Law Commons^™

Presidential Power: Should Bill Clinton Be Immune From Lawsuits On Allegations Of Past Acts?, Susan Low Bloch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones filed her complaint against Bill Clinton she joined a small group of women who have publicly accused men in high-profile positions of sexual harassment.

A classic "he said, she said" story? We may never know, if the president is able to argue successfully that his office shields him from liability for actions occurring prior to assuming it. On June 27, his lawyer, Robert Bennett, asked a federal court to delay action, and said he would be filing a separate motion in August on the issue.

The defense is based on the 1982 case …

Law Reform In Estonia: The Role Of Georgetown University Law Center, J. Peter Byrne, Philip G. Schrag

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On June 19, 1992, we and seven other members of the Georgetown University Law Center community landed in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, to help the Estonian government draft laws to support a market economy. Our group consisted of six students, two professors, and an alumnus. The country to which we had come had declared its independence from the Soviet Union less than one year before. After fifty years of imposed communism, the Estonian leaders wanted to understand and adopt the basic foundations for a Western legal system that would support democratic and market institutions.

Foreword: "Do What You Can...", Susan Low Bloch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

"Do what you can with what you have." That's what Thurgood Marshall preached. That is how he lived. He used what he had to change the world forever.

Beyond The Moot Law Review: A Short Story With A Happy Ending, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When the author began teaching at the Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1982, it was publishing at great expense a law review that few cited, few professors would write for, and few, if anyone, read. For this reason, he dubbed it a "moot law review" in that students were working hard to produce a publication that mimicked "real" law reviews-that is, law reviews that contribute to intellectual discourse and the body of legal knowledge.

The fact that you are reading this page (and others in this issue) is evidence that the Chicago-Kent Law Review is no longer a moot law …

...And Contractual Consent, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Part I, the author contends that when economists persistently ignore the importance of contractual consent, they are missing the crucial problem of legitimacy. In Parts II and IV, he responds to the criticisms of his consent theory of contract advanced by Jay Feinman and Dennis Patterson. Both Feinman and Patterson object to the enterprise in which the author and others are engaging, and he explains why each is wrong to dismiss the current debate over default rules. Finally, in contrast, in Part III the author shows how Steven Burton's theory of default rules, which he finds most congenial, is …

The Power Of Presumptions, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Once you start to notice it, you see it everywhere. Burden-shifting is pervasive.The author began to notice the power of presumptions when examining how to protect the rights "retained by the people" referred to in the Ninth Amendment without having to enumerate each one. He proposed the creation of a "presumption of liberty" that would extend the same protective presumption now accorded freedom of speech to all other rightful exercises of liberty. This presumption would shift the burden to the government to justify as necessary and proper any restriction on the rightful exercise of any liberty.

Bad Trip: Drug Prohibition And The Weakness Of Public Policy, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The case against prohibition is overwhelming precisely because so many different types of considerations all point to a single solution: the legalization of illicit drugs. The complexity of the case against prohibition means, however, that it cannot be presented adequately by a few anecdotes or even a lengthy essay. Nothing less than a book-length treatment will suffice and, fortunately, that book has been published. America's Longest War is an ambitious effort to evaluate the effectiveness of the policy of prohibition. It accomplishes this by marshalling the empirical research that has been done on both drugs and drug prohibition and then …

Securing Health Or Just Health Care? The Effect Of The Health Care System On The Health Of America, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author first analyzes why the prevention of illness and promotion of health provide the leading justification for the government to act for the welfare of the population. His analysis focuses principally on the foundational importance of health for human happiness, the exercise of rights and privileges, and the formation of family and social relationships. He explains why health care, although critically important; is not the only, nor even the most important, determinant of health. Most morbidity and mortality in the United States is attributable to environmental conditions, pathogens, and human behavior, which are all more responsive to population-based interventions …

The Constitution Of Reasons, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Cass Sunstein's book, The Partial Constitution, brings together a number of his constitutional law essays from the last ten years. During that time, Sunstein has argued, powerfully, for the unconstitutionality of regulatory constraints on access to abortion; for the constitutionality of and the need for regulation of violent pornography; for the constitutionality of limits on both campaign spending and congressional control over public broadcasting; for the deep consistency, conventional wisdom to the contrary notwithstanding, of the Court's repudiation of Lochner in 1937 with its 1974 decision in Roe v. Wade; for the view that we should accord far less deference …

The Case Of The Prisoners And The Origins Of Judicial Review, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For over one hundred years, scholars have closely studied the handful of cases in which state courts, in the years before the Federal Constitutional Convention, confronted the question whether they had the power to declare laws invalid. Interest in these early cases began in the late nineteenth century as one aspect of the larger debate about the legitimacy of judicial review, a debate triggered by the increasing frequency with which the Supreme Court and state courts were invalidating economic and social legislation. The lawyers, political scientists, and historians who initially unearthed the case law from the 1770s and 1780s used …

The Word On Trial, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Milner Ball's extraordinary book, The Word and the Law, begins with a narrative account of "seven practices in law." The seven practitioners Ball brings to life for the reader share two powerful traits: they all, in quite different ways, use law to lessen the multiple sufferings of various communities of poor people, and they all, by doing so, strengthen the communities within which and for which they labor. The reader gains from these accounts not only a sympathetic understanding of the lives of seven lawyers, but a renewed sense of the possibilities their practices present. This can be put any …

Objectivity In Legal Judgment, Heidi Li Feldman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We are experiencing a crisis of confidence in the idea of objectivity. In scholarly circles, many are ready to discontinue talk of objectivity altogether, on the grounds that it has been nothing more than a mask for the oppressive practices of politically and economically privileged groups, promising neutrality where in fact there are only power relations. Some feminist legal scholars, some critical race scholars, and some critical legal studies scholars, along with some contemporary philosophers, argue that objectivity is inevitably a problematic, dangerous idea or ideal. Critics of objectivity sometimes argue that it can never be genuinely had, only claimed …

Culture Clash In The Quality Of Life In The Law: Changes In The Economics, Diversification And Organization Of Lawyering, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is no question that law practice has changed in recent decades. More lawyers work in larger units or newer forms of practice. Increasing numbers of lawyers come from previously excluded groups, including both women and minority demographic groups. After a period of economic boom there is general economic anxiety about the continued health and growth of the law "industry." This occurs as there is a general "speed up" in American work, the forms of law practice organization and billing for legal work are being renegotiated, and rates of dissatisfaction with the practice of law increase, especially among younger and …

Working Papers As Federal Records: The Need For New Legislation To Preserve The History Of National Policy, Philip G. Schrag

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article deals with policy records at the "front end" of their lives; that is, preserving them from destruction by federal agencies in the decades immediately after their creation. It does not deal with the destruction of archived documents by Archives officials themselves. It discusses only in passing the related question of how long a policy record should be sealed off from public inspection; the literature includes a variety of opinions on that subject. The author is content to leave to others the problem of just where to draw the balance between making historical documentation available soon enough so that …