Law Commons^™

The Jurisdictional Heritage Of The Grand Jury Clause, Roger A. Fairfax Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

For the first 150 years of our constitutional history, a valid grand jury indictment was deemed to be a mandatory prerequisite to a federal court's exercise of criminal subject matter jurisdiction. Under that view of the Grand Jury Clause, a defendant in a federal felony case could neither waive nor forfeit the right to grand jury indictment. A critical examination of the historical evidence reveals that the legal realist criminal procedure reform project of the early twentieth century advanced a pragmatic critique of the usefulness of the grand jury that culminated in a provision of the Federal Rules of Criminal …

A Grand Slam Of Professional Irresponsibility And Judicial Disregard, Stephen A. Saltzburg

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Many examples of bad lawyering and indifferent judicial responses to bad lawyering concern those who seek to raise the standards of professional conduct and assure adequate legal representation for all clients. This article discusses one case (a death penalty prosecution of William Charles Payton for rape, murder and attempted murder in 1981) to illustrate just how poor the performance of lawyers can be and how largely indifferent judges often are to such performances. With the defendant's life on the line, it appears that none of the legally trained professionals at trial did what professional standards required of them. The prosecutor …

Guilt Assuming Hypotheticals: Basic Character Evidence Rules, Stephen A. Saltzburg

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The accused in a criminal case has the right to offer evidence of a pertinent character trait in order to cast doubt on whether he or she would commit the crime charged by the government. This right gives the accused an opportunity to offer predisposition evidence that is otherwise generally inadmissible. Calling a character witness is not without risk, however. The principal risk is that the witness may be cross-examined about specific acts that are inconsistent with the character to which the witness attests. This article discusses Michelson v. United States, and United States v. Pirani, the latter which reminds …

The Fourth Amendment: Internal Revenue Code Or A Body Of Principles?, Stephen A. Saltzburg

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Supreme Court has made the body of Fourth Amendment law too complicated, inconsistent, and confusing. Prior to Mapp v. Ohio, in 1961, the Court focused its attention on federal law enforcement and devoted less of its docket to criminal procedure cases. After Mapp, the Court was called upon to review state cases and forced to deal with the myriad of state law enforcement issues that inevitably arise. Since Mapp, the Court has made the meaning of the relatively few words that constitute the Fourth Amendment extremely complicated, so that the total body of Fourth Amendment law has begun to …

Getting Back To Basics: Some Thoughts On Dignity, Materialism, And A Culture Of Racial Equality, Christopher A. Bracey

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Dignity is the most compelling value in racial reform. Racial inequality is expressed as an ongoing attempt to deny minorities dignity. Dignity requires that to truly have freedom and equality, each of us has equal ability to exercise our fundamental freedoms. In order to ensure that this is possible, persons must possess the material wherewithal to exercise that freedom. The government, in order to combat racial inequality, must ensure that persons have the capability to live a “safe, well-nourished, productive, educated, social, and politically and culturally participatory life of normal length.” This approach requires structural changes in the obligations of …

Review Essay: 'Seeing Beyond The Limits Of International Law,' Jack L. Goldsmith And Eric A. Posner, 'The Limits Of International Law', Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In 'The Limits of International Law,' Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner use the simplifying assumptions of rational choice theory in an attempt to demonstrate that international law has no independent valence whatsoever. Rather, according to the authors, each state single-mindedly pursues its own rational interest and obeys international legal norms only to the extent that such norms serve those pre-existing interests. In this Review Essay, I argue that their vision of international law is deeply flawed. In particular, I take issue with the authors' assumption that states simply have pre-existing unitary interests that they then rationally pursue. First, I argue …

Dialectical Regulation, Territoriality, And Pluralism, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Scholarly and policy debates about territoriality and nation-state sovereignty are turning to the ways in which such concepts might be changing in an increasingly interconnected world of interlocking governance structures and systems of communication. Robert Ahdieh's provocative and generative essay, Dialectical Regulation, 38 Conn. L. Rev. 863 (2005-2006), attempts a model for understanding this new plural order. He argues that intersystemic regulation is now a significant legal reality, and analyzes the types of interactions we would expect to see among these multiple regulatory authorities. Ahdieh aims to define dialectical regulation, in which regulators exist in some kind of formal structural …

Post-Katrina Reconstruction Liability: Exposing The Inferior Risk-Bearer, Steven L. Schooner, Erin Siuda-Pfeffer

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article describes the doctrinal, functional, and moral flaws inherent in the Gulf Coast Recovery Act (GCRA), a United States Senate bill that would provide liability protection to government contractors engaged in disaster relief work in the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina, as well as in future disaster areas. First, the Article discusses the history of the government contractor defense and finds that the protection provided by the GCRA is quite unlike the traditional government contractor defense. This Article further argues that this doctrinal departure cannot be justified on grounds of efficiency or fairness, as the GCRA allocates risk away …

Family, Naomi R. Cahn

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Based on contemporary privacy law, this entry discusses two different aspects of family privacy: (1) the marital relationship and (2) the parent-child relationship. Marital privacy protects several aspects of married life. The first form of marital privacy protects the very decision of whom to marry. While state laws generally establish who may marry whom, the Supreme Court has established the quasi-fundamental nature of the right to marry. The second form of marital privacy involves the right to relational privacy. This constitutionally developed right to marital privacy protects the relationship from undue interference, particularly in the context of sexual decision-making.

There …

Choosing A Text For The Family Law Curriculum Of The Twenty-First Century, Catherine J. Ross

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article describes the Family Law Education Reform (FLER) Project Report and provides recommendations as to how a family law professor should select a course textbook. I note that the FLER Report focuses on the importance of new lawyers being sensitive to gender, race, and class and discuss how a textbook focusing on policy, practice problems, and collaborative skills will satisfy the FLER project’s recommendations.

Constitutional Obstacles To Regulating Violence In The Media, Catherine J. Ross

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This chapter examines whether speech containing violent imagery that is made available to children can be subjected to government regulation that will survive constitutional scrutiny. The first section of this chapter reviews the general limits that the First Amendment places on the government’s power to regulate speech. The second section arguees that violent speech may not be regulated based on its content because “violence” is not one of the limited legal categories constituting “unprotected” speech, such as obscenity.

The third section examines the government’s burden to demonstrate that violent speech harms children before it can regulate such speech, and concludes …

An Introduction To The United States Legal System: Cases And Comments, Alberto M. Benítez

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This casebook introduces non-U.S trained lawyers, law students, and college undergraduates to the intricacies and nuances of our legal system. The world is becoming a smaller place and as a consequence of this globalization, the need for lawyers who are international in perspective and competence is increasing. Whatever one's opinion about globalization, there is no doubt that the U.S. legal system is at the forefront of these changes. This book attempts to compress three years of U.S. legal education into one casebook.

The following materials in this chapter, and throughout this book, will help non-United States law students and pre-law …

The Jec's Estate Tax Report: Myths And Legends, Neil H. Buchanan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Advocates of estate tax repeal often assert that family-run businesses and farms are broken up when heirs are unable to pay the estate tax. This claim has never been proven, but a recent Joint Economic Committee report claims to demonstrate that it is true. I assess the arguments and evidence presented in the JEC report and find that there is nothing in it that proves that the estate tax breaks up family-run businesses and farms. In fact, the most credible source cited by the report suggests that families might have adequate liquid resources to pay the estate tax or even …

Women In The Workplace: Which Women, Which Agenda?, Michael Selmi, Naomi R. Cahn

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Much of the work family literature that has blossomed over the last decade has focused on professional women and has emphasized policy changes that would be of less utility to many other working women and men. In this symposium contribution, we explore the recent data on working time to demonstrate that in today's economy more women are underemployed rather than overemployed. We also demonstrate that although professional women tend to work the longest hours, they also tend to have the greatest means, both in income and workplace benefits, to support them in achieving a workable balance between their work and …

Race In The City: The Triumph Of Diversity And The Loss Of Integration, Michael Selmi

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This symposium piece explores the current state of our cities with a particular emphasis on political power, education and housing, and examines whether our move away from integration and towards diversity has been a trade worth making. Despite the transformation of most of the largest cities to majority-minority status, the latest data indicate that our housing remains deeply segregated, and urban schools deeply troubled, and in many instances, whites have been able to retain political power. The increased emphasis on diversity has not translated into the expected multicultural renaissance. The essay also explores the emerging issues relating to the ascendancy …

A Taxonomy Of Privacy, Daniel J. Solove

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Privacy is a concept in disarray. Nobody can articulate what it means. As one commentator has observed, privacy suffers from an embarrassment of meanings. Privacy is far too vague a concept to guide adjudication and lawmaking, as abstract incantations of the importance of privacy do not fare well when pitted against more concretely-stated countervailing interests.

In 1960, the famous torts scholar William Prosser attempted to make sense of the landscape of privacy law by identifying four different interests. But Prosser focused only on tort law, and the law of information privacy is significantly more vast and complex, extending to Fourth …

A Case Study In Comparative Procurement Law: Assessing Uncitral's Lessons For U.S. Procurement, Christopher R. Yukins

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has commissioned a working group, with delegations from many industrialized and developing nations, to reform and update the UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services. The working group is currently reviewing reforms on a number of fronts. This essay focuses on three areas of reform in particular - electronic communications, electronic reverse auctions, and unrealistically low bidding - to gauge whether lessons from the UNCITRAL debate may be useful for reform in the U.S. procurement system. As the essay reflects, the international debate surrounding UNCITRAL reform does in …

Constitutional Structure, Judicial Discretion, And The Eighth Amendment, Bradford R. Clark

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Supreme Court recently resolved a longstanding split in its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence when it declared that the cruel and unusual punishments clause delegates to federal courts broad discretion to exercise independent judgment to evaluate the propriety of punishments authorized by state law. The Court claimed authority to displace a punishment - however widely employed - based on the Court's own assessment of the penological effectiveness of the punishment and the moral culpability of the particular class of offenders. Notably, the Court did not, and has not in the modern era, attempted to justify its approach in terms of either …

The Relevance Of The Nlra And Labor Organizations In The Post-Industrial Global Economy, Charles B. Craver

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

As the United States continues to transition from a manufacturing to a post-industrial service-oriented economy that is directly affected by global competition, the strength of domestic labor organizations has declined and private sector union membership has fallen to below 8 percent. Most unions continue to behave like the craft and industrial organizations of the mid-1900s. They employ appeals that once worked well for blue collar manufacturing workers to appeal to new-age white collar and service personnel who view traditional unionization as working class. If labor organizations hope to appeal to twenty-first century employees, they must devise strategies that will resonate …

Privacy Issues Affecting Employers, Employees, And Labor Organizations, Charles B. Craver

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Privacy issues arise regularly in employment environments. Employers frequently assert privacy rights when denying non-employee union organizers access to employment premises and limiting the distribution of union literature or the solicitation of authorization cards by current employees. On the other hand, when employers desire to monitor employee computer usage on firm computers to be sure they are not accessing inappropriate sites or engaging in other inappropriate electronic behavior, they give short shrift to employee privacy claims. When employer premises are open to the general public, non-employee access to external areas such as parking lots might provide an appropriate accommodation between …

The Mysterious Ways Of Mutual Funds: Market Timing, Lawrence A. Cunningham, Tamar Frankel

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The term market timing was little known outside the arcane world of mutual funds until state attorneys general from across the country popularized it. The term's innocuous-sounding ring assumed a more pernicious note when the mysterious ways of mutual funds became more transparent. In its pernicious sense, market timing denominates mutual fund insiders using the inscrutable structures of mutual funds to provide benefits selectively to favored participants at the expense of less favored participants. Mutual fund shares are not like common stocks; investments made using these vehicles are unlike those made through traditional securities markets. While the peculiar features of …

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Legal Implications And Research Opportunities, Lawrence A. Cunningham, Stephen Kwaku Asare, Arnold Wright

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Congress passed the Sarbanes Oxley Act to restore investor confidence, which had been deflated by massive business and audit failures, epitomized by the demise of the Enron Corporation and Arthur Anderson LLP. The Act altered the roles and responsibilities of auditors, corporate officers, audit committee members, as well as other participants in the financial reporting process. We evaluate the potential legal implications of some of the Act's major provisions and anticipate participants' likely responses. Our evaluation suggests that these provisions will significantly change behavior, increase compliance costs and alter the legal landscape. We also identify promising avenues for future research …

The Campaign To Restrict The Right To Respond To Terrorist Attacks In Self-Defense Under Article 51 Of The U.N. Charter And What The United States Can Do About It, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Article 51 of the United Nations Charter preserves the right of nations to use military force in self-defense. This broad language would appear to allow nations to use military force in self-defense in response to "armed attacks" by terrorists. But a significant problem has developed over the past twenty years. In a series of resolutions and judicial decisions, organs of the United Nations have attempted to read into Article 51 four very significant and dangerous limitations on the use of military force in self-defense. These limitations find no support in the language of Article 51, they do not accord with …

Engineering A Deal: Toward A Private Ordering Solution To The Anticommons Problem, F. Scott Kieff, Troy A. Paredes

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The problems of the intellectual property ("IP") anticommons are infamous. Many people fear that the potential for vast numbers of IP rights to cover a single good or service will prevent an enterprise from even attempting to launch a business for fear of being unduly taxed or retarded or simply held up. This Article offers a solution based on private ordering within the context of existing laws. This approach uses a limited liability entity structured so that IP owners are given an actual stake in the operating business and thus an incentive to participate in the enterprise; and yet at …

Too Big To Fail: Moral Hazard In Auditing And The Need To Restructure The Industry Before It Unravels, Lawrence A. Cunningham

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Large audit firms may believe that they are too big to fail. Arthur Andersen's 2002 criminal indictment reduced their number from five to four, and the government decided in 2005 to avoid indicting KPMG for crimes it admitted committing. If audit firms interpret the government's reluctance to indict as signaling aversion to tough action against them, moral hazard arises. This offsets auditing improvements mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 that are designed to strengthen auditors' reputations with managers for thoroughness and improve financial statement reliability. Neutralizing this moral hazard requires a credible alternative industry structure so that when a …

Trial Tactics: Reverse Rule 404(B) Evidence: Parts I And Ii, Stephen A. Saltzburg

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Defendants have the same right to offer Rule 404(b) evidence as prosecutors, and they are not required to give pretrial notice under the Federal Rules of Evidence. When defendants offer this evidence, they attempt to prove that someone else is guilty of the crime attributed to them. This often is referred to as reverse Rule 404(b) evidence. Some defense evidence will be admitted - indeed the Confrontation Clause or Compulsory Process Clause may require admission in some cases - but not all defense evidence will be admitted. The issue is where to draw the line between admissible and inadmissible evidence. …

Privacy For The Working Class: Public Work And Private Lives, Michael Selmi

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Privacy has become the law's chameleon, simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. This is particularly true of the workplace where employees often seek some private space but where the law, particularly the formidable employment-at-will rule, typically frustrates that search. As the workplace has expanded both in its scope and importance, additional concerns have been raised about an employer's potential reach outside of the workplace. In this symposium contribution, I explore the privacy issue by asking a fundamental question: what do employees deserve? My answer is that, as a matter of policy, we ought to concede privacy issues as the employer's domain at …

Was The Disparate Impact Theory A Mistake?, Michael Selmi

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The disparate impact theory has long been viewed as one of the most important and controversial developments in antidiscrimination law. In this article, Professor Selmi assesses the theory's legacy and challenges much of the conventional wisdom. Professor Selmi initially charts the development of the theory, including a close look at Griggs v. Duke Power Co. and Washington v. Davis, to demonstrate that the theory arose to deal with specific instances of past discrimination rather than as a broad theory of equality. In the next section, Professor Selmi reviews the success of the theory in the courts through an empirical analysis …

A Model Regime Of Privacy Protection, Daniel J. Solove

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

A series of major security breaches at companies with sensitive personal information has sparked significant attention to the problems with privacy protection in the United States. Currently, the privacy protections in the United States are riddled with gaps and weak spots. Although most industrialized nations have comprehensive data protection laws, the United States has maintained a sectoral approach where certain industries are covered and others are not. In particular, emerging companies known as "commercial data brokers" have frequently slipped through the cracks of U.S. privacy law. In this article, the authors propose a Model Privacy Regime to address the problems …

A Tale Of Two Bloggers: Free Speech And Privacy In The Blogosphere, Daniel J. Solove

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This short essay was written for the symposium, Bloggership: How Blogs are Transforming Legal Scholarship, held at Harvard Law School on April 27-28, 2006. In this essay, Professor Solove examines Glenn Reynold's new book, An Army of Davids, which champions little guy bloggers (the Davids) who are taking on mainstream media entities (the Goliaths).

Who exactly is David? We have a rather romantic conception of bloggers; we envision Eugene Volokh, but most bloggers are probably more akin to Jessica Cutler, the U.S. Senate staffer who blogged about sex gossip. The average blogger is a teenager writing an online diary, not …