Law Commons^™

Terry Stops And Frisks: The Troubling Use Of Common Sense In A World Of Empirical Data, David A. Harris, David Rudovsky

Articles

The investigative detention doctrine first announced in Terry v. Ohio and amplified over the past fifty years has been much analyzed, praised, and criticized from a number of perspectives. Significantly, however, over this time period commentators have only occasionally questioned the Supreme Court’s “common sense” judgments regarding the factors sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion for stops and frisks. For years, the Court has provided no empirical basis for its judgments, due in large part to the lack of reliable data. Now, with the emergence of comprehensive data on these police practices, much can be learned about the predictive power of …

Inequitable Administration: Documenting Family For Tax Purposes, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

Family can bring us joy, and it can bring us grief. It can also bring us tax benefits and tax detriments. Often, as a means of ensuring compliance with Internal Revenue Code provisions that turn on a family relationship, taxpayers are required to document their relationship with a family member. Most visibly, taxpayers are denied an additional personal exemption for a child or other dependent unless they furnish the individual’s name, Social Security number, and relationship to the taxpayer.

In this article, I undertake the first systematic examination of these documentation requirements. Given the privileging of the “traditional” family throughout …

Parallel Courts In Post-Conflict Kosovo, Elena Baylis

Articles

Even as American attention is focused on Iraq's struggle to rebuild its political and legal systems in the face of violent sectarian divisions, another fractured society - Kosovo - has begun negotiations to resolve the question of its political independence. Kosovo's efforts to establish multi-ethnic rule of law in the context of persistent ethnic divisions offer lessons in transitional justice and in managing legal pluralism for Iraq and other states.

In Kosovo today, two parallel judicial systems each claim sole jurisdiction over the province. One system was established by the United Nations administration in Kosovo, while the other system is …

The Lugano Case In The European Court Of Justice: Evolving European Union Competence In Private International Law, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

On October 19, 2004, the European Court of Justice held its first en banc hearing since the 2004 enlargement to twenty-five Member States. The case was Opinion 1/03, involving a request by the Council of the European Union on whether the Community has exclusive or shared competence to conclude the Lugano Convention. While the case on its face deals only with a single convention, it has far broader implications and is likely to influence the development of private international law and private law on a Community level for years to come. This brief article traces the origins of the issues …

The Rule Of Law: China's Skepticism And The Rule Of People, Pat K. Chew

Articles

The West believes that without formal legal rules (the rule of law), how society operates is not transparent. This opaqueness in how things get done discourages trade, including foreign investment, which in turn makes overall economic development more difficult. Instead of predictable legal rules, the fear is that the void will be filled with unpredictable and arbitrary human indiscretions. Furthermore, the West believes that the absence of the rule of law makes the basic protection of human and civil rights problematic.

However, the Western view of the rule of law is not the only model. Alternative cultural assumptions about the …

Comparative Forum Non Conveniens And The Hague Judgments Convention, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This article begins with a discussion of the application of the forum non conveniens doctrine in four common law legal systems. It then briefly notes related concepts applied in the courts of two civil law systems. This discussion is followed in Part IV by a brief history of the negotiations at the Hague Conference on Private International Law for a Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters and a review of Articles 21 and 22 of the Interim Text of that Convention created at the June 2001 portion of the Diplomatic Conference. This review allows conclusions …

International Trade Law And The Arbitration Of Administrative Law Matters: Farrel V. U.S. International Trade Commission, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

With support from the executive branch, Congress, and the courts, arbitration has become an increasingly popular method of international dispute resolution. While agreements to arbitrate traditionally were frowned upon, particularly when the dispute involved certain “public law” or “statutory” matters, the situation has changed dramatically in the past few decades. United States courts now routinely order arbitration of disputes implicating important policy issues in securities, antitrust, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (“RICO”), and employment law matters. By the end of the 1980’s, the presence of a public or “statutory” issue seemed no longer to be a distinguishing factor; arbitration, when …