Law Commons^™

After Seattle: Public International Organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations (Ngos), And Democratic Legitimacy In An Era Of Globalization: An Essay In Contested Legitimacy, Kenneth Anderson

Working Papers

This working monograph (about 120,000 words) analyzes the relationship between public international organizations such as the United Nations system and international non-governmental organizations under conditions of globalization.It argues that international organizations and international NGOs are locked in an embrace of mutual legitimation, each giving the other important political legitimacy, in favor of liberal internationalism and at the expense of democratic sovereignty. The monograph argues that the legitimacy that each gives the other is based on flawed assumptions about the nature of civil society and "international civil society," on the one hand, and global governance and the possibilities of international, global …

The Ottawa Convention Banning Landmines, The Role Of International Non-Governmental Organizations And The Idea Of International Civil Society, Kenneth Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Establishment of the Ottawa Convention Banning Landmines was regarded by many international law scholars, international activists, diplomats and international organization personnel as a defining, 'democratizing' change in the way international law is made. By bringing international NGOs - what is often called 'international civil society' - into the diplomatic and international law-making process, many believe that the Ottawa Convention represented both a democratization of, and a new source of legitimacy for, international law, in part because it was presumably made 'from below'. This article sharply questions whether the Ottawa Convention and the process leading up to it represents and real …

The Effectiveness Of International Legislative Responses To The Helms-Burton Act, Bernadette Atuahene

All Faculty Scholarship

The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act (Helms-Burton Act) is the latest appendage to the Cuban embargo. Title III has caused an international uproar because it gives U.S. victims of Cuban expropriation a right of action within U.S. courts against third parties who traffic in confiscated property. For example, a U.S. citizen can sue a Canadian Mining company doing business in Cuba if they are operating on or using expropriated property. The Helms-Burton Act (HBA) targets U.S. allies who continue to trade and invest in Cuba regardless of pending U.S. claims of expropriation. In response to the HBA, Cuba, …

Copyright And Democracy: A Cautionary Note, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Democratic theories of copyright have become quite the rage in recent years. A growing number of commentators have offered their views on the relationship between copyright law and the process of self-governance.' No scholar has been more committed to developing this perspective than Neil Netanel. In an important series of articles, Netanel has pursued a powerful and innovative project that attempts to reexamine copyright through the lens of democratic theory. His core concern is that the concentration of private wealth and power in communications and mass media is creating unprecedented disparities in the ability to be heard. The ""speech hierarchy"" …

Insurance: How It Matters As Psychological Fact And Political Metaphor, Thomas Morawetz

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

From Watergate To Generation Next: Opening Remarks, Rory K. Little

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Lobbyist No. 28 (Winter 2000), Maine Women's Lobby Staff

Maine Women's Publications - All

No abstract provided.

The Lobbyist No. 29 (Spring 2000), Maine Women's Lobby Staff

Maine Women's Publications - All

No abstract provided.

Insurance And The Utopian Idea, Carol Weisbrod

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Constructing The New International Financial Architecture: What Role For The Imf?, Shalendra Sharma

Politics

No abstract provided.

Indirect Constitutional Discourse: A Comment On Meese, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Law, Ethics, And Religion In The Public Square: Principles Of Restraint And Withdrawal, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

In recent years, scholars have begun to recognize and discuss the profound questions that arise in attempting to determine the place of religion in the law and the legal profession. This discussion has emerged on at least two separate yet related levels. On one level, scholars have debated the place of religion in various segments of the public sphere, including law and politics. On a second level, lawyers have expressed the aim to place their professional values and obligations in the context of their overriding religious obligations. This article explores, from both an ethical and jurisprudential perspective, the question of …

Judges And Federalism: A Comment On "Justice Kennedy's Vision Of Federalism", Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Political Parties And Campaign Finance Reform, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Recent campaign finance innovations of the major political parties have blown large and widening holes in federal campaign finance regulation. The relationship between parties and candidates also challenges the basic doctrinal categories of campaign finance law. The Constitution permits regulation of campaign finances to deal with the danger of corruption. But some judges and commentators have argued that the parties present no danger of corruption. This Article finds that, although parties play a positive role in funding campaigns, certain party practices raise the specter of corruption in the constitutional sense. Moreover, due to the close connection between parties and candidates, …

Benign Hegemony? Kosovo And Article 2(4) Of The U.N. Charter, Jules Lobel

Articles

The 1999 U.S.-led, NATO-assisted air strike against Yugoslavia has been extolled by some as leading to the creation of a new rule of international law permitting nations to undertake forceful humanitarian intervention where the Security Council cannot act. This view posits the United States as a benevolent hegemon militarily intervening in certain circumstances in defense of such universal values as the protection of human rights. This article challenges that view. NATO's Kosovo intervention does not represent a benign hegemony introducing a new rule of international law. Rather, the United States, freed from Cold War competition with a rival superpower, is …

Globalization And The Design Of International Institutions, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

In an increasingly globalized world, international rules and organizations have grown ever more crucial to the resolution of major economic and social concerns. How can leaders design international institutions that will effectively solve global regulatory problems? This paper confronts this question by presenting three major types of global problems, distinguishing six main categories of institutional forms that can be used to address these problems, and showing how the effectiveness of international institutions depends on achieving “form-problem” fit. Complicating that fit will be the tendency of nation states to prefer institutional forms that do little to constrain their sovereignty. Yet the …

Rethinking Welfare Rights: Reciprocity Norms, Reactive Attitudes, And The Political Economy Of Welfare Reform, Amy L. Wax

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Dark Side Of The Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism In America, Donald J. Herzog

Reviews

In this elegantly written, provocative, and sometimes just plain provoking book, punctuated by bits of anguish and rather more pique, Richard Ellis worries that the American Left has been so passionate about equality that it has run roughshod over liberty. So put, the thesis is not exactly news. It has been the recurrent lament of conservative indictments- Tocqueville's is the canonical statement, but he has plenty of precursors and followers. And it has its scholarly variations, too, such as Arthur Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America: Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement (1982). No profound surprises are on offer here.

If Taxpayers Can't Be Fooled, Maybe Congress Can: A Public Choice Perspective On The Tax Transition Debate, Kyle D. Logue

Reviews

In When Rules Change: An Economic and Political Analysis of Transition Relief and Retroactivity , Shaviro takes the various strands of the existing literature on retroactivity and weaves them together, applying his unique combination of legal expertise, political pragmatism, and theoretical sophistication in public finance economics as well as political science. The result is a subtle, balanced, and scholarly treatise on transition relief and retroactivity that should serve as the starting point for all future research in the field. In its stated objectives, the book is admirably ambitious.

This Review will, in a broad sense, follow Shaviro's characterization of the …

Recognizing Opportunistic Bias Crimes, Lu-In Wang

Articles

The federal approach to punishing bias-motivated crimes is more limited than the state approach. Though the federal and state methods overlap in some respects, two features of the federal approach restrict its range of application. First, federal law prohibits a narrower range of conduct than do most state bias crimes laws. In order to be punishable under federal law, bias-motivated conduct must either constitute a federal crime or interfere with a federally protected right or activity-requirements that exclude racially motivated assault, property damage and many other common violent or destructive bias offenses. In most states, however, hate crimes encompass a …

Getting It Right: Panel Error And The En Banc Process In The Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals, Arthur D. Hellman

Articles

"Why are judges [who are] so good making so many errors?"

That question, posed at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 1999, nicely captures one of the principal arguments made in the Final Report of the Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals. The Commission, chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Byron White, recommended that Congress divide the existing Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals into three "adjudicative divisions," each of which would operate almost as an independent appellate court. Restructuring is necessary, the Commission said, because "the law-declaring function of appellate courts requires groups …

Can The Vice President Preside At His Own Impeachment Trial?: A Critique Of Bare Textualism, Joel K. Goldstein

All Faculty Scholarship

Turn the clock back for a moment to August 1973. In the midst of the burgeoning Watergate scandal, the nation discovered that Vice President Spiro T. Agnew was being investigated for allegedly accepting bribes from contractors, and for committing tax fraud while Governor of Maryland and Vice President. The investigation, by attorneys in the United States Attorneys Office in Maryland, ultimately gathered sufficient evidence to present to a grand jury. To avoid the spectre of likely indictment and prosecution, Agnew elected to resign his office and plead nolo contendere.[1]

But suppose Agnew had decided not to go quietly.[2] Instead of …

Liberality, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Did late eighteenth-century Americans ever consider themselves liberal? To many historians, this will seem a strange question. The concept of liberalism is widely held to be a nineteenth-century innovation, and therefore to inquire whether Americans in the previous century thought of themselves as liberal seems anachronistic.

Yet precisely because so many scholars take for granted the late evolution of liberal ideas, it may be all the more valuable to reexamine this assumption. Is there really no evidence that eighteenth-century Americans considered themselves liberal? Although they may not have embraced later concepts of liberalism, is it not at least possible that …

The Spratly Islands Dispute: China Defines The New Millennium, Omar Saleem

Journal Publications

China is a growing and prosperous nation that many predict will become the second most powerful military and economic nation in the world, behind the United States, within the early part of the new millennium. China's developmental goals include a claim of right to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The China/Taiwan claim to the Spratly Islands is antagonistic towards the claims asserted by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam who each claim the Spratly Islands in whole or in part. This Article focuses on China's perception of the Spratly Islands dispute and China's potential courses of conduct …

Localism, Self-Interest, And The Tyranny Of The Favored Quarter: Addressing The Barriers To New Regionalism, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article argues that our nation's ideological commitment to decentralized local governance has helped to create the phenomenon of the favored quarter. Localism, or the ideological commitment to local governance, has helped to produce fragmented metropolitan regions stratified by race and income. This fragmentation produces a collective action problem or regional prisoner's dilemma that is well-known in the local governance literature.

Localism And Regionalism, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Localism and regionalism are normally seen as contrasting, indeed conflicting, conceptions of metropolitan area governance. Localism in this context refers to the view that the existing system of a large number of relatively small governments wielding power over such critical matters as local land use regulation, local taxation, and the financing of local public services ought to be preserved. The meaning of regionalism is less clearly defined and proposals for regional governance vary widely, but most advocates of regionalism would shift some authority from local governments, restrict local autonomy, or, at the very least, constrain the ability of local governments …

The Recusal Alternative To Campaign Finance Legislation, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

Typical campaign finance proposals focus on limiting the amount of money that can be contributed to candidates and the amount of money that candidates can spend. This article suggests an alternative proposal that places no restrictions on contributions or spending, but rather targets the corrupting influence of contributions. Under the proposals, legislators would be required to recuse themselves from voting on issues directly affecting contributors. I contend that this proposal would prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption while remedying the first amendment objections to the regulation of money in campaigns.

The Business Of Bribery: Globalization, Economic Liberalization, And The ‘Problem’ Of Corruption, Margaret E. Beare, James Williams

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper is intended as a critical response to the emerging consensus within both academic and policy literatures that we are currently facing an epidemic of corruption which threatens to undermine the stability of economic and political development on both a national and global scale, and which requires both immediate and wide-ranging policy interventions. Based on a review of the publications and policy statements of the leading anti-corruption crusaders — namely the OECD, the IMF, and the World Bank — it will be argued that the recent concern with corruption is attributable, not to any substantive increase incorrupt practices, but …

The Public And Private Lives Of Presidents, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Focusing on a frequent theme in the executive privilege arguments advanced by the Clinton Administration, Neal Kumar Katyal explores the distinction drawn between the public and private lives of the President, particularly in the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky cases. He argues that the Administration's difficulties in asserting executive privilege claims following these cases demonstrate that the public/private distinction is not entirely valid He asserts that, unlike members of Congress who have time when they are not in session, the President is unique in that he is in office twenty-four hours a day. He argues that this special constitutional status …