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Full-Text Articles in Law

Owning Versus Renting: Thoughts On Housing Policy, Tax Incentives, And Middle Class Dreams, Neil H. Buchanan Jan 2012

Owning Versus Renting: Thoughts On Housing Policy, Tax Incentives, And Middle Class Dreams, Neil H. Buchanan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This document gathers together 22 essays that were originally published as online commentary by Professor Neil H. Buchanan, between 2008 and 2012. All but one of the essays first appeared on the Dorf on Law blog (www.dorfonlaw.org). In these essays, Professor Buchanan discusses the arguments for and against government support of individual home ownership. Most of the essays focus on how to move away from the model of individual ownership. The latter essays, however, begin to embrace the possibility that home ownership incentives should be expanded, to mitigate the current upside-down quality of those subsidies, and to preserve middle-class professional …


District Court Review Of Findings Of Fact Proposed By Magistrates: Myth Or Reality, Richard J. Pierce Jr Jan 2012

District Court Review Of Findings Of Fact Proposed By Magistrates: Myth Or Reality, Richard J. Pierce Jr

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this essay, Professor Pierce criticizes the decisions in six circuits that forbid a district judge from rejecting a finding of fact proposed by a magistrate without first conducting a new evidentiary hearing. Those decisions are inconsistent with the Magistrates Act of 1968, the 1951 decision of the Supreme Court that authorizes agencies to reject findings of fact made by Administrative Law Judges without conducting a new evidentiary hearing, the consistent findings of empirical studies that a fact-finder’s ability to observe the demeanor of witnesses does not improve the fact-finder’s ability to evaluate the credibility of witnesses, and Articles I …


Dead Contractors: The Un-Examined Effect Of Surrogates On The Public’S Casualty Sensitivity, Steven L. Schooner, Collin D. Swan Jan 2012

Dead Contractors: The Un-Examined Effect Of Surrogates On The Public’S Casualty Sensitivity, Steven L. Schooner, Collin D. Swan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Once the nation commits to engage in heavy, sustained military action abroad, particularly including the deployment of ground forces, political support is scrupulously observed and dissected. One of the most graphic factors influencing that support is the number of military soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice on the nation’s behalf. In the modern era, most studies suggest that the public considers the potential and actual casualties in U.S. wars to be an important factor, and an inverse relationship exists between the number of military deaths and public support. Economists have dubbed this the "casualty sensitivity" effect.

This article asserts …


Emerging Policy And Practice Issues (2011), Steven L. Schooner, David J. Berteau Jan 2012

Emerging Policy And Practice Issues (2011), Steven L. Schooner, David J. Berteau

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This paper, presented at the West Government Contracts Year in Review Conference (covering 2011), attempts to identify the key trends and issues for 2012 in U.S. federal procurement. It begins from the premise that the most significant emerging issue in government contracting, looking ahead, is the money (or lack of it). As the fiscal belt tightens, the procurement landscape - what the government buys, from whom, and how - will necessarily change. Consistent with prior practice, this chapter offers extensive coverage of the federal procurement spending trend and attempts to predict what lies ahead. It also discusses the proliferation of …


Foreword To Scholarly Writing: Ideas, Examples, And Execution, Steven L. Schooner Jan 2012

Foreword To Scholarly Writing: Ideas, Examples, And Execution, Steven L. Schooner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This foreword recommends the forthcoming second edition of Scholarly Writing: Ideas, Examples, and Execution by Jessica L. Clark and Kristen E. Murray. The book, published by Carolina Academic Press, is a welcome tool and useful resource for students embarking on their scholarly writing endeavors. Having supervised hundreds of LL.M. candidates struggling to complete a thesis, J.D. students attempting to fulfill a scholarly note requirement dominating their second-year law journal experience, and J.D. and LL.M. candidates writing seminar papers or independent research and writing projects, the author encourages students to invest in Scholarly Writing as a helpful and instructive lifeline. The …


Affirmatively Inefficient Jurisprudence?: Confusing Contractors’ Rights To Raise Affirmative Defenses With Sovereign Immunity, Steven L. Schooner, Pamela Kovacs Jan 2012

Affirmatively Inefficient Jurisprudence?: Confusing Contractors’ Rights To Raise Affirmative Defenses With Sovereign Immunity, Steven L. Schooner, Pamela Kovacs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In M. Maropakis Carpentry v. United States, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upset the commonly understood rules of practice and procedure for government contracts dispute litigation. In what the Supreme Court might view as a drive-by jurisdictional ruling, the court held that a contractor must file its own claim for time extensions before it can defend against a government claim for liquidated damages. Two Court of Federal Claims cases then confirmed fears that the decision would create a significant, disruptive, and disadvantageous change in procedural posture for a large number of contractors defending against government …


Comparative Administrative Law, Francesca Bignami Jan 2012

Comparative Administrative Law, Francesca Bignami

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This chapter provides an overview of comparative administrative law, with particular attention to European jurisdictions and the United States. The underlying conceptual similarity that serves to organize the comparative analysis is the purpose, common to these systems, of rendering public administration both capable and expert, on the one hand, and accountable to a variety of liberal democratic actors, on the other hand. The chapter first discusses what historically was the principal legal tool for achieving neutrality and expertise—the legal guarantees of civil service employment—together with national variations in the professionalization of administration. It then turns to three important types of …


A Visa To "Snitch": An Addendum To Cox And Posner, Eleanor Marie Brown Jan 2012

A Visa To "Snitch": An Addendum To Cox And Posner, Eleanor Marie Brown

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Cox and Posner’s landmark contribution is the first article to have highlighted the challenges of information asymmetry in immigration screening. While Cox and Posner have undoubtedly made a significant contribution, there is a critical oversight in their framework: they do not discuss the importance of targeted ex post mechanisms of screening educational elites. This Essay is an attempt to remedy Cox and Posner’s omission. Why is this oversight so problematic? In the post-9/11 world, U.S. immigration policy currently finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. While immigrant educational elites are critical to U.S. economic growth, terrorist networks have stepped …


The Participation Interest, Spencer A. Overton Jan 2012

The Participation Interest, Spencer A. Overton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Lack of participation is a primary problem with money in politics. Relatively few people make political contributions—less than one-half of one percent of the population provides the bulk of the money that politicians collect from individual contributors. This Article introduces and details the state’s interest in expanding citizen participation in financing politics. Rather than focus solely on pushing an incomplete anticorruption framework to restrict special interest influence, reformers should also embrace a strategy of giving more people influence. Reformers should accept that money produces speech and that “special interests” in the form of grassroots organizations are a democratic good that …


In Defense Of Judicial Empathy, Thomas B. Colby Jan 2012

In Defense Of Judicial Empathy, Thomas B. Colby

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

President Obama has repeatedly stated that he views a capacity for empathy as an essential attribute of a good judge. And conservatives have heaped mountains of scorn upon him for saying so—accusing him of expressing open contempt for the rule of law. To date, the debate has been surprisingly one-sided. One federal judge has recently noted that “President Obama’s statement that judges should have ‘empathy’ was met with strong criticism from his opponents and uncomfortable silence from his supporters.” This Article seeks to offer a sustained defense of the President’s call for empathy in judging. Its argument is neither grounded …


Enlightenment Economics And The Framing Of The U.S. Constitution, Renée Lettow Lerner Jan 2012

Enlightenment Economics And The Framing Of The U.S. Constitution, Renée Lettow Lerner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Some scholars have argued that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution did not have a common set of views on economics, or that the Constitution, except perhaps in isolated clauses, does not reflect any specific economic views. The principal Framers did, in fact, share a basic set of economic views, though of course they did not agree on all economic questions. Their shared economic views were common to enlightenment thinkers: promoting free trade, curtailing rent-seeking (the transfer of wealth from producers to non-producers through political power), and, in most instances, eliminating monopolies. These economic views permeate the Constitution and are …


An Addendum To Cox And Posner: A Visa To 'Snitch', Eleanor Marie Brown Jan 2012

An Addendum To Cox And Posner: A Visa To 'Snitch', Eleanor Marie Brown

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Cox and Posner’s landmark contribution is the first article to have highlighted the challenges of information asymmetry in immigration screening. While Cox and Posner have undoubtedly made a significant contribution, there is a critical oversight in their framework: they do not discuss the importance of targeted ex post mechanisms of screening educational elites. This Essay is an attempt to remedy Cox and Posner’s omission. Why is this oversight so problematic? In the post-9/11 world, U.S. immigration policy currently finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. While immigrant educational elites are critical to U.S. economic growth, terrorist networks have stepped …


The America Invents Act, Its Unique First-To-File System And Its Transfer Of Power From Juries To The United States Patent And Trademark Office, Martin J. Adelman Jan 2012

The America Invents Act, Its Unique First-To-File System And Its Transfer Of Power From Juries To The United States Patent And Trademark Office, Martin J. Adelman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The signing of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) by President Obama on 16 September 2011 is a landmark event in the history of American patent law. It has already been the subject of numerous articles on the web and in the law reviews as well as in the popular press. I have no intention here of going into all the details of the AIA, I just want to leave the reader with a sense for its eventual impact on American patent law. All the details are to be found in its 37 sections whose titles give the reader a …


How To Choose The Least Unconstitutional Option: Lessons For The President (And Others) From The 2011 Debt Ceiling Standoff, Neil H. Buchanan, Michael C. Dorf Jan 2012

How To Choose The Least Unconstitutional Option: Lessons For The President (And Others) From The 2011 Debt Ceiling Standoff, Neil H. Buchanan, Michael C. Dorf

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The current successor to a federal statute first enacted in 1917, and widely known as the “debt ceiling,” limits the face value of money that the United States may borrow. Congress has repeatedly raised the debt ceiling to authorize borrowing to fill the gap between revenue and spending, but in the summer of 2011, a political standoff nearly left the government unable to borrow funds to meet obligations that Congress had affirmed earlier that very year. Some commentators urged President Obama to ignore the debt ceiling and issue new bonds, in order to comply with Section 4 of the Fourteenth …


Competition Agency Design: What's On The Menu?, William E. Kovacic, David A. Hyman Jan 2012

Competition Agency Design: What's On The Menu?, William E. Kovacic, David A. Hyman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In recent years the United Kingdom and various other countries have decided to restructure the institutions responsible for enforcing competition laws. How should a nation choose among myriad alternative arrangements? This paper lays out nine major institutional choices that governments must address in designing the implementation mechanism for a competition law. The paper discusses tradeoffs associated with each choice and examines interdependencies among different design elements. In doing so, the paper offers a structured framework that countries can use in forming new competition systems or altering existing institutional arrangements.


Behavioral Economics: Implications For Regulatory Behavior, William E. Kovacic, James C. Cooper Jan 2012

Behavioral Economics: Implications For Regulatory Behavior, William E. Kovacic, James C. Cooper

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Behavioral economics (BE) examines the implications for decision-making when actors suffer from biases documented in the psychological literature. This article considers how such biases affect regulatory decisions. The article posits a simple model of a regulator who serves as an agent to a political overseer. The regulator chooses a policy that accounts for the rewards she receives from the political overseer — whose optimal policy is assumed to maximize short-run outputs that garner political support, rather than long-term welfare outcomes — and the weight the regulator puts on the optimal long run policy. Flawed heuristics and myopia are likely to …


The Crime Of Aggression At The Icc, Sean D. Murphy Jan 2012

The Crime Of Aggression At The Icc, Sean D. Murphy

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In May 2012, Liechtenstein became the first State to ratify amendments to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that seek to activate the Court’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. The amendments, which were adopted by consensus at the ICC Review Conference that met in Kampala, Uganda, in 2010, establish definitions for “act of aggression” and “crime of aggression,” and provide the Court with jurisdiction even in the absence of a referral from the Security Council. At the same time, the States Parties decided that the ICC’s jurisdiction over this crime will not become operative until at …


Modern Military Justice: Cases And Materials, Gregory E. Maggs, Lisa M. Schenck Jan 2012

Modern Military Justice: Cases And Materials, Gregory E. Maggs, Lisa M. Schenck

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This new textbook (ISBN-13: 978-0314268037) comprehensively covers the modern military justice system under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Materials from every service within the Armed Forces show how the military justice system addresses all criminal offenses, ranging from minor infractions to serious offenses, such as the misconduct of soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. The text covers the jurisdiction of courts-martial; sources of military law; military offenses and defenses; pretrial, trial, and appellate procedures; the role of judge advocates; nonjudicial punishment and other alternatives to courts-martial; special forums, such as boards of inquiry and military commissions for trying enemy belligerents; …


The Financial Services Industry's Misguided Quest To Undermine The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr. Jan 2012

The Financial Services Industry's Misguided Quest To Undermine The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Congress decided to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) after concluding that federal bank regulators had utterly failed to protect consumers during the credit boom leading up to the financial crisis. Because of the prudential regulators’ systemic failures, Congress vested CFPB with sole responsibility and clear accountability for protecting consumers of financial services. Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act delegates broad rulemaking and enforcement powers to CFPB. To insulate CFPB from political influence, Title X grants CFPB substantial autonomy as well as an assured source of funding from the Federal Reserve System.

The …