Law Commons^™

Unitary Innovations And Political Accountability, Edward H. Stiglitz

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Religion Of Alcoholics Anonymous (Aa): Applying The Clergy Privilege To Certain Aa Communications, Ari J. Diaconis

Cornell Law Library Cantwell Prize for Exemplary Student Research Papers

In the debate about AA’s status as a religion for clergy privilege purposes, there has been a lack of accurate information.315 AA originated from among the most evangelic of Christian movements, the Oxford Group. AA’s 12 Step program is so centered on a higher power as to preclude an atheist from moving beyond Step 2, let alone complete the entire 12 Step program.

AA’s historical origins and program of recovery are so faith based as to render it a religion under virtually any First Amendment definition.Indeed, courts have already defined AA as a religion in certain Establishment Clause contexts. To …

Legitimacy And Impartiality In A Sovereign Debt Workout Mechanism, Odette Lienau

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Particularly in light of recent developments in sovereign debt litigation, there is a pressing need for discussion of more robust sovereign debt restructuring mechanisms. This paper contends that any sovereign debt workout mechanism (DWM) should embody the principles of legitimacy and impartiality, to the extent possible, in order to garner the stable and long-term adherence of international stakeholders. These two elements are important both for attracting support ex ante, i.e. in the initial development of any treaty, ad hoc, or soft law restructuring mechanism, and for ensuring ex post that a DWM is ultimately utilized by states and their creditors. …

The Future Of Fault In Contract Law, Robert A. Hillman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

According to judicial opinions, the Restatement (Second) of Contracts, and some analysts, the reasons for failing to perform a contract, whether willful, negligent, or unavoidable, have little or no bearing in determining contract liability. Contract liability is said to be “strict,” meaning that the reasons for nonperformance are irrelevant in determining the injured party’s rights. In this Article, I argue that the reasons for failing to perform, which focus on whether non-performance is the promisor’s fault, are crucially important in the resolution of many, perhaps most disputes under contract law.

American Blood: Who Is Counting And For What?, Gerald Torres

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When thinking about "who counts," I initially titled this Essay: "Who is Counting and for What?" I wanted to highlight the role that power necessarily plays in the very asking of the question. It presumes a perspective, and interrogating that perspective can only occur if the second part of the question is answered. Because race has always played a critical role in our culture from the very beginning, I wanted to explore one of the many ways it has been deployed to justify a particular expression of power. The story virtually every American learns is the story of the inevitable …

Unitary Innovations And Political Accountability, Edward H. Stiglitz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

An important trend in administrative and constitutional law is to attempt to concentrate ever-greater control over the administrative state in the hands of the President. As the Supreme Court recently reminded us in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, one foundation for this doctrinal trend is a fear that diffusing power diffuses accountability. Here, I study whether institutional innovations resulting from such judicial decisions support this functionalist constitutional value of political accountability, emphasizing under-appreciated complications arising out of interbranch relations. For most of the Article, I conduct an indepth empirical case study of the legislative veto, one …

Authority, Ignorance, And The Guilty Mind, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Psychiatry For The Lawyer Common Psychiatric States Not Due To Psychosis , Gaylord Coon P.

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Damages And Accounting Procedure In Unfair Competition Cases , Harry D. Nims

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Changing The Wind: Notes Toward A Demosprudence Of Law And Social Movements, Lani Guinier, Gerald Torres

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This essay was influenced by a class on Law and Social Movements that Professors Guinier and Torres taught at the Yale Law School in 2011. This essay was also informed by numerous conversations with Bruce Ackerman regarding his book that is under review in this Symposium. While we are in fundamental agreement with Professor Ackerman’s project, as well as the claims he makes as to the new constitutional canon, we supplement his analysis with the overlooked impact of the lawmaking potential of social movements. In particular, we focus on those social movements that were critical to the legal changes that …

Replacing Myths With Facts: Sex-Selective Abortion Laws In The United States, Brian Citro, Jeff Gilson, Sital Kalantry, Kelsey Stricker, University Of Chicago Law School. International Human Rights Clinic, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (U.S.), Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (Organization)

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Several countries in the world have sex ratios at birth that are as high or higher than China and India, including countries with predominantly white populations. Nonetheless, immigrant communities in the United States from China and India are consistently accused of harboring a preference for sons. It is supposedly this preference for sons that leads Asian Americans to abort female fetuses. In response, eight states have enacted bans on sex-selective abortion and 21 states and the United States Congress have considered such bans.

Proponents of sex-selective abortion bans claim that the United States is one of the few countries in …

Sexual Violence By Educators In South African Schools: Gaps In Accountability, University Of The Witwatersrand. Centre For Applied Legal Studies, Cornell Law School. Avon Global Center For Women And Justice, Cornell Law School. International Human Rights Clinic

Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence

In many South African schools, educators have sexually harassed and abused the learners in their care. This serious human rights violation is widespread and well known. However, its actual incidence is difficult to determine as many cases of educator-learner abuse are never reported. Such harassment and abuse – which occurs with frequency not only in South Africa but also worldwide – has devastating consequences for the health and education of the learners, mainly girls, who experience it. Over the past decade, South Africa has adopted important laws and policies to address this grave human rights problem, yet sexual violence persists …

Three Symmetries Between Textualist And Purposivist Theories Of Statutory Interpretation - And The Irreducible Roles Of Values And Judgment Within Both, Richard H. Fallon Jr.

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Clearinghouses As Liquidity Partitioning, Richard Squire

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Three Discount Windows, Kathryn Judge

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Soft Law As Foreign Relations Law, Jean Galbraith, David Zaring

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Agencies And Aliens: A Modified Approach To Chevron Deference In Immigration Cases, Matthew F. Soares

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Locked Out Without A Key: How The Eighth Circuit Wielded A Pro-Labor Statute As A Sword Against Labor, Matthew Tymann

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law Review Divide: A Study Of Gender Diversity On The Top Twenty Law Reviews, Lynne N. Kolodinsky

Cornell Law Library Cantwell Prize for Exemplary Student Research Papers

My goal in this Note is to provide the first comprehensive statistical analysis of independently reported and verified data on law review membership in order to determine whether or not a gender disparity exists on law reviews. I further hope that this analysis would indicate whether any given admissions process correlates particularly strongly with that gender disparity. Interestingly, no single selection method or even combination of selection methods appears to consistently yield any greater number of women than men; some law reviews with similar admissions processes have very different membership compositions by gender, and some law reviews with very different …

The Public Trust: The Law's Dna, Gerald Torres, Nathan Bellinger

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Searching For The Hinterman: In Praise Of Subjective Theories Of Imputation, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

How should international courts distinguish between principals and accessories? The ICC answered this question with Roxin’s Control Theory of Perpetration; defendants should be convicted as principals if they control the crime individually, jointly with a co-perpetrator, indirectly via an organized apparatus of power, or as indirect co-perpetrators (via a combination of the previous doctrines). As the ICC adopted the control requirement, however, some of its decisions have allowed lower mental states such as recklessness or dolus eventualis to meet the standard for principal perpetration under the Control Theory. Other decisions have asserted that intent or knowledge is required though their …

Intergenerational Communities, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Under the human flourishing theory of property, owners have obligations, positive as well as negative, that they owe to members of the various communities to which they belong. But are the members of those communities limited to living persons, or do they include non-living persons as well, i.e., future persons and the dead? This Article argues that owners owe two sorts of obligation to non-living members of our generational communities, one general, the other specific. The general obligation is to provide future generations with the basic material background conditions that are necessary for them to be able to carry out …

Courtroom Technology, Jessica Moyeda

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

Courtroom technology, like all technology, will continue to change and, hopefully, improve. Technology can be an amazingly helpful resource, but it is only a tool. As lawyers develop and adapt to changes in technology, they must also remember to make efficient and effective use of these tools, to acquire the necessary training, and remember their obligation to the client.

Videoconference Technology And The Confrontation Clause, Russell Kostelak

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Cloud Computing, Virtual Law Firms, And The Legal Profession, Dillon Horne

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

What does the future hold for cloud computing, virtual law firms, and the legal profession? Like so many answers in the legal field, it depends. The increasing costs of storing ever-increasing amounts of information may force firms to turn to housing data off-site through cloud-based services. New technologies, yet unforeseen, may render the cloud obsolete, replaced by a new form of caching materials. Virtual law firms may be looked back at five years from now as an obsolete fad, or the practice might instead become the new normal. Wherever the legal profession ventures, lawyers must do a better job of …

Predicitive Coding: The New E-Discovery, Emmanuel Alvarez

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

Predictive coding is currently the most efficient and cost effective method for electronic discovery. Predictive coding combines a good balance of human and computer components to continuously provide a set of seed documents to better assist and find conceptual relevance between potential discovery documents. The organization and method of topic categories reduces the costs for litigation overall. However, the continuous reasonableness standard used by the courts must still be met. With the more elaborate predictive coding, the court and small firms may have difficulty in judging whether the process was reasonable. This may cause potential hurdles, or even potentially changing …

"Out, Damned [Metadata]!", Emily Shaw

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

We live in exciting times; technology is evolving quickly. The legal profession, however, has a history of begrudging and delayed acceptance of new technology. Attorneys may be slow to learn new tricks, but when it comes to metadata, the usual reactionary behavior could be harmful to clients. It is imperative that attorneys understand the ethical and evidentiary issues that arise when metadata is disclosed, mishandled, discovered, or destroyed. This paper explores these issues and recommends best practices to avoid inadvertent disclosures and ethical violations. The structure of this paper is as follows: first, metadata is defined and explained. Second, I …

Constitution Making: The Role Of External Actors, Muna B. Ndulo

Southern African Journal of Policy and Development

In the past three decades new constitutions have been developed in many parts of the world, often in the aftermath of conflicts, but also in response to demands for more democratic political systems or for the resolution of institutional crises. In these processes, the international community often plays an important role. This article considers the role that external actors play in the elaboration and development of new constitutions in post-conflict societies. It identifies both the negative and the positive roles external intervention can play and suggests approaches that could be adopted by external actors to maximize their impact while avoiding …

Institutional Corruption: A Fiduciary Theory, M.E. Newhouse

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Punishing Terrorists: Congress, The Sentencing Commission, The Guidelines, And The Courts, George D. Brown

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.