Law Commons^™

Putting The Community In Communication: Dissolving The Conflict Between Freedom Of Expression And Copyright, Carys Craig

Carys Craig

This paper is concerned with the relationship between freedom of expression and copyright law — and, more specifically, with what this relationship reveals about the nature and purpose of the copyright interest. I argue that the source of the apparent conflict between copyright and free expression is the prevailing characterization of both as individual rights vested in the liberal subject. The key to dissolving the conflict lies in the recognition of the social values that these rights affirm: the value that we attach to communication, to interaction between members of society and to participation in a social dialogue. If copyright …

Demanding Individual Rights And Civil Liberties: An Iranian Approach, Zahra Takhshid

Zahra Takhshid

Iran has a long history of social movements and revolutions. The 1906 Constitutional Revolution led to the recognition of individual rights as part of Iran’s first Constitution. With the Islamic Revolution of 1979, a new constitution was enacted, which devoted one chapter to “the Rights of the Nation.”

The Constitution has introduced several methods to protect the recognized rights: the Guardian Council, the Tribunal of Administrative Justice, and the Commission of Article 90.

In addition to the institutions introduced in the Constitution, the Legislature and the Executive branch proposed new safeguarding procedures and adopted new statutes, which recognized broader range …

Employment Arbitration: Empirical Findings And Research Needs, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] There is vociferous opposition to employers forcing pre-dispute arbitration agreements on employees. Critics argue that employees are not voluntary participants in the process, which they say unfairly favors employers. Advocates of mandatory arbitration dispute these charges and argue that arbitration offers employees and employers significant advantages over litigation. For example, they argue, among other things, that that litigation is not as accessible as arbitration because lawyers will not take low value employment cases on a contingency basis.

Critics of mandatory employment arbitration have moved the debate into the legislative arena. Bills have been introduced in state legislatures and in …

American Workplace Dispute Resolution In The Individual Rights Era, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

This article presents a theoretical conceptualization of the rise of alternative dispute resolution and its impact on American employment relations in the individual rights era. The idea of an industrial relations system advanced by Dunlop is no longer a plausible general approach for understanding American employment relations given the decline of organized labor. This article examines the question of whether a new individual employment rights-based system of employment relations has replaced it. The old New Deal industrial relations system was based on three pillars: labor contracts that provided a web of rules governing the workplace; economic strikes, actual or threatened, …

The Structural Constitutional Principle Of Republican Legitimacy, Mark D. Rosen

Mark D. Rosen

Democracy does not spontaneously occur by citizens gathering to choose laws. Instead, representative democracy takes place within an extensive legal framework that determines such matters as who gets to vote, how campaigns are conducted, and what conditions must be met for representatives to make valid law. Many of the “rules of the road” that operationalize republicanism have been subject to constitutional challenges in recent decades. For example, lawsuits have been brought against partisan gerrymandering—which is partly responsible for the fact that most congressional districts are no longer party competitive, but instead are either safely Republican or safely Democratic—and against onerous …

Whose Public? Which Law? Mapping The Internal/External Distinction In International Law, Peter G. Danchin

Peter G. Danchin

This chapter challenges and problematizes the convergence thesis between sovereignty and human rights which is argued to rest on only a partial understanding of the liberal tradition in international law, a position commonly referred to as “liberal anti-pluralism.” While relying on a contingent and thus contestable conception of individual autonomy, liberal anti-pluralist accounts do not in fact seek to challenge the rationale for public law or public reason itself. To the contrary, such accounts advance a vision of “universal” or “global” social order governed by a “neutral” public law which limits the freedom of its subjects pursuant to the single …

Application Of International Human Rights Law In State And Federal Courts, Connie De La Vega, Stephen Rosenbaum, Kathryn Burke, Sandra Coliver

Connie de la Vega

This article provides a substantive discussion of international human rights law and how it can be used in federal and state courts to protect human rights within and outside the United States. It provides a comprehensive analysis of cases and examples of possible areas in which international human rights standards may be used to interpret United States laws. Specifically, the article seeks to promote more extensive use of international human rights laws by United States lawyers. State and federal courts have traditionally used international law for the application and enforcement of treaties to which the United States has been a …