulatory problems. In this Introduction, I would like to introduce the topics and the authors, and put them in the larger context of the movement that is now called …

Some Reflections On Copyright Management Systems And Laws Designed To Protect Them, Julie E. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Copyright management systems (CMS)—technologies that enable copyright owners to regulate reliably and charge automatically for access to digital works—are the wave of the very near future. The advent of digital networks, which make copying and distribution of digital content quick, easy, and undetectable, has provided the impetus for CMS research and development. CMS are premised on the concept of "trusted systems" or "secure digital envelopes" that protect copyrighted content and allow access and subsequent copying only to the extent authorized by the copyright owner. Software developers are testing prototype systems designed to detect, prevent, count, and levy precise charges for …

Law And Fancy, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Martha Nussbaum's graceful book Poetic Justice is an elegant brief for the importance of our capacity for imaginative "fancy" to our moral and legal lives. Imaginative fancy, Nussbaum argues, allows us to know the internal substance and quality of the lives of others. It allows us to come to appreciate, to understand, to share, and ultimately to resist others' suffering. It is, in short, the means by which we come to care about the fate and happiness of others. It is a part, but not the whole, of our capacity to transcend a narcissistic and infantile egoism. It is therefore …

Integrity And Universality: A Comment On Dworkin's Freedom's Law, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Ronald Dworkin has done more than any other constitutional lawyer, past or present, to impress upon us the importance of integrity to constitutional law, and hence to our shared public life. Far from being merely a private virtue, Dworkin has shown that integrity imposes constraints upon and provides guidance to the work of judges in constitutional cases: Every constitutional case that comes before a court must be decided by recourse to the same moral principles that have dictated results in relevant similar cases in the past. Any group or individual challenging the constitutionality of legislation which adversely affects his or …

The Constitutional Right To Die: Ethical Considerations, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this commentary, the author first looks at some ethical reasoning supporting physician-assisted dying. Second, he examines some of the lines that have been drawn between withdrawing and withholding life-sustaining treatment on the one hand, and physician-assisted dying on the other. Finally, he relates both of these matters to constitutional reasoning, beginning with Cruzan and ending with the cases before the Supreme Court at the time of the article's publication.

The Benefits And Costs Of Regulatory Reforms For Superfund, W. Kip Viscusi, James T. Hamilton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The current policy approach used in the Superfund program is a peculiar halfway house. EPA devotes substantial effort to identifying chemicals at a site and ascertaining their potential risks. It also assesses the costs of a range of remedies in considerable detail. However, many key elements are missing in the agency's analyses. There is no explicit consideration of the size of the population at risk. Risks to a single individual have the same weight as risks to a large exposed population. Actual and hypothetical exposures to chemicals receive equal weight so that risks to a person who, in the future, …

The Epidemics Of Injecting Drug Use And Blood-Borne Disease: A Public Health Perspective, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article, the author first examines the mechanism by which blood-borne disease is transmitted through sharing of injection equipment. Thereafter, he presents a public health strategy for reducing multi-person use of contaminated injection equipment. This strategy includes: repealing or modifying current laws and regulations making possession and distribution of sterile injection equipment a criminal offense; implementing syringe exchange programs to expand access to new syringes for users of injection drugs; and counseling, education, and treatment targeted to injecting drug users (IDUs), including those in the prison and health care system. The objective of a public health approach is not …

Toward A Conceptual Framework For Assessing Police Power Commitment Legislation, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

Recent litigation and scholarship have begun to focus on the substantive limits of the state's power to use civil commitment as a social control tool. Courts and commentators describe civil commitment as grounded on two powers of the state: the parens patriae interest and the police power. This Article seeks an analytical framework for defining the boundaries of police power commitments in which justification rests on the interests of the public rather than on the interests of the committed individual.

Harm And Money: Against The Insurance Theory Of Tort Compensation, Heidi Li Feldman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since the 1980s, tort damages for pain and suffering have excited hue and cry. Twenty-three states currently place statutory limitations on tort damages for pain and suffering: seven states cap damages in general tort cases; an additional sixteen states limit awards solely in medical malpractice cases. Several states also have provisions limiting damages in other, very specific types of tort cases. While some statutes have been invalidated on state constitutional grounds, others have survived judicial scrutiny. At the federal level, both the House of Representatives and the Senate have passed tort-reform bills. Although no compromise legislation has been enacted, this …

Free Speech At Work: Verbal Harassment As Discriminatory (Mis)Treatment, Deborah Epstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In his reply to my article on workplace harassment law and freedom of speech, Professor Volokh does not respond to my most important critiques of his earlier work. For example, he fails to grapple with the true complexity of the problem by focusing exclusively on one side of this conflict of rights-the burden that the law imposes on workplace expression. Equal attention must be paid to the other side: the harm inflicted by discriminatory speech on employees of a single gender. As I describe in detail in my original piece, these harms may include: an adverse effect on the quantity …

Sex, Culture, And Rights: A Re/Conceptualization Of Violence For The Twenty-First Century, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

The central theme of this Article, "Sex, Culture, and Rights: A Re/conceptualization of Violence," is that a re/vision of acts that constitute violence against women is necessary for gender equality -- both domestically and internationally -- to become a reality. This reconceptualization must address not only the normative concept of violence, i.e., the use of physical force, but it must also transform and reposition the idea of violence within a broader framework that includes, considers and aims to eradicate (1) psychological, social and political subordination of women; (2) male dominant (and female subservient) cultural and traditional practices; as well as …

Lawyering For Social Justice, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is an honor, albeit a sad one, to be invited to write this Essay in commemoration of Tom Stoddard and as commentary on his final publication.

I first met Tom in the late 1970s, when we both joined the Board of Directors of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Both of us were American Civil Liberties Union staff attorneys, Tom for the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and I for the Reproducfive Freedom Project in the national office. Later, for the last half of the 1980s, Tom was the Executive Director of Lambda during the same period …

The Bad Man And The Good Lawyer: A Centennial Essay On Holmes's The Path Of The Law, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although Justice Holmes did not much enjoy listening to speeches (he once wondered "what makes the world throng to hear loose-fibred and coarse-grained men drool"), he had a remarkable gift for writing them. Holmes's 1920 Collected Legal Papers includes a dozen speeches and addresses, all delivered to student audiences or lawyers' associations, and there are unexpected pleasures to be found in every one. He had published all but four in a previous book of speeches, where he described them as "chance utterances of faith and doubt.., for a few friends who will care to keep them."' Among the four he …

Counting Votes And Discounting Holdings In The Supreme Court's Takings Cases, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Essay focuses on a dimension of the regulatory takings issue that has received relatively little attention in what is otherwise a vast amount of literature on the topic: Why the Court is so persistently splintered and its precedent so seemingly schizophrenic. Most academic discussion has focused on the sheer difficulty of reconciling the public's firmly held conception of sacrosanct private property rights with the public's increasing demand for restrictions on the exercise of those same rights when they affect others adversely. This Essay's thesis is that reasons for this phenomenon exist beyond those that have dominated the ongoing academic …

The Use Of Mediation And Arbitration For Resolving Family Conflicts: What Lawyers Think About Them, Mary Kay Kisthardt

Faculty Works

The use of alternative methods for resolving family conflict has increased significantly in the past few years, but many attor­neys are still wary. In an effort to discover some of the sources of this hesitation as well as identify support for "alternative" processes, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers sur­veyed its members concerning the use of dispute resolution methods. The purpose of this study was to ascertain attorneys' perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of the two most commonly used alternative dispute resolution mechanisms: me­diation and arbitration. Whether clients will continue to use these methods depends in great part on …

Foreword: The New Estates, Lance Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Telecommunications Law is under pressure from fast-paced technological advances and changes in the industry structure. As the high-stakes debates plays itself out in federal and state legislatures, agencies and courts, the academic study is struggling to catch up. The author poses provocative questions about the present and future of Telecommunications Law. Of paramount interest are the ill-fitting legal categories that continue to influence crucial determinations about the level of First Amendment protection accorded various communications media, and the reach of Constitutional Takings doctrine that pits incumbent regulated industries against government regulators and up-start competitors looking to shake-up the established order. …

Comparatively Speaking: The Honor Of The East And The Passion Of The West, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, I will attempt a comparative review by examining in the United States the crime that has the most affinity with the crime of honor in the Arab World: the killing of women in the heat of passion for sexual or intimate reasons, which is seen in the United States as one of many instances in which the more generic crime of passion can occur. For the purposes of this Article, I will use the term "crime of passion" as it is so specifically defined. The reason for the exercise is to locate precisely the meaning of the …

Intimate Violence And The Problem Of Consent, Jane H. Aiken

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The juxtaposition of intimacy with violence is striking. Intimacy implies a closeness and a vulnerability that is treasured and inviolate. Intimacy should foreclose the possibility of violence. Intimate violence should be an oxymoron. Yet, intimacy sometimes creates its own special kind of violence, one that can erupt into rape or assault. On a less physical level, intimacy may cause violence to a woman's personal integrity and economic independence.

Intimate violence manifests itself with a certain subtlety that forces women to walk a careful tightrope in order to avoid threatened harm. This essay is about that tightrope: the double binds women …

Sexual Character Evidence In Civil Actions: Refining The Propensity Rule, Jane H. Aiken

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When claims of sexual misconduct are made, two threads are often seen in the kinds of questions raised: Did she "invite it," and has he ever done it before? The way these questions are handled can determine the outcome of a sexual misconduct case. In 1995, Congress weighed in on whether these questions could be asked in civil cases in federal court and adopted two significant changes to the rules of evidence. One, revised Rule 412,4 extends "rape shield" protection to civil actions that claim sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment. The other, new Rule 415,5 allows plaintiffs to offer evidence …

Rethinking Equality In The Global Society, Clark D. Cunningham

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Necessary And Proper, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article, the author maintains that, if the courts are to hold Congress to the exercise of its enumerated powers, then they must come to grips with the congressional power: "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." While the Necessary and Proper Clause has long been used to greatly expand congressional power, he argues that, to the contrary, it provides a two-part standard against which all national …

Dedicatory Essay: Honoring Ian Mccoll Kennedy, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Ian Kennedy is perhaps the best known and most important figure in health law and ethics in the United Kingdom, and probably one of the most significant in Europe and North America. How did his life and career evolve to the point where he would wield such influence? This essay examines the leadership, erudition, and passion Ian Kennedy has brought to the field of health law and ethics. It is perhaps not an overstatement to suggest that Professor Kennedy virtually invented the field in the United Kingdom. He did so through his scholarship, public advocacy, and influence in shaping institutions, …

What Is Eleventh Amendment Immunity?, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's Eleventh Amendment decisions give conflicting signals about what the Amendment does. On one view, the Amendment functions as a forum-allocation principle--immunizing states from liability in suits filed in federal court, but leaving open the possibility that states may be compelled to entertain suits against themselves in their own courts. A separate line of cases, however, implies that state courts enjoy an immunity from suit in their own courts and that nothing in the Constitution withdraws such immunity; on this view, the Eleventh Amendment, by protecting the states from suit in the federal courts, effectively immunizes the states …

Ethics In Alternative Dispute Resolution: New Issues, No Answers From The Adversary Conception Of Lawyers’ Responsibilities, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The romantic days of ADR appear to be over. To the extent that proponents of ADR, like myself, were attracted to it because of its promise of flexibility, adaptability, and creativity, we now see the need for ethics, standards of practice and rules as potentially limiting and containing the promise of alternatives to rigid adversarial modes of dispute resolution. It is almost as if we thought that anyone who would engage in ADR must of necessity be a moral, good, creative, and, of course, ethical person. That we are here today is deeply ironic and yet, also necessary, as "appropriate" …