Law Commons^™

Uncle Sam Is Watching You, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Brief For Prof. Stephen B. Cohen, Pro Se, As Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondents, Commissioner Of Internal Revenue V. Banks, Nos. 03-892 & 03-907 (U.S. Aug. 16, 2004), Stephen B. Cohen

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Pops, Pic, And Lrtap: The Role Of The U.S. In Draft Legislation To Implement These International Conventions : Testimony Before The H. Subcomm. On Environment And Hazardous Materials Of The H. Comm. On Energy And Commerce, 108th Cong., Jul. 13, 2004 (Statement Of Lisa Heinzerling, Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), Lisa Heinzerling

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Paralyzed Veterans Of America Et Al., Spector V. Norwegian Cruise Line Ltd., No. 03-1388 (U.S. Jul. 5, 2004), Richard Mckewen, David C. Vladeck

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Statistical Overview, October Term 2003, Georgetown University Law Center, Supreme Court Institute, Liz Hollander

Supreme Court Overviews

No abstract provided.

Aiding Terrorists: Hearing Before The S. Comm. On The Judiciary, 108th Cong., May 5, 2004 (Statement Of David D. Cole, Geo. U. L. Center), David Cole

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Respondents In Opposition, In Re Green Tree Financial Corp., No. 03-1243 (U.S. Apr. 22, 2004), Cornelia T. Pillard

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Appropriate Role Of Foreign Judgments In The Interpretation Of American Law: Hearing Before The H. Comm. On The Judiciary, 108th Cong., Mar. 25, 2004 (Statement Of Vicki C. Jackson, Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), Vicki C. Jackson

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

Brief For American Public Health Association Et Al. As Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Department Of Transportation V. Public Citizen, No. 03-358 (U.S. Mar. 12, 2004), Hope M. Babcock, Lisa Goldman

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Democracy In Hong Kong: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On East Asian And Pacific Affairs Of The S. Comm. On Foreign Relations, 108th Cong., Mar. 4, 2004 (Statement Of Professor James V. Feinerman, Geo. U. L. Center), James V. Feinerman

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

Trade And Human Rights: The Future Of U.S.-Vietnamese Relationships: Hearing Before The S. Comm. On Foreign Relations, 108th Cong., Feb. 12, 2004 (Statement Of Viet D. Dinh, Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), Viet D. Dinh

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

Toward A New Constitutional Anatomy, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is an important sense in which our Constitution's structure is not what it appears to be--a set of activities or functions or geographies, the 'judicial" or the "executive" or the "legislative" power, the "truly local and the truly national. "Indeed, it is only if we put these notions to the side that we can come to grips with the importance of the generative provisions of the Constitution: the provisions that actually create our federal government; that bind citizens, through voting, to a House of Representatives, to a Senate, to a President, and even, indirectly, to a Supreme Court. In …

Brief Amici Curiae Of Legal Historians Listed Herein In Support Of The Petitioners, Rasul V. Bush, Nos. 03-334 & 03-343 (U.S. Jan. 14, 2004), James Oldham

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Brief Of International Law And Jurisdiction Professors As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioners, Rasul V. Bush, Nos. 03-334 & 03-343 (U.S. Jan. 12, 2004), Barry E. Carter

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Deliberate Extinction: Whether To Destroy The Last Smallpox Virus, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The target problem to be examined is smallpox. Specifically, what should we (the United States and the entire world) now do with the last known residual samples of the virus that causes this uniquely horrific disease? The illness itself has virtually disappeared from the catalogue of human afflictions: due to a stunningly imaginative, concerted, and resolute campaign of the World Health Organization (WHO) through the 1970s, no one has contracted this deadly impairment for twenty-five years. Yet the causative element, an insidious scourge known as the variola virus, still remains, housed for now in high-security freezers at the U.S. Centers …

Judging Environmental Law, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The title of this Essay, "Judging Environmental Law," evokes several different themes. On the one hand, the title presents an occasion to discuss the role of judges in environmental law. On the other hand, it offers an opportunity to judge environmental law itself: whether environmental law is guilty, as charged by some in industry, of overreaching in its regulatory requirements; or, whether environmental law is instead guilty, as charged by some environmentalists, of underreaching, by failing to address pressing pollution control and natural resource management concerns. Finally, the title of the Essay possibly presents an occasion for a more theoretical …

The Lawyer's Role(S) In Deliberative Democracy, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this paper I will explore the idea of a "neutral" lawyer who may have neither "client" (in the conventional sense of client) to represent nor advocacy to perform, yet still be functioning fully as a lawyer or "learned professional" schooled in the law. Indeed, in this paper I will suggest that lawyers may be especially useful in performing a variety of "new" functions that depart from traditional conceptions of the lawyer's role, but which lawyers may be especially well suited to perform. It may be counter-cultural to think of lawyers as "consensus builders," rather than as advocates or makers …

Remembrance Of Things Past? The Relationship Of Past To Future In Pursuing Justice In Mediation, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article I seek to explore, not resolve, some of the issues and tensions in the role of temporality in achieving justice through mediative processes and to suggest some correctives at the practice level, as well as encourage some deeper thinking at the theoretical level. I focus here on issues of expression of temporality ("the past") in the "justice and mediation" question, not on issues of how the past should be judged - by the rule of law, culture, or universal human rights principles, or even how it can be "managed" when understandings of the past conflict or cannot …

The Politics Of Embryonic Discourse, Kevin P. Quinn

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In our brave new world of stem cells, clones, and parthenotes,l how should we talk about early human embryos? In fashioning a response to this very thorny question, Ann Kiessling has a core message. It is: (1) that new science produces "new" conceptuses; (2) that science and scientists have failed to differentiate (with appropriate clarity) these new ex vivo conceptuses from those created in vivo; (3) that new, more appropriate and scientifically-informed, terms are necessary; and (4) that this new language should transform the public discourse about human embryos. No one would deny that the subtleties of human embryology are …

Aliens, The Internet, And "Purposeful Availment": A Reassessment Of Fifth Amendment Limits On Personal Jurisdiction, Wendy Collins Perdue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article first considers the Fourteenth Amendment cases and argues that the constitutional limits on the jurisdictional authority of state courts reflect a view about the limits of state authority. It then turns to the Fifth Amendment and, after considering the practices of other nations and lessons from prescriptive jurisdiction, argues that the United States's sovereign authority should allow it to assert personal jurisdiction solely on the basis of effects in the United States, without a requirement of "purposeful availment." It further argues that concerns about reasonableness should be addressed at the subconstitutional level. This Article is built on two …

Lecture Commentary On Islam And International Law: Toward A Positive Mutual Engagement To Realize Shared Ideals, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

An-Na'im as I read him is postulating a process theory when it comes to the relationship of Islamic law to international law. He is advocating a bargaining relationship in which the Islamic side and the international side meet as equals in negotiating their contributions to the universal international. This process-based equality can only be achieved if, first, the international eschews its We sternness and the Islamic retains its internal sense of diversity, indeed secularism. The international abandons its Westernness when it abandons its pre-World War II impulse to colonize, imperialize, and hegemonize, acts which at heart render equality in the …

A Theory Of Crimes Against Humanity, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The answer I offer in this Article is that crimes against humanity assault one particular aspect of human being, namely our character as political animals. We are creatures whose nature compels us to live socially, but who cannot do so without artificial political organization that inevitably poses threats to our well-being, and, at the limit, to our very survival. Crimes against humanity represent the worst of those threats; they are the limiting case of politics gone cancerous. Precisely because we cannot live without politics, we exist under the permanent threat that politics will turn cancerous and the indispensable institutions of …

The Dark Side Of Grutter, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Liberals have generally cheered the Supreme Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger as validating the continued use of affirmative action in the struggle against racial injustice. But the Supreme Court's modern race cases rest on a misunderstanding of the nature of contemporary racial discrimination. From Brown, to Bakke, to Grutter, the Court has advanced a colorblind conception of racial equality that treats race-conscious affirmative action as constitutionally suspect, because it deviates from an aspirational baseline of race neutrality that lies at the core of the equal protection clause. However, race neutrality is a hopelessly artificial concept in …

The Gifts Of Mary Dunlap (1949-2003), Wendy Webster Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I guess it never really occurred to me that Mary was mortal. It certainly never crossed my mind that I would somehow be around, alive and kicking, in a world without Mary in it. Mary Cynthia Dunlap, larger than life, a force of nature, who filled up a room with her presence, her tall solid self, her waving arms, her energy, her laugh, her voice, her words and words and more words, her hair that (of course) stood straight up on her head, electrified. Mary who, Saint Frances-like, rescued birds and fed them in her big palms, loved dogs and …

Pari Passu And A Distressed Sovereign's Rational Choices, William W. Bratton

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part I describes the disruptive role the pari passu clause plays in sovereign debt compositions, stating the case favoring the narrow reading. Part II reconsiders the economic incentives in play at the time lenders close loans to sovereigns, stating a case for the broad reading. Part III works the competing readings through the legal framework of bond contract interpretation. The exercise shows that the matter comes down to a choice between an ex ante reading, conducted as of the time the contract is executed and delivered, and an ex post reading, conducted as of the later time of distress. The …

Analyzing The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Of 2002, Roy A. Schotland

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ("BCRA") is the laboratory in campaign finance law. When analyzing BCRA, it is important to look at the Missouri state law that led to the Supreme Court case, Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC. In Shrink Missouri, five justices upheld Missouri's relatively low simple limit on contributions to candidates. The law in Missouri limited contributions by anyone to candidates, but there was no limit as to how much a person or entity could give to a political party committee or to a political action committee (PAC). Further, there was no limit on how …

Panel Ii: Public Appropriation Of Private Rights: Pursuing Internet Copyright Violators, Rebecca Tushnet, Michael Carlinsky, Justin Hughes, Sonia Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It seems to me that the story of music on the Internet over the past five or six years is the story of two fantasies colliding. The first fantasy is that information wants to be free, that with the Internet we can throwaway all the bottles and just have the wine and the free flow of data, which apparently was generated from somewhere and then circulated forever. So, there was that fantasy, that we would not need copyright anymore because everything would be available to everyone. The other fantasy is the record companies' fantasy of perfect control, that there would …

Just Do It, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Racial injustice has always been a problem in the United States. The most salient victims of the Nation's discrimination against racial minorities have included indigenous Indians, Chinese immigrants, Japanese-American citizens, Latinos, and of course blacks. But as the current war on terrorism illustrates, under the right conditions, almost any racial group can come within the scope of America's discriminatory focus. It is common to suppose that that there is a difference between the progressive and the conservative ends of the political spectrum concerning the issue of race. However, those commonly accepted differences pale in comparison to the overriding similarity that …

The Secret Life Of The Political Question Doctrine, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

"Questions, in their nature political, or which are, by the constitution and laws, submitted to the executive, can never be made in this court."

The irony, of course, is that Marbury v. Madison, itself, "made" a political question, and the answer the Court gave was deeply political as well. As everyone reading this essay knows, the case arose out of a bitter political controversy, and the opinion for the Court was a carefully crafted political document - "a masterwork of indirection," according to Robert McCloskey's well-known characterization, "a brilliant example of Chief Justice Marshall's capacity to sidestep danger while seeming …

From Legal Disputes To Conflict Resolution And Human Problem Solving: Legal Dispute Resolution In A Multidisciplinary Context, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although this essay traces my own intellectual journey as a teacher and scholar of "alternative dispute resolution," it describes as well the evolution of the field of dispute resolution (rooted in legal studies) to the now broader field of conflict resolution that encompasses the study of disputes and conflicts, not only when they "come to law" in legal disputes, but in all forms of human conflict, including the interpersonal, domestic, and international. While my work began in legal disputing, it quickly moved to the more interdisciplinary study of conflict resolution when I sought better solutions to human problems than those …