Law Commons^™

Color-Coded Standing, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Remarkably, the Supreme Court has held that whites who wish to challenge the constitutionality of affirmative action plans have standing to do so. In Northeastern Florida Chapter of the Associated General Contractors v. City of Jacksonville the Supreme Court upheld the standing of non-minority construction contractors to challenge a minority setaside program under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. What is remarkable is not that the result reached in the case was wrong, but that the Court was able to reach that result given its most recent standing precedents. In previous Terms, the Supreme Court had taken …

War Crimes And Other Human Rights Abuses In The Former Yugoslavia, Robert T. Mounts, Jeffrey L. Bleich, Doug Cassell

Journal Articles

Mr. Cassel: Today, the world is witnessing in Europe the first genocide in half a century. Unfortunately, everyone has failed to date to do much about it. Everyone has seen it so often in the papers and on the television in the last two years, that it sounds almost banal at this point to repeat it. History, sociology and the law can get pretty dry. One of the things that the report of the U.N. Commission of Experts on Violations of International Humanitarian Law in the Former Yugoslavia attempted to do was to give all this a human face. This …

United States: Deconstructing The American Family - Developments In Family Law During 1993, Lynn D. Wardle, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

Persons unfamiliar with the American legal system might be dismayed by the variety and inconsistency of developments in domestic relations law during 1993. The key to comprehending family law in the United States is to know that, within the broad parameters set by the Constitution and minimal federal legislation, each of the fifty American states retains substantial constitutional autonomy when regulating domestic relations. As a result, "a hundred flowers bloom" in American family law-in the form of tremendously varied (sometimes diametrically inconsistent) statutes, policies and doctrines. Despite national trends, novelties or developments of potentially broad interest that occur every year, …

Avoiding Error In Closing Argument, H. Patrick Furman

Publications

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of The Scholarship In Law And Religion Of Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

I first met John Noonan at a Law Review dinner when I was a year or so out of law school and he was a third year student. Chance placed us at the same table, and the conversation-naturally-proved to be more interesting than the speeches.

I am honored, indeed, blessed, to have been exposed to that witness for so many decades, and deeply grateful for the opportunity to come here on this occasion and bear my own witness in return.

The Legal Aspects Of Foreign Investment In Vietnam, Tang Thi Thanh Trai Le

Journal Articles

Recent years have brought burgeoning interest in foreign investment in Vietnam. Although a few observers have sounded discordant notes about Vietnam's economic potential, they have been drowned out in the chorus of the prevailing opinion that Vietnam appears set to become the next 'tiger' of Southeast Asia. Recognising this potential, the US lifted its trade embargo of Vietnam in early 1994. By this time, foreign investors from other nations had already established a presence in Vietnam.

Foreign investors have well-founded reasons underlying their interest in Vietnam. Vietnam's plentiful natural resources, including timber, oil, agricultural resources, a long coastline, tourism, and …

Can A Deficiency Notice To A Non-Filing Taxpayer Shorten The Time To Claim A Refund In The Tax Court?, Matthew J. Barrett

Journal Articles

Each year, about three million people overpay their federal income taxes but don't file returns. Taxpayers usually have three years to claim a refund. When a non-filer waits more than two years before seeking a refund, the IRS often seeks more tax because the taxpayer has not filed. If the taxpayer appeals to the Tax Court to avoid paying the additional tax, the IRS says the refund period is only two years. Now the Supreme Court decides if a deficiency notice can shorten the time to claim a refund in the Tax Court.

Are Litigating Attorneys Debt Collectors Under The Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act?, Tang Thi Thanh Trai Le

Journal Articles

In 1986 Congress amended the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to include attorneys under the definition of debt collector. Now the Supreme Court is asked to determine if the law applies to attorneys suing debtors on behalf of clients, not just when they conduct debt-collection activities.

If the Supreme Court affirms the decision of the Seventh Circuit, thus finding for Jenkins, attorneys who litigate cases involving collection of debts may find themselves subject to liability for communications with the consumer or the consumer's attorney regarding the litigation. Furthermore, these attorneys would face personal liability for any violations of the Act …

Lawyers As Strangers And Friends: Reply To Professor Sammons:, Thomas L. Shaffer, Robert F. Cochran Jr.

Journal Articles

Our thanks to the editors of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Journal for the opportunity to respond to Jack Sammons' review of our recent book. We are honored to be taken seriously by someone as thoughtful as Sammons. We especially like his suggestion that, "[I]t would be good for everyone in the legal profession to pay attention to what Shaffer and Cochran have done here." (We hope they all buy copies of the book.) We see his book review (as we know he sees it) as moral discourse among friends; we respond in the same spirit. Though …

Fighting Domestic Violence In The Nation’S Capital, Deborah Epstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Every year, in the District of Columbia alone, the Metropolitan Police Department receives more than 18,000 calls for help from victims of domestic violence, and more than 2,500 battered women bring legal actions requesting protection from their abusers. Thousands of other cases go unreported, either because the victims are too afraid of their batterers to report the violence, or because they do not know how to obtain relief to which they are entitled.

Enriching The Legal Ethics Curriculum: From Requirement To Desire, Heidi Li Feldman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The problem has become all too familiar: Acting at least in part from noble motives, the American Bar Association ("ABA") requires all law students at ABA-accredited law schools to take a course in "professional responsibility." Every accredited school offers a course or courses that enable students to fulfill this requirement. Under these circumstances, the professional responsibility course can easily assume the character of high school drivers' education or health classes: It often becomes an obligatory exercise, in which students think they must woodenly learn the maxims of the ABA Code of Conduct or Rules of Professional Responsibility. Faced with this …

How Do We Get Rid Of These Things? Dismantling Excess Weapons While Protecting The Environment, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The startling successes of contemporary international arms control negotiations call to mind the old aphorism that one should be careful about what one wishes for, because the wish just might come true.

Today, disarmament diplomacy has wrought unprecedented triumphs across a wide range of global bargaining issues, producing a series of watershed treaties that offer spectacular new advantages for the security of the United States and for the prospect of enduring world peace. At the same time, however, these unanticipated negotiation breakthroughs have themselves generated unforeseen implementation problems, spawning a host of novel difficulties for which the traditional tools and …

Inviolability And Privacy: The Castle, The Sanctuary, And The Body, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the idea and imagery of inviolability. I use a trilogy of terms-the castle, the sanctuary, and the body-to illuminate different loci of inviolability and to show how notions of sacredness and sanctity undergird the legal protection of inviolability. These images, familiar from privacy jurisprudence, provide a useful lens through which to examine the association between inviolability and gender. Familiar feminist critiques suggest that concepts such as privacy have served to deny, rather than to secure, inviolability for women and women's bodies. I explore the interplay of inviolability and privacy in some prominent feminist accounts of sexuality, and …