Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 70

Full-Text Articles in Law

Book Review, Robert J. Cottrol Jan 2007

Book Review, Robert J. Cottrol

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Brazilian legal history has been a challenging and somewhat under-explored field. It presents often daunting challenges, requiring the uncovering of opaque and often conflicting legal doctrine and the ability to grapple with even harder to discern questions concerning the law’s application and impact on Brazilian history. The field has been under explored by Brazilian legal scholars who have tended to focus their historical investigations on the development of continental civil law. It has also suffered from neglect by historians, Brazilian and foreign, who have largely concentrated their efforts on the political, social and economic history of the South American colossus. …


Erie's Constitutional Source, Bradford R. Clark Jan 2007

Erie's Constitutional Source, Bradford R. Clark

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The constitutional rationale of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins has remained elusive for almost seventy years. Three decades ago, Paul Mishkin argued in a brief but influential article that Erie rests on "constitutional principles which restrain the power of the federal courts to intrude upon the states' determination of substantive policy in areas which the Constitution and Congress have left to state competence." Professor Mishkin wrote his article in response to John Hart Ely's insightful analysis of Erie published earlier the same year. Mishkin understood Erie as imposing a constitutional restraint on the federal courts, but read Ely as treating …


The Second National Risk And Culture Study: Making Sense Of - And Making Progress In - The American Culture War Of Fact, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Paul Slovic, John Gastil, Geoffrey L. Cohen Jan 2007

The Second National Risk And Culture Study: Making Sense Of - And Making Progress In - The American Culture War Of Fact, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Paul Slovic, John Gastil, Geoffrey L. Cohen

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Cultural Cognition refers to the disposition to conform one's beliefs about societal risks to one's preferences for how society should be organized. Based on surveys and experiments involving some 5,000 Americans, the Second National Risk and Culture Study presents empirical evidence of the effect of this dynamic in generating conflict about global warming, school shootings, domestic terrorism, nanotechnology, and the mandatory vaccination of school-age girls against HPV, among other issues. The Study also presents evidence of risk-communication strategies that counteract cultural cognition. Because nuclear power affirms rather than threatens the identity of persons who hold individualist values, for example, proposing …


Culture And Identity-Protective Cognition: Explaining The White Male Effect In Risk Perception, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, John Gastil, Paul Slovic, C.K. Mertz200 Jan 2007

Culture And Identity-Protective Cognition: Explaining The White Male Effect In Risk Perception, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, John Gastil, Paul Slovic, C.K. Mertz200

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Why do white men fear various risks less than women and minorities? Known as the white male effect, this pattern is well documented but poorly understood. This paper proposes a new explanation: identity-protective cognition. Putting work on the cultural theory of risk together with work on motivated cognition in social psychology suggests that individuals selectively credit and dismiss asserted dangers in a manner supportive of their preferred form of social organization. This dynamic, it is hypothesized, drives the white male effect, which reflects the risk skepticism that hierarchical and individualistic white males display when activities integral to their cultural identities …


The Hidden Beauty Of The Quadratic Market Scoring Rule: A Uniform Liquidity Market Maker, With Variations, Michael B. Abramowicz Jan 2007

The Hidden Beauty Of The Quadratic Market Scoring Rule: A Uniform Liquidity Market Maker, With Variations, Michael B. Abramowicz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The logarithmic market scoring rule has emerged as a standard automated market maker. The approach is particularly useful for combinatorial markets, but this article argues that for a variety of prediction market applications, the quadratic market scoring rule may be more sensible. With that rule, liquidity is uniform across the probability or prediction spectrum. Moreover, the rule can easily be adapted for contexts in which greater liquidity is desired for some portion of the probability or prediction spectrum. For each binary or linear outcome being predicted, two separate markets are used, so that a forecaster can always buy shares in …


Easier Said Than Done? A Corporate Law Theory For Actualizing Social Responsibility Rhetoric, Lisa M. Fairfax Jan 2007

Easier Said Than Done? A Corporate Law Theory For Actualizing Social Responsibility Rhetoric, Lisa M. Fairfax

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Post Enron has witnessed renewed concern regarding corporations' failure to behave responsibly, both in terms of their ethical responsibility and in terms of their responsibilities to advance issues beyond financial matters, such as those that impact employees, customers, and the broader community. Many scholars, legislators, and members of the business community have struggled to find strategies for restoring corporate responsibility. This Article argues that a corporation's own words or rhetoric may be useful in solving its behavioral defects. In fact, the vast majority of corporations issue statements or otherwise engage in rhetoric that suggest a commitment to issues and concerns …


Depiction Of The Regulator-Regulated Entity Relationship In The Chemical Industry: Deterrence-Based V. Cooperative Enforcement, Robert L. Glicksman, Dietrich Earnhart Jan 2007

Depiction Of The Regulator-Regulated Entity Relationship In The Chemical Industry: Deterrence-Based V. Cooperative Enforcement, Robert L. Glicksman, Dietrich Earnhart

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

For years, scholars and environmental policymakers have conducted a spirited debate about the comparative merits of two different approaches to enforcement of the nation's environmental laws - the coercive (or deterrence-based) and cooperative approaches. Supporters of the coercive model regard the deterrence of violations as the fundamental purpose of environmental enforcement. These supporters also regard the imposition of sanctions, which make it less costly for regulated entities to comply with their regulatory responsibilities and avoid enforcement than to fail to comply and run the risk of enforcement, as the most effective way for inducing regulated entities to comply with their …


A Jurisprudence Of Ideology, Robert L. Glicksman, James May Jan 2007

A Jurisprudence Of Ideology, Robert L. Glicksman, James May

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Chief Justice Rehnquist figures prominently in recent historic environmental case law addressed by the Supreme Court. Although generally critical of federal environmental laws, the skepticism stemmed from an interest in the protection of state rights and protection of private property rights rather than a general challenge to federal regulation. His jurisprudence reflects three “guideposts” to consider environmental concerns: limiting the scope of federal power, protecting state sovereignty from encroachment by the federal government, and protecting the rights of private property owners against intrusions resulting from regulation by government. In limiting the scope of federal power, Rehnquist specifically supported limitations on …


The Worldwide Popular Revolt Against Proportionality In Self-Defense Law, Renée Lettow Lerner Jan 2007

The Worldwide Popular Revolt Against Proportionality In Self-Defense Law, Renée Lettow Lerner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article examines popular dissatisfaction with the proportionality standard in self-defense law, which holds that the prevention of harm cannot be achieved by causing harm that is disproportionate. Legal elites, such as prosecutors, judges, and legal scholars, have long championed versions of this standard. But there is an increasingly widespread movement in the United States and Europe to modify elite notions of proportionality.

Common to these movements is the desire to replace complicated balancing tests with clearer rules, which would limit the discretion of prosecutors and judges, and to permit use of deadly force against attackers in more situations. Fueling …


Improper Use Of The Trial Judge As Voucher: Improper Use Of Plea Agreements To Vouch, Stephen A. Saltzburg Jan 2007

Improper Use Of The Trial Judge As Voucher: Improper Use Of Plea Agreements To Vouch, Stephen A. Saltzburg

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

These articles discuss United States v. Harlow, 444 F.3d 1255 (10th Cir. 2006), in connection with: (1) whether a prosecutor acts improperly when he or she uses the trial judge to vouch for the credibility of prosecution witnesses; and (2) the impermissible use of plea agreements to vouch for the credibility of a witness.


Wal-Mart And The Separation Of Banking And Commerce, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr. Jan 2007

Wal-Mart And The Separation Of Banking And Commerce, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

During 2005-2006, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and several other commercial firms applied to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for permission to acquire FDIC-insured industrial loan companies (ILCs). Those applications were opposed by business groups, labor unions, community activists, and members of Congress. In January 2007, the FDIC imposed a one-year moratorium on all acquisitions of ILCs by commercial firms and asked Congress to determine whether such acquisitions should be prohibited.

As the FDIC noted, acquisitions of ILCs by commercial firms raise three important policy issues, which are addressed in this Article. First, commercial ownership of ILCs conflicts with the policy …


Guide To International Environmental Law, Dinah L. Shelton, Alexandre Kiss Jan 2007

Guide To International Environmental Law, Dinah L. Shelton, Alexandre Kiss

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This book aims to present the essential elements of international environmental law. The attached document includes a page memorializing the life of Alexandre Kiss (who passed away on March 22, 2007); a forward; a table of contents, author information, abbreviations, and Chapter 1, "An Introduction to International Law." The book provides a general overview of why and how the international system elaborates environmental obligations and monitors compliance with them. Second, it discusses the relationship between international obligations and national and local law, with particular reference to federal systems. It indicates another interrelationship, pointing out the influence national law has on …


Incrementalism: Eroding The Impediments To A Global Public Procurement Market, Christopher R. Yukins, Steven L. Schooner Jan 2007

Incrementalism: Eroding The Impediments To A Global Public Procurement Market, Christopher R. Yukins, Steven L. Schooner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Following decades of international negotiations and agreements, the world's multi-trillion-dollar public procurement market appears to be maturing into a free, open international market. To reach that point, nations must lower a broad array of barriers to trade in procurement. As the U.S. experience demonstrates, purchasing agencies, laboring under the constraints of domestic preferences, may effectively seek to promote free trade. At the same time, a variety of international organizations, from the World Trade Organization to Transparency International, have developed tools and instruments - including model codes and explicit nondiscrimination agreements - that ease barriers to trade in procurement. To accelerate …


An Introduction To The History Of International Human Rights Law, Dinah L. Shelton Jan 2007

An Introduction To The History Of International Human Rights Law, Dinah L. Shelton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

As part of a lecture series given at the International Institute of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, France, in July 2003, the author presents an overview of the history of international human rights law. The author explores numerous religious, political, cultural, philosophical, economic and intellectual movements throughout history that have informed and guided the development of human rights law on the global stage. In doing so, the author examines the moral and ethical dimensions which underpin international human rights law, including what she defines as the innate human desire for protection from abuse. The author highlights the world's most significant historical …


Global Climate Change And The Risks To Coastal Areas From Hurricanes And Rising Sea Levels: The Costs Of Doing Nothing, Robert L. Glicksman Jan 2007

Global Climate Change And The Risks To Coastal Areas From Hurricanes And Rising Sea Levels: The Costs Of Doing Nothing, Robert L. Glicksman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, attention has focused on a pair of threats to low-lying coastal areas. Scientists have begun a debate over the possible impact of global climate change on hurricane intensity. Some scientists take the position that recent increases in hurricane intensity in the North Atlantic are due, at least in part, to increases in sea surface temperatures caused by human-induced global climate change. Others believe that those increases are largely due to natural fluctuations in weather patterns such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. There is little debate over a second threat to coastal areas. The broad …


The Comparative Effectiveness Of Government Interventions On Environmental Performance In The Chemical Industry, Robert L. Glicksman, Dietrich Earnhart Jan 2007

The Comparative Effectiveness Of Government Interventions On Environmental Performance In The Chemical Industry, Robert L. Glicksman, Dietrich Earnhart

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Effective enforcement is crucial to achieving the objectives of the federal environmental statutes. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recognized the importance of effective enforcement, calling it a critical aspect of environmental governance and committing itself to the maintenance of a "credible deterrent" to regulatory violations. Despite the central role of enforcement to achievement of environmental statutory goals, relatively little is known about why regulated entities either do or do not comply. In particular, empirical studies of environmental enforcement are not plentiful, in part because comprehensive data on compliance and enforcement have been difficult to obtain. Although EPA and …


Nothing Is Real: Protecting The Regulatory Void Through Federal Preemption By Inaction, Robert L. Glicksman Jan 2007

Nothing Is Real: Protecting The Regulatory Void Through Federal Preemption By Inaction, Robert L. Glicksman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Whether a federal statute preempts state law has important implications for the allocation of power between the federal and state governments. One aspect of preemption doctrine that has received relatively little scholarly attention is whether the federal government's failure to act is capable of preempting state law and, if so, when. In the regulatory context, Congress must first decide whether as a normative matter it should preempt state law despite its decision not to regulate activities regulated by states. Once Congress has done so, the courts may need to interpret federal legislation to determine whether Congress has decided to preempt …


Marriages Of Convenience: International Marriage Brokers, 'Mail-Order Brides,' And Domestic Servitude, Suzanne H. Jackson Jan 2007

Marriages Of Convenience: International Marriage Brokers, 'Mail-Order Brides,' And Domestic Servitude, Suzanne H. Jackson

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (IMBRA) expands federal regulation of the burgeoning "mail-order bride" industry by requiring international matchmaking agencies to conduct minimal criminal background checks on their U.S.-based clients and disclose the results to participating women, obtaining their signed consent before releasing any contact information to male clients. Two federal suits challenging IMBRA complain that it violates equal protection guarantees by exempting not-for-profit and religious matchmaking agencies, and violates First Amendment protections for commercial speech by regulating the agencies' communications with its clients. Defenders of the law's constitutionality accurately but incompletely describe IMBRA's purpose as preventing …


Campaign Speech And Contextual Analysis, Miriam Galston Jan 2007

Campaign Speech And Contextual Analysis, Miriam Galston

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Recent developments - such as a wave of FEC enforcement actions, the FEC's publication of its case by case approach to determining political committee status, and the Supreme Court's decision in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life - have made it necessary to reconsider the kinds of campaign finance reforms desirable and constitutionally permissible. This Article examines the proposition that, if section 527 groups and groups exempt under section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code are part of a network of commonly managed organizations, then the FEC should decide whether they need to register as political committees under the Federal …


A Concise Guide To The Federalist Papers As A Source Of The Original Meaning Of The United States Constitution, Gregory E. Maggs Jan 2007

A Concise Guide To The Federalist Papers As A Source Of The Original Meaning Of The United States Constitution, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Many lawyers, judges, law clerks, and legal scholars feel unprepared to make or evaluate claims about the original meaning of the Constitution based on the Federalist Papers. The typical law school curriculum acknowledges the importance of the Federalist Papers - usually by assigning Supreme Court cases which cite them - but does not treat the essays in depth. As a result, many law students and graduates still need accessible information about the creation, content, and distribution of the essays, manageable summaries of the theories under which the Federalist Papers might provide evidence of the original meaning, and instruction on possible …


Assessing The Legality Of Counterterrorism Measures Without Characterizing Them As Law Enforcement Or Military Action, Gregory E. Maggs Jan 2007

Assessing The Legality Of Counterterrorism Measures Without Characterizing Them As Law Enforcement Or Military Action, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this article, I develop three theses. First, I claim that disagreements about the legality of counterterrorism measures commonly stem from disagreements about whether to characterize the measures as law enforcement efforts or as military actions. Observers who see the measures as methods of controlling crime assess their lawfulness differently from those who see them as a form of warfare against terrorists because criminal law enforcement rules differ substantially from the laws of war. With many specific examples, I show that disputes about legality based on disagreements over characterization have arisen in at least eight different subject areas, ranging from …


A Complaint About Payment Law Under The U.C.C.: What You See Is Often Not What You Get, Gregory E. Maggs Jan 2007

A Complaint About Payment Law Under The U.C.C.: What You See Is Often Not What You Get, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this Essay, Professor Maggs observes that many provisions of U.C.C. Articles 3, 4, 4A, and 5 are misleading. Although the provisions express certain rules, these rules often actually do not apply because the parties have waived them, because the parties have no practical way to enforce them, or because they are predicated on unrealistic assumptions. Professor Maggs laments that this discrepancy between what the U.C.C. says and reality may have deceived the state legislatures that voted to enact the U.C.C., that it may impose costs on businesses and consumers, and that it clearly hinders the education of lawyers and …


The Danger Of Underdeveloped Patent Prospects, Michael B. Abramowicz Jan 2007

The Danger Of Underdeveloped Patent Prospects, Michael B. Abramowicz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Commentators have long recognized that much of the work of commercializing an invention occurs after a patent issues. They have not recognized, however, that by the time market conditions make commercialization potentially attractive, the remaining patent term might be sufficiently short such that a patentee will not develop an invention to the extent that the patentee would if more patent term remained. This concern about patent underdevelopment provides a counterweight to patent prospect theory, which urges that patents be issued relatively early in the invention process. While the patent system reduces this risk by requiring a substantial degree of achievement …


A Collective Action Perspective On Ceiling Preemption By Federal Environmental Regulation: The Case Of Global Climate Change, Robert L. Glicksman, Richard E. Levy Jan 2007

A Collective Action Perspective On Ceiling Preemption By Federal Environmental Regulation: The Case Of Global Climate Change, Robert L. Glicksman, Richard E. Levy

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In an era of regulatory skepticism, proponents of regulation in general and environmental regulation in particular face a number of new political and legal hurdles, particularly at the federal level. Frustrated with federal inaction or weak federal regulation, it is increasingly common for states and local governments to adopt environmental laws that seek to provide greater environmental protection. The critical question is when federal environmental law provides a ceiling, preempting such state regulatory programs. In this article, which is part of a forthcoming symposium on federal preemption in the Northwestern Law Review, Professors Glicksman and Levy develop a framework for …


The Future Of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, And Privacy On The Internet, Daniel J. Solove Jan 2007

The Future Of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, And Privacy On The Internet, Daniel J. Solove

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This is the complete text of Daniel J. Solove's book, THE FUTURE OF REPUTATION: GOSSIP, RUMOR, AND PRIVACY ON THE INTERNET (Full Text) (Yale University Press, October 2007).

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there's a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives - often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false - will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, …


Ensuring A 'Yes-Pets' Rule, Joan Schaffner Jan 2007

Ensuring A 'Yes-Pets' Rule, Joan Schaffner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

For many people, their companion animal is their "life-line." Almost 65% of all US households have a companion animal. Moreover, it is well-documented that living with a companion animal is therapeutic. Unfortunately, obtaining housing that allows companion animals can be very difficult. It is common for rental leases to prohibit companion animals. Moreover, many mobile home parks, cooperatives, condominiums and homeowners associations are banning companion animals, leaving fewer and fewer opportunities for people to benefit from the love of a companion animal. Last but not least, many homeless animals are needlessly destroyed because no-pet rules eliminate options for placing them. …


The Many Faces Of Darlene Jespersen, Michael Selmi Jan 2007

The Many Faces Of Darlene Jespersen, Michael Selmi

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay was written for a symposium on the case Jespersen v. Harrah's Operating Co., in which Darlene Jespersen challenged Harrah's policy that required its female employees to wear makeup. In this essay, I explore the applicable case law, focusing specifically on the emerging law of sexual stereotyping to explain why the law was unwilling to recognize Jespersen's claim. In addition, I suggest that Jespersen's case is symptomatic of the way in which we have come to expect too much both from work and from courts. The workplace is typically not a place to express our identities and the fact …


Judicial Interpretation In The Cost-Benefit Crucible, Jonathan R. Siegel Jan 2007

Judicial Interpretation In The Cost-Benefit Crucible, Jonathan R. Siegel

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article responds to Professor Adrian Vermeule's new book, Judging Under Uncertainty. Professor Vermeule argues that (1) no one can empirically determine whether judicial use of legislative history or other interpretive methods that go beyond simple enforcement of plain text has any positive net benefits, but (2) we do know that such interpretive methods impose costs, and therefore (3) courts should discard such interpretive methods. This article suggests that (1) it is far from clear how costly these interpretive methods are, (2) it is also not clear that discarding them would result in any cost savings, both because of costs …


New Legal Fictions, Peter J. Smith Jan 2007

New Legal Fictions, Peter J. Smith

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

There was a time when judges routinely deployed legal fictions, which Lon Fuller famously defined as false statements not intended to deceive, in order to temper the disruptive effect of changes in legal doctrine. In an age of positive law, such classic legal fictions are significantly less common. But they have been replaced by new legal fictions.

In fashioning legal rules, judges rely with surprising frequency on false, debatable, or untested factual premises. At times, of course, such false premises simply reflect judicial ignorance. But there is an increasingly large body of empirical research available to judges, and more often …


Technology And Pornography, Dawn C. Nunziato Jan 2007

Technology And Pornography, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Over the past decade, legislators and industry players have attempted to employ technology to restrict the availability to minors of sexually-themed Internet content. Legislative efforts have relied on adult verification and software filtering technology. The constitutionality of such schemes generally depends on the level of sophistication, efficacy, and deployment of adult verification technology, the burdens that the required use of such technology imposes on content providers and Internet end users, and availability of less restrictive but equally effective alternatives for achieving the government's interest. In the case of both the CDA and COPA, challengers pointed to the less restrictive alternative …