Law Commons^™

Aiding And Abetting Persecutors: The Seizure And Return Of Haitian Refugees In Violation Of The U.N. Refugee Convention And Protocol, Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Pursuant to Executive Order 12,807 of May 23, 1992, the “Kennebunkport Order,” United States Coast Guard cutters have been intercepting boatloads of Haitian citizens in international waters off the coast of Haiti and turning them over to the Haitian authorities in Port-au-Prince. No questions are being asked to determine if any of these citizens are bona fide refugees fleeing persecution. All are simply returned.

Does the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (Protocol), to which the United States is a party, permit the U.S. government to do this? That question is now before the United States Supreme Court. Regarding …

Academic Freedom And Political Neutrality In Law Schools: An Essay On Structure And Ideology In Professional Education, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

My topic for this essay is the role of institutional political neutrality in fostering a vital academic freedom within a law school. It is necessary to explain what this inquiry embraces and why it is a useful entry into our concerns. Traditionally, the political neutrality of the university has been seen as the foundation for the academic freedom of the professoriate. But the media today vibrate with complaints about "political correctness" in legal education, meaning an administrative sponsorship of certain social ideals in a manner that restricts criticism or debate.1 Also, political contention over the shape of legal education has …

Drawing A Line Between Killing And Letting Die: The Law, And Law Reform, On Medically Assisted Dying, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Traditional medical ethics and law draw a sharp distinction between allowing a patient to die and helping her die. Withholding or withdrawing life sustaining treatment, such as by abating technological nutrition, hydration or respiration, will cause death as surely as a lethal injection. The former, however, is a constitutional right for a competent or once-competent patient, while the latter poses a risk of serious criminal or civil liability for the physician, even if the patient requests it.

Preface: Academic Freedom And Legal Education, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Preface to a collection of papers delivered at a conference on Academic Freedom and Legal Education, held at the Tulane University School of Law on April 3 and 4,1992. Speaking or writing about academic freedom propels one from current controversies toward implicit or explicit propositions about the nature and goals of legal education.

Parsing Good Faith: Has The United States Violated Article Vi Of The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has long been the cornerstone of the international effort to retard the spread of nuclear weaponry to additional countries, now appreciated as the greatest post-cold war threat to international peace and security. Under this treaty, the parties also undertook to pursue in good faith additional negotiations leading to further reductions in nuclear weapons-and, in fact, such subsequent bargaining has recently yielded dramatic, far-reaching successes. Professor Koplow, however, argues that in one crucial respect, the United States has been derelict in implementing the obligations of the NPT: Recent American presidents have rigidly refused to participate in …

Bonehead Non-Proliferation, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Review and Extension Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will convene in 1995. The primary issue to be considered at the Extension Conference is whether the NPT, universally regarded as the most important bulwark against the spread of nuclear weaponry, should remain in force. In this article, David A. Koplow argues that the United States must negotiate a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in order to maintain the non-proliferation regime and promote its own long-run security interests

Legitimating The Illegitimate: A Comment On 'Beyond Rape', Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Dripps's provocative proposal, as I understand it, is that we think of sex as a commodity and rape as the theft of that commodity. Understood as such, the theft of sex accomplished through violence or the threat of violence is a twofold wrong: it violates our "negative" right to refuse to have sex with anyone for any or no reason, and violence or the threat of violence infringes our right to personal, physical security. Therefore, the violent expropriation of sex should be punished as a major felony, as is violent rape, at least in theory.

Furthermore, according to Dripps, …

Natural Law Ambiguities, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I share with Fred Schauer the relatively unpopular belief that the positivist insistence that we keep separate the legal "is" from the legal "ought" is a logical prerequisite to meaningful legal criticism, and therefore, in the constitutional context, is a logical prerequisite to meaningful criticism of the Constitution. As Schauer argues, despite the modern inclination to associate positivism with conservatism, the positivist "separation thesis," properly understood, facilitates legal criticism and legal reform, not reactionary acquiescence. If we want to improve law, we must resist the urge to see it through the proverbial rose-colored glasses; we must be clear that a …

Sex, Reason, And A Taste For The Absurd, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Like much of Richard Posner's best work, Sex and Reason does many things, and for that reason will no doubt attract a large and diverse readership. This heavily footnoted, exhaustively researched, and imminently accessible book is a welcome introduction to the interdisciplinary study of sex. For the lay reader it presents an arresting set of speculations about human sexuality, drawn from the author's evident familiarity with a sizeable library of studies representing at least half a dozen scientific and social scientific disciplines, assembled in a readable and lively way. Of more interest, perhaps, to academicians and social scientists familiar with …

The “Self-Executing” Character Of The Refugee Protocol’S Nonrefoulement Obligation, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When the United States ratified the 1967 U.N. Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (Protocol), it undertook not to "expel or return (refouler) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened" on specified grounds. On May 24, 1992, President Bush issued an executive order, known as the Kennebunkport Order, authorizing the United States Coast Guard to interdict vessels on the high seas suspected of containing Haitians destined for U.S. shores and to return such persons to Haiti without regard to whether their lives or freedom would …

Prospective Overruling And The Revival Of ‘Unconstitutional' Statutes, William Michael Treanor, Gene B. Sperling

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey reshaped the law of abortion in this country. The Court overturned two of its previous decisions invalidating state restrictions on abortions, Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, and it abandoned the trimester analytic framework established in Roe v. Wade. At the time Casey was handed down, twenty states had restrictive abortion statutes on the books that were in conflict with Akron or Thornburgh and which were unenforced. In six of these states, courts had held the statutes unconstitutional. Almost …

The Intersection Of Natural Rights And Positive Constitutional Law, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this brief essay, the author describes what he sees to be the unavoidable connection between natural law--or, more accurately, natural rights--and the positive law that is the subject of constitutional adjudication. This connection would exist whether or not there is a conceptual distinction between natural and positive law of the sort that Professor Fred Schauer maintains in his article, Constitutional Positivism. Because of this connection, judges in a world in which legal positivism is "true" should act, on occasion, as though the natural rights approach is' correct. And if this is true then, the author maintains, the natural …

Pursuing "Environmental Justice": The Distributional Effects Of Environmental Protection, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The purpose of this Article is to explore the distributional side of environmental protection and, more particularly, to explain the significance of including environmental justice concerns into the fashioning of environmental protection policy. Unlike earlier legal commentary, hazardous waste facility siting is not this Article's dominant focus. It offers a broader, more systemic, examination of environmental protection laws and policies. The Article is divided into three parts. First, it describes the nature of the problem. This includes a discussion of the varied distributional implications of environmental protection laws, as well as the ways in which racial minorities could receive too …

The Americans With Disabilities Act And The Corpus Of Anti-Discrimination Law: A Force For Change In The Future Of Public Health Regulation, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this paper the author reviews the constitutional history of the courts' attempts to check the powers of the public health department. He demonstrates how ineffective and inconsistent constitutional review has been, and suggests that adequate review criteria have not emerged. The author shows that, whether the courts are applying First, Fourth, or Fourteenth Amendment standards, ultimately they are highly deferential to public health officials. Then he carefully examines the key concepts in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as they apply to communicable disease. He reveals Congress' clear intention to include communicable disease, even asymptomatic infection, as a disability. …

Foreword: Health Care Reform In The United States—The Presidential Task Force, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay serves as the foreword to Implementing U.S. Health Care Reform, a symposium held in 1993.

The exact specifications of the new health care system depend on the package that President Clinton will send to Capitol Hill and the changes that Congress will make in the reform package. Some of the basic structures and organizing principles of the new system that are being considered by the President are already the subject of intense public scrutiny.

The design being considered would involve new relations between the federal government and the states, between the public and private sectors, and between …

The Aspirational Constitution, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Firmly embedded in every theory of judicial decisionmaking lies an important set of assumptions about the way government is supposed to work. Sometimes these theories about government are made explicit. More often they are not. Moreover, deeply embedded in every theory of government is a theory of human nature. Although these assumptions about human nature generally remain latent within the larger theory, because they provide the underpinnings for our ideas about the way government is supposed to work, they drive our notions about judicial decisionmaking. For example, the theory of government reflected in the United States Constitution reveals what one …

Health Care Reform In The United States, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author presents a brief description of the design features and objectives of the health care reform package, together with the reasons to support reform of the health care system in the United States.

Identity, Speech, And Equality, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

My experience as a litigator tells me that the First Amendment as provided the most reliable path to success of any of the doctrinal claims utilized by lesbian and gay rights lawyers. Certainly no other block of cases can rival the success rate of the cases seeking recognition and even funding of lesbian and gay student organizations, all of which were brought on First Amendment grounds and ultimately won by plaintiffs.

When Civil Rights Go Wrong: Agenda And Process In Civil Rights Reform, Charles F. Abernathy

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The aging of the persons leading the civil rights movement is only a metaphor for a more serious aging process that afflicts the movement. It is a sclerotic condition that has kept an old agenda and once-prodding - but now increasingly intolerant - ideas in place, a fixed way of thinking that has become more strident and resistant to change as it has become more complacent with itself. Once the opponent of conformity, some parts of the civil rights community now preach conformity within their communities. I see these not as indices of the venality of the civil rights movement, …

Putting The Correct "Spin" On Lucas, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part I describes and discusses the significance of the Lucas majority's desire to draft an opinion making environmental regulations more susceptible to takings challenges. Part II identifies the majority's antiquated notions of the physical and social function of real property as the source of the majority's misguided efforts. Finally, Part III describes how the majority's analytical framework may ultimately make it easier, rather than harder, for environmental protection measures to survive takings challenges.

International Environmental Law: Contemporary Issues And The Emergence Of A New World Order, Edith Brown Weiss

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 1972 international environmental law was a fledgling field with less than three dozen multilateral agreements. Today international environmental law is arguably setting the pace for cooperation in the international community in the development of international law. There are nearly nine hundred international legal instruments that are either primarily directed to international environmental issues or contain important provisions on them. This proliferation of legal instruments is likely to continue. Therefore, it is important to assess what we have done and explore where we are headed.

Rethinking War Powers: Congress, The President, And The United Nations, Jane E. Stromseth

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The division of war powers between Congress and the President has never been free of ambiguity or tension. The Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, and to make rules for the regulation of those armed forces. The President, on the other hand, is the Commander in Chief of U.S. armed forces. Most scholars agree that the framers sought to strike a balance: the President alone could not commence "war," but he could use force to "repel sudden attacks" on the United States or its armed forces. Reacting …