Law Commons^™

Some Kind Of Right, Jud Mathews

Journal Articles

The Right to Be Forgotten II crystallizes one lesson from Europe’s rights revolution: persons should be able to call on some kind of right to protect their important interests whenever those interests are threatened under the law. Which rights instrument should be deployed, and by what court, become secondary concerns. The decision doubtless involves some self-aggrandizement by the German Federal Constitutional Court (GFCC), which asserts for itself a new role in protecting European fundamental rights, but it is no criticism of the Right to Be Forgotten II to say that it advances the GFCC’s role in European governance, so long …

Why Didn't The Common Law Follow The Flag?, Christian Burset

Journal Articles

This Article considers a puzzle about how different kinds of law came to be distributed around the world. The legal systems of some European colonies largely reflected the laws of the colonizer. Other colonies exhibited a greater degree of legal pluralism, in which the state administered a mix of different legal systems. Conventional explanations for this variation look to the extent of European settlement: where colonizers settled in large numbers, they chose to bring their own laws; otherwise, they preferred to retain preexisting ones. This Article challenges that assumption by offering a new account of how and why the British …

Loo Law: The Public Washroom As A Hyper-Regulated Space, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

The article suggests that the public washroom is the most regulated of all public spaces, at least in the United States. It offers several possible explanations for this hyper-juridical attention. First and foremost, the article argues, such hyper-regulation of the public washroom has to do with the sanitary and moral significance of this space. Secondly, the intensity of washroom regulation is due to its ambiguous public/private properties. Finally, the intense regulation of the public washroom is the result of physio-anatomical functions performed in it. Utilizing the State of New York as a lens through which to observe the various issues …

Environmental Certification Systems And U.S. Environmental Law: Closer Than You May Think, Errol E. Meidinger

Journal Articles

Many industrial organizations are committing to achieve improved environmental performance through non-governmentally instituted environmental certification programs. Such programs typically define the environmental standards that firms must meet as well as the organizational mechanisms required to achieve and "certify" compliance. Well known examples include the chemical industry's "Responsible Care" program, the International Organization for Standardization's "ISO 14000" environmental management program, and the Forest Stewardship Council's well-managed forests program.

Because of their ostensibly private and voluntary nature, environmental certification programs are often presumed to be separate and distinct from law. In fact, however, they are deeply intertwined with law, and seem likely …