Law Commons^™

The Complex Uses Of Sexual Orientation In Criminal Court, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Times may or may not be changing for gay people in the criminal justice system--and for the import of sexual orientation in criminal law. It depends on the nature of the case and, more importantly, exactly whose sexual orientation we are talking about.

Signs of positive change include the recent high profile Matthew Shepard and Diane Whipple cases, in which gay and lesbian homicide victims were mourned not only by the gay community, but also by the entire country. It was no doubt helpful that both Shepard and Whipple presented very appealing images of gay people: each was young, attractive, …

Democracy And Legitimation: A Response To Professor Guinier, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a response to Supreme Democracy: Bush v. Gore Redux, an essay by Lani Guinier (2002).

The author critiques Professor Lani Guinier’s essay through a discussion of the maldistribution of wealth in American society, which he argues is accepted by American people thanks to the existence complex structures that allow them to distance themselves from it. He discusses four legitimation structures as he critiques this essay.

Professor Guinier focuses on the belief in meritocracy. For our purposes, we might define a believer in meritocracy as someone who thinks that, in a given society, people get more or less …

Trust And Betrayal In The Medical Marketplace, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author argues in this Comment that disingenuity as first resort is an unwise approach to the conflict between our ex ante and our later, illness-endangered selves. Not only does rationing by tacit deceit raise a host of moral problems, it will not work, over the long haul, because markets reward deceit's unmasking. The honesty about clinical limit-setting that some bioethicists urge may not be fully within our reach. But more candor is possible than we now achieve, and the more conscious we are about decisions to impose limits, the more inclined we will be to accept them without experiencing …

The War On Terrorism And The End Of Human Rights, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, President Bush stated that the perpetrators of the deed would be brought to justice. Soon afterwards, the President announced that the United States would engage in a war on terrorism. The first of these statements adopts the familiar language of criminal law and criminal justice. It treats the September 11 attacks as horrific crimes—mass murders—and the government’s mission as apprehending and punishing the surviving planners and conspirators for their roles in the crimes. The War on Terrorism is a different proposition, however, and a different model of governmental action—not law but war. Most …