Law Commons^™

When Interests Diverge, Robert S. Chang, Peter Kwan

Faculty Articles

In this review of Mary Dudziak's important book, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton Univ. Press 2000), Professors Chang and Kwan find the book to provide compelling historical narratives about the intersection of the Cold War and civil rights struggles. Dudziak demonstrates through an amazing array of historical evidence a story that runs counter to the standard narrative of racial sin followed by racial redemption, which helps us to reassess who we are and to be cognizant of the work that remains.

The Way We Were And What We “B”, Kelly Kunsch

Faculty Articles

This article describes the changes over the past 20 years in the job of reference librarian. Using typical reference questions and quotes from leading law librarians in the early '80s, the author compares current practice and explains the differences in the time, place, and manner of legal reference. Although answering questions may be done today more quickly and efficiently than 20 years ago, the increase in demand and expectations make the job more challenging than ever.

Undeserving Addicts: Ssi/Ssd And The Penalties Of Poverty, Dean Spade

Faculty Articles

Since the late 1980's, American media and politicians have produced and participated in a moral panic around the issue of illegal drug use. This panic has generated vivid pictures in the American imagination of drug users as a morally depraved, irresponsible, and willfully criminal underclass. Such images have fueled the "war on drugs," a multi-faceted rhetoric and policy approach to drug use that focuses on incarceration, interdiction, and other criminal justice strategies. The punitive approach of the war on drugs has bled into poverty and disability policy with alarming persistence. The trend has influenced numerous poverty alleviation and disability programs …

Transboundary Dispute Resolution As A Process And Access To Justice For Private Litigants: Commentaries On Cesare Romano's "The Peaceful Settlement Of International Disputes: A Pragmatic Approach", Henry Mcgee, Timothy W. Woolsey

Faculty Articles

Professor McGee reviews Cesare Romano's The Peaceful Settlement of International Environmental Disputes: A Pragmatic Approach. Cesare R. P. Romano, of the New York University Center for Global Cooperation, argues for and advocates arbitrative processes as the most tenable means of solving transboundary conflicts over the impacts of environmental pollution as well as access to natural resources.

Closing Essay: Developing A Collective Memory To Imagine A Better Future, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

This closing essay to a symposium inaugurating UCLA Law School's Program in Critical Race Studies suggests that the racialized Asian American body can operate as a site for collective memory and thus serve as reminders of past mistakes in order to restrain current and future abuses of power. One of the lessons to be learned is from World War II when extreme subordination of one Asian American group, Japanese Americans, was accompanied by the elimination of certain barriers for another Asian American group, Chinese Americans. A similar dynamic may be happening now following September 11. With the increase in legal …

After Intersectionality, Robert S. Chang, Jerome Culp

Faculty Articles

This essay is part of a symposium that looks at what Peter Kwan has described as post-intersectionality theory. It responds to the principal article in the symposium by Nancy Ehrenreich, Subordination and Symbiosis: Mechanisms of Mutual Support Between Subordinating Systems. While the authors applaud the effort by Ehrenreich to advance identity theory to account for multiple oppression, they suggest that Ehrenreich and other post-intersectionality scholars work to make these theories speak more directly to legal doctrine and legal actors.

Developing The Asset Protection Dynamic: A Legacy Of Federal Concern, John K. Eason

Faculty Articles

This article analyzes and critiques the modern asset protection environment, drawing from various paradigms of influence. Particularly, the article considers federal influence over asset protection—proposing that such federal factors need to be investigated with a critical eye in order to comprehensively understand asset protection issues in the modern landscape.

No. 1 - Legal Systems In Transition, Ivana Janu, Josef Bejcek, Gabriel M. Wilner

Occasional Papers Series

A January 24-28, 2000 visit by Justice Ivana Janu, Dean Josef Bejcek, and some of the Czech colleagues to the Dean Rusk Center and the University of Georgia provided an occasion for the exchange of ideas concerning transition in the legal structure and content in the former Socialist states of central and eastern Europe. Justice Janu and Dean Bejcek prepared papers and agreed to their publication. The availability of these two important papers, one on constitutional courts and the other on transitions in commercial law, rendered to the Rusk Center the necessary impetus for the creation of the Occasional Papers …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

The Progress Of Passion, Kathryn Abrams

Michigan Law Review

Like an abandoned fortress, the dichotomy between reason and the passions casts a long shadow over the domain of legal thought. Beset by forces from legal realism to feminist epistemology, this dichotomy no longer holds sovereign sway. Yet its structure helps to articulate the boundaries of the legal field; efforts to move in and around it infuse present thinking with the echoes of a conceptually distinct past. Early critics of the dichotomy may unwittingly have prolonged its influence through the frontal character of their attacks. By challenging a strong distinction between emotion and reason, critics kept it, paradoxically, before legal …

Joseph Henry Lumpkin Inn Of Court Team Members 2002-2003, Kellie Casey Monk

Materials from All Student Organizations

No abstract provided.

The Legal Status Of The Doha Declarations, Steve Charnovitz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article evaluates the uncertain legal status of two ministerial declarations approved at the Doha Conference. The Article proceeds by explaining the broad meaning and purpose of ministerial declarations, as well as the specific implications of the Doha Declarations. I conclude that the Doha Declarations may be considered either (1) the political statements or moral commitments of trade ministers or (2) as part of the constitutive process of decision-making by the WTO organization. Under the first view, the WTO Declarations are analogous to G-7 Declarations or the Malmö Declaration of environmental ministers. Under the second view, the Ministerial Conference can …

The Globalization Of Jurisdiction, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article begins by surveying the myriad ways that increasing globalization of communication, travel, and trade, and in particular the rise of the Internet, have forced judges and legal scholars to "adapt" traditional rules for legal jurisdiction to the new economic and social environment. For example, if a person posts content online that is legal where posted but illegal in some place where it is viewed, can that person be subject to suit in the far-off location? How should the International Shoe "minimum contacts" test account for online contacts? Is online activity sufficient to make one "present" in a jurisdiction …

The Cultural Life Of Capital Punishment: Surveying The Benefits Of A Cultural Analysis Of Law, Reviewing Austin Sarat, 'When The State Kills: Capital Punishment And The American Condition', Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Austin Sarat's 'When the State Kills' seeks to explore the interrelationship between capital punishment and American culture. Utilizing scholarly approaches drawn from sociology, literary criticism, cultural studies, and political science, Sarat illuminates the ways in which the official legal regime of capital punishment creates, reflects, and reinforces broader cultural attitudes about crime and punishment. Moreover, he argues that the destructive long-term cultural consequences of the death penalty provide a reason for abolition over and above any criminological or doctrinal arguments against the practice.

Thus, 'When the State Kills' not only offers a powerful intervention in the ongoing death penalty debate, …

Fine-Tuning Acquisition Reform's Favorite Procurement Vehicle, The Indefinite Delivery Contract, Karen Thornton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article provides an assessment of the effectiveness of the efforts to improve efficiency and commercialize government procurement, seven years after the passage of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act. The reforms that abolished inflexible rules and empowered a reduced acquisition workforce have been criticized as allowing agencies to obscure the transparency of traditionally rule-bound federal procurement, using sole source methods and bundling to limit competition. This Article asserts the problems associated with indefinite delivery contracting can be alleviated if more attention is devoted to accountability and enhancing contracting officer participation on the acquisition team.

Behavioral Finance And Investor Governance, Charles B. Craver

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The efficient market hypothesis is a special case in finance. It explains only tiny fractions of observed phenomena. Perhaps its major contribution is a formal definition of an ideal market world, to which policy formulations may be directed and against which they can be measured. Indeed, it seems unlikely that the infirmities of market action ever will be so minuscule as to render the EMH more than a special case, though it may explain more in the future than it does now. However things evolve, during the evolutionary course the shackles of the EMH should be unloosed from corporate and …

A Spurious Solution To A Genuine Problem: An In-Depth Look At The 1848 Import Drugs Act, Angela Walch

Faculty Articles

The Import Drugs Act has been relatively ignored by the academic community, and is most often relegated to a passing reference in a footnote. Yet the Act represents an important step in our nation's creation of a safe supply of drugs, and thus deserves some attention. In this paper, I give the Act that attention, and seek to place it in an historical context. In Chapter 1, I describe how Congressional action was prompted by medical conditions during the Mexican War and the belief that American soldiers were being given adulterated drugs. Chapter 2 describes the involvement of the professional …

One View To Add To The Many, Bill Piatt

Faculty Articles

The United States offers its citizens the opportunity to participate in the legal and political system through which it governs. The Constitution ensures that its citizens may engage, participate, and represent the body politics in government and the application of its laws. The recent attacks on America and the failure of the immigration system in monitoring its applicants has resulted in more restrictive immigration laws and policy.

The country’s legal education system must continue to improve its efforts in diversifying the nation’s law schools. More minorities should be represented as students, professors, and deans. Accomplishing a more diversified legal education …

The New Thought Police: Inside The Left’S Assault On Free Speech And Free Minds (Book Review), John W. Teeter Jr

Faculty Articles

Attacks on political correctness have grown both plentiful and rather tiresome. Such tomes occasionally score valid ideological points, but one grows weary of the bitter repetitiveness of it all. The New Thought Police might seem to offer a little novelty to the litany. Bruce is undeniably bright, impassioned, and edgy. Her book, however, is decidedly a mixed bag. The best parts center on her controversial role as a feminist spokeswoman during the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Bruce cogently emphasized that the case was a tragic paradigm of domestic violence rather than a racist conspiracy against a black cultural icon.

Bruce’s …

The Ethical Foundations Of American Judicial Independence, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Most lawyers and many citizens could recall the federal constitutional basis for judicial independence. Article III of the United States Constitution mandates that positions be filled through appointment by the President and confirmation by the Senate. That formidable selection process almost invariably ensures that federal judges are intelligent, well educated, and professionally experienced. Those qualities are conducive to judicial independence.

Additionally, federal judges enjoy the following constitutional guarantees: life tenure during good behavior, non-reducible compensation, and removal only through impeachment. These protections free federal judges from the need to behave in politically advantageous ways in order to keep their positions. …

Trial Rights And Psychotropic Drugs: The Case Against Administering Involuntary Medications To A Defendant During Trial, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

This paper explores the legal problems that arise when the government undertakes to render a criminal defendant competent to stand trial, by administering involuntary psychotropic medications. Among these problems are the infringement of the defendant's trial rights, such as the right to receive assistance of counsel and to confront witnesses, as well as interference with the defendant's ability to testify and to present evidence of a mental illness. This paper explores these problems with special reference to the case of Russell Weston, who has been charged with murder in the deaths of two Capitol police officers and who spent more …

Rois Can Validate Your Library’S Value, Robert H. Hu

Faculty Articles

The Return-On-Investment (ROI) rate, when determined and positively proven, may be the most effective tool for marketing a library. ROI is a cost-and-benefit analysis that determines whether money spent on the library produces a positive return. Proving and communicating a library's value to its governing board or constituents is increasingly necessary for law libraries to survive and flourish. A ROI analysis may be difficult to undertake if the library works in a not-for-profit setting, and requires a set of criteria different from those used for libraries in the for-profit setting. Although the ROI is a time-consuming and difficult analysis, libraries …

Beyond Brown V. Board Of Education: The Need To Remedy The Achievement Gap, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

Addresses the need to remedy the disparity in academic achievement of black and white students and examines why this disparity continues to exist in spite of the desegregation decrees issued under "Brown." Reviews how a court decides whether a school district has complied with a desegregation decree. Explains why schools are being released from desegregation decrees despite achievement gap.

Women's Labor Rights Rulings In 2001: A Mixed Bag, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Over the past year, federal and state courts issued a number of important decisions affecting the rights of working women. A review of these decisions reveals a mixed bag for women's rights. At the Supreme Court level, sex discrimination cases did not figure as prominently as they have in past year, yet the Court handed down a small but meaningful victory, and at least one significant defeat for female employees.

A Partial Legal Victory Against Continuing Discrimination: The New Supreme Court Ruling In Amtrak V. Morgan, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This June, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a technical, but important case interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case–National Railroad Passenger Corp. (Amtrak) v. Morgan- was a victory for victims of sexual and other forms of harassment, but a loss for victims of other forms of illegal workplace discrimination. The issue was whether incidents of discrimination that occurred outside the statute of limitations could nevertheless form the basis for a suit pursuant to the “continuing violations” doctrine. The answer from the Court, in a decision authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, was “Yes and no.”

Sexual Harassment, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Sexual Harassment is a form of sex discrimination that is common in American work places and education institutions, as well as in prisons, on the street, and in a variety of other contexts. The term "sexual harassment" includes a range of unwelcome sexual behavior, from sexual jokes, comments, or pictures, to rape.

Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control: Lessons From The Icann Dispute Resolution Process, Elizabeth G. Thornburg

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Some people have argued that the uniform dispute resolution process used by ICANN to resolve domain name disputes would be a good model for internet disputes generally. This article argues the opposite: the UDRP teaches sobering lessons about the consequences of privatized dispute resolution processes. The lessons include: the questionable legitimacy of privately-adopted substantive standards; the danger of unprincipled choice of law decisions to fill in the gaps in that private law; unreconciled splits among arbitrators as to the meaning of the standards; and a tendency to expand beyond the narrow jurisdictional limits of the policy. The UDRP also demonstrates …

Introduction: Keeping Secrets, Dale Carpenter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

It has become a commonplace to say that September 11 changed everything. What the writer or speaker usually means by this is that Americans have re-calibrated their views on the relative importance of individual civil liberties and the common good. Like many other national traumas, September 11 may in historical hindsight be seen as a jolt that perhaps necessarily-but at any rate, temporarily-induced a retrenchment on rights.

But if the September-11-changed-everything idea overstates the significance of the event, it also understates the extent to which, at least in the area of privacy, some re-calibration of the balance between liberty and …

Table Of Contents - Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 20, Iss. 1

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Postcards From The Edge: Surveying The Digital Divide, Andrew G. Celli Jr., Kenneth M. Dreifach

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.