Law Commons^™

Comment, Post-War Iraq: Prosecuting Saddam Hussein, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

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On January 9, 2004, the United States officially declared Saddam Hussein a prisoner of war and indicated that it will turn him over to a special court established by the Iraqi Governing Council under the direction of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Yet, prosecution in this forum fails to ensure proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as required by Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and does not prohibit the death penalty. Further, such prosecution requires the application of Iraqi criminal law and procedure where otherwise unarticulated in the statute creating it. This might allow …

Apprendi And Federalism, Peter B. Rutledge

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Since the emergence of the Apprendi majority and its newly minted (and evolving) constitutional limits on criminal punishment, many commentators have begun to address its implications for the horizontal relations between the branches of government — between legislators and courts, between judges and juries, and between judges and prosecutors. Less widely addressed, though equally (if not more) important, has been the Apprendi doctrine’s implications for vertical relations, particularly federalism.

This essay seeks to begin to fill that lacuna in the literature. Part I explains how Apprendi undermines principles of federalism, a curious tension because several of Apprendi’s strongest defenders, particularly …

Lyman Ray Patterson: Scholar And Gentle Man, Paul M. Kurtz

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The University of Georgia School of Law community and the legal academy lost a dear friend, an outstanding scholar, and a wonderful colleague and teacher when Ray Patterson died after a long career and a short illness in November 2003.

Guantánamo, Diane Marie Amann

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This article addresses not only offshore detainees at Guantánamo and elsewhere, but also the two Americans and one Qatari held in the United States as enemy combatants. It focuses on the critical issues in U.S. litigation - extraterritoriality and deference - yet also examines the scope of detention and the propriety of proposed special tribunals. After demonstrating that in the wake of September 11, 2001, no U.S. constitutional precedent governed these issues, the article then looks to norms drawn from international humanitarian and human rights law to aid decision. The Supreme Court increasingly consults such external norms as persuasive authority; …

Defining Democracy: The Supreme Court's Campaign Finance Dilemma, Lori A. Ringhand

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On December 10, 2003 the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in McConnell v. FEC. In McConnell, the Court was asked to determine the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ("BCRA"). A divided Court, in a deeply fractured decision in which six justices wrote individual opinions, upheld the major provisions of the legislation. Yet despite the almost 300 pages of reasoning provided by the Court, and a voluminous record developed by the district court, the Justices could not agree on what purportedly is the central issue in campaign finance law: whether the challenged regulations were necessary …

Academic Law Library Directors’ Law School Courses, Ann Puckett

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Summarizes informal survey of law library directors concerning topics on which they have taught courses.

Affirmative Action In The Workplace: The Signficance Of Grutter?, Rebecca H. White

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The Supreme Court's decision last term in Grutter v. Bollinger answered important questions about the affirmative use of race in the educational context. I have been asked by the editors of the Kentucky Law Journal to explore the impact the decision is like to have on affirmative action in a different context--employment. Simply put, to what extent does Grutter affect a public or private employer's ability to voluntarily adopt an affirmative action plan in order to diversify its workplace? The short answer, of course, is that the Grutter decision does not directly apply to the affirmative use of race or …

Local Government Liability Litigation: Numerical Nuances, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

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Georgia local government law not only encompasses a forbidding substantive expanse; it occupies a dominating presence before the Georgia appellate courts. Those courts are called to resolve all manner of litigation erupting from citizen exposure to government at its first level. The controversies feature issues both recurring and unique; they represent nothing less than the essence of law in daily life. An annual effort to chronicle those controversies over a good number of years reveals two (among many) distinct facets. First, local government liability has consistently dwarfed all other litigated issues; and second, this pervading characteristic emits no signs of …

Education Finance Litigation: A Review Of Recent High Court Decisions And Their Likely Impact On Future Litigation, Anne Dupre, John Dayton, Christine Kiracofe

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This article addresses the impact that school funding litigation has had in shaping public schools across the United States. It serves as an update to a 2001 article titled Serrano and It’s Progeny: An Analysis of 30 Years of School Funding Litigation, which reviewed school funding litigation since the Serrano v. Priest decision. This article updates that research by providing brief reviews of the most recent and significant school funding litigation decisions, including the most recent decisions in Claremont v. Governor, James v. Alabama Coalition for Equality, Tennessee Small School Systems v. McWhorter, Lake View v. Huckabee, DeRolph v. …