Law Commons^™

Copy This Essay: How Fair Use Doctrine Harms Free Speech And How Copying Serves It, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Defenders of transformative uses have invoked the First Amendment to bolster claims that such uses should not be subject to the copyright owner’s permission. But this focus on transformation is critically incomplete, leaving unchallenged much of copyright’s scope, despite the large number of nontransformative copying activities that are also instances of free speech. The current debate leaves the way open for expansions of copyright that, while not targeted at dissenting viewpoints, nonetheless may have a profoundly negative effect on freedom of speech. In other words, transformation has limited our thinking about the free speech interests implicated by copying. This essay …

The Moral Foundations Of Modern Libertarianism, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Libertarians no longer argue, as they once did in the 1970s, about whether libertarianism must be grounded on moral rights or on consequences; they no longer act as though they must choose between these two moral views. In this paper, the author contends that libertarians need not choose between moral rights and consequences because theirs is a political, not a moral, philosophy, one that can be shown to be compatible with various moral theories, which is one source of its appeal.

Moral theories based on either moral rights or on consequentialism purport to be comprehensive, insofar as they apply to …

Was The Right To Keep And Bear Arms Conditioned On Service In An Organized Militia?, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a review of The Militia and the Right to Arms, or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent by H. Richard Uviller & William G. Merkel (2002).

Those who deny that the original meaning of the Second Amendment protected an individual right to keep and bear arms on a par with the rights of freedom of speech, press and assembly no longer claim that the amendment refers only to a collective right of states to maintain their militias. Instead, they now claim that the right, although belonging to individuals, was conditioned on service in an organized militia. With …

Procedural Justice, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article begins in part I, Introduction, with two observations. First, the function of procedure is to particularize general substantive norms so that they can guide action. Second, the hard problem of procedural justice corresponds to the following question: How can we regard ourselves as obligated by legitimate authority to comply with a judgment that we believe (or even know) to be in error with respect to the substantive merits?

The theory of procedural justice is developed in several stages, beginning with some preliminary questions and problems. The first question--what is procedure?--is the most difficult and requires an extensive …

Upending Status: A Comment On Switching, Inequality, And The Idea Of The Reasonable Person, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews Murder and the Reasonable Man: Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom, by Cynthia Lee (2003).

Cynthia Lee has written a hard-hitting and insightful book on bias and the law of homicide. Her purpose is to document how murder law’s “reasonable person” may absorb the unreason of prejudice in its various forms (from biases of race to gender to sexual orientation). Doctrinally, Lee’s book is wide-ranging and ambitious, covering a variety of standard defenses, such as provocation (chs. 1–3) and self-defense (chs. 5–7), in contexts ranging from excessive use of force to intimate homicide, from hate …

Executive Compensation Reform And The Limits Of Tax Policy, Michael Doran

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 includes a major attempt to reform the tax rules for deferred compensation arrangements covering corporate managers. This paper examines the tax policy and corporate-governance policy objectives of the reform effort, explores the shortcomings of the legislation, and outlines a different approach for future executive compensation reform.

Rethinking Crime Legislation: History And Harshness, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is a truth about the criminal law that scholars evade as much as they criticize: the criminal law is produced by legislators (rather than the experts). The author states she does not know of any way to make law in a democracy other than through the voters' representatives. And, yet, it is the standard pose of the criminal law scholar to denigrate legislatures and politicians as vindictive, hysterical, or stupid. All of these things may be true but name-calling is a poor substitute for analysis. As in constitutional law, so too in criminal law, it is time to put …

War Everywhere: Rights, National Security Law, And The Law Of Armed Conflict In The Age Of Terror, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Both international and domestic law take as a basic premise the notion that it is possible, important, and usually fairly straightforward to distinguish between war and peace, emergencies and normality, the foreign and the domestic, the external and the internal. From an international law perspective, the law of armed conflict is triggered only when a armed conflict actually exists; the rest of the time, other bodies of law are applicable. Domestically, U.S. courts have developed a constitutional and statutory jurisprudence that distinguishes between national security issues and domestic questions, with the courts subjecting government actions to far less scrutiny when …

Modernizing Muslim Family Law: The Case Of Egypt, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Author discusses the dynamics of family law reforms in modern Egypt as an instance of similar dynamics of reforms in other Muslim countries. The forces that push for reforms as well as those that try to limit them are also introduced. The Author begins by describing the historical legal background shared by the vast majority of Muslim countries, including Egypt. An account of the general evolution of Islamic law-from a dominant system existing within an Islamic state to a subordinate system existing within an overall secularized legal system characterized by legal borrowing from European codes-is given. Islamic law has …

The Dark Side Of Grutter, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Liberals have generally cheered the Supreme Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger as validating the continued use of affirmative action in the struggle against racial injustice. But the Supreme Court's modern race cases rest on a misunderstanding of the nature of contemporary racial discrimination. From Brown, to Bakke, to Grutter, the Court has advanced a colorblind conception of racial equality that treats race-conscious affirmative action as constitutionally suspect, because it deviates from an aspirational baseline of race neutrality that lies at the core of the equal protection clause. However, race neutrality is a hopelessly artificial concept in …

Panel Ii: Public Appropriation Of Private Rights: Pursuing Internet Copyright Violators, Rebecca Tushnet, Michael Carlinsky, Justin Hughes, Sonia Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It seems to me that the story of music on the Internet over the past five or six years is the story of two fantasies colliding. The first fantasy is that information wants to be free, that with the Internet we can throwaway all the bottles and just have the wine and the free flow of data, which apparently was generated from somewhere and then circulated forever. So, there was that fantasy, that we would not need copyright anymore because everything would be available to everyone. The other fantasy is the record companies' fantasy of perfect control, that there would …

American Public Schools Fifty Years After Brown: A Separate And Unequal Reality, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Public schools became more segregated in the 1990s. More so than our neighborhoods, our schools are bastions of race and class privilege on the one hand, and race and class disadvantage on the other. Black and Latino schoolchildren are bearing the heaviest costs of this separation. They tend to be relegated to high-poverty; overwhelmingly minority schools that are characterized by poorer test scores, less experienced teachers, and fewer resources than the type of public schools most white children attend. This Essay argues that public schooling has become the "great equalizer" in America because it tends to place white children in …

Pandemic Influenza: Public Health Preparedness For The Next Global Health Emergency, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) garnered a great deal of public attention because it was novel and its potential for spread was unknown. However, the SARS corona virus is significantly less virulent than pandemic influenza viral infections. The annual number of deaths for seasonal influenza is 36,000 people in the United States and 250,000- 500,000 worldwide. However, highly pathogenic influenza pandemics have occurred roughly 2-3 times per century, causing untold morbidity and mortality. The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 was believed to have caused over 20 million deaths in a world less than one-third the size of the current global …

Building A Better Seating Chart For Sovereign Restructurings, Anna Gelpern

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Every sovereign debt restructuring in recent memory has wrestled with the problem of inter-creditor equity. Governments have discriminated among creditors in ways that were hard to predict and often were not revealed until after a debt default. In contrast, debts of firms, individuals and even localities are ranked in order of priority established by contract and statute. This ranking is known at borrowing, generally corresponds to the order of repayment in bankruptcy liquidation, and helps define the creditors' relative bargaining power in reorganization. Without a bankruptcy backstop, most debts of national governments are legally equal. Yet in practice, sovereign immunity …

Executive And Judicial Overreaction In The Guantanamo Cases, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The U.S. Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States held that detainees at Guantanamo Bay may challenge their detentions via writs of habeas corpus. Justice Stevens' majority opinion held that "the federal courts have jurisdiction to determine the legality of the Executive's potentially indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent of wrongdoing." This holding is potentially unbounded, perhaps enabling someone detained at Kandahar or even Diego Garcia to challenge his detention via the great writ. It appears to be a striking break from the 1950 Johnson v. Eisentrager decision, which strongly intimated that …

Arthur C. Helton 1949-2003, Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Through his advocacy, teaching and scholarship, Arthur Helton enabled some of the most vulnerable people on earth, as well as those who work to advance their rights, to ensure that governments strive to live up to their legal and moral obligations to protect and assist the displaced.

Walk Before They Make Us Run: Republican Party Of Minnesota V. White And The Need For Judicial Reform In Mississippi, David Neil Mccarty

MC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Three Years After Swancc: Still Wading Through The Jurisdictional Gap Created By The United States Supreme Court, Gretchen Zmitrovich

MC Law Review

No abstract provided.

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MC Law Review

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Table Of Contents

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

Aba Section Of Taxation Report Of The Task Force On Judicial Deference, Linda Galler, Irving Salem, Ellen P. Aprill, Aba Section Of Taxation, Task Force On Judicial Deference

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Recognizing the need for clearer standards regarding the degree of deference that the federal courts should confer on guidance issued by the Department of Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, the Tax Section, under the direction of former ABA Section of Taxation Chair Pamela F. Olson, created a Task Force on Judicial Deference in 2000. It was charged with the mission of not only examining the state of the law pertaining to judicial deference across the broad range of administrative pronouncements issued by the Treasury and the IRS, but also sharing its conclusions and possible solutions with the Section of …

[Un]Safe Harbor: No Common Denominator In Privacy Compliance, Steven A. Wells, Mark Courtney, Peter Vogel

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

Privacy is a social issue that varies depending on the mores of any particular culture. Clearly there have always been personal privacy issues before the advent of the Internet. However, the Internet has provided widespread proliferation of personal data which has dramatically changed the scope of where personal data may be. It was not really until about 1995 that the Internet brought this wide-spread change caused by ubiquitous growth of personal computers, online networks, graphical browsers, and broadband communications. Since it is impossible to accurately predict the ultimate direction of personal privacy on the Internet, governments around the world are …

Table Of Contents

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

Icann May Be The Only Game In Town, But Marina Del Rey Isn't The Only Town On Earth: Some Thoughts On The So-Called "Uniqueness" Of The Internet, Volker Kitz

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

"If you want to attach your network to the Internet, but you don't like the Network Solution, Inc.'s ("NSI") policies, for whatever reason, you quickly learn that NSI is the only game in town," said Catherine Simmons- Gill at a Congressional hearing in 1996. One might pose the question, "Why not just go to a different town?" Unfortunately, no other "town" can pride itself on hosting an organization that ultimately presides over the assignment of domain names under the current domain name system. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN"), based in Marina del Rey, is presently in …

Canned Spam: New State And Federal Legislation Attempts To Put A Lid On It, Jordan M. Blanke

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

Jurisdictional Issues In Electronic Commerce Contracts: A Canadian Perspective, Shafik Bhalloo

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

Governments, the private sector, the media, and academicians have defined electronic commerce ("e-commerce") in a variety ways. Narrowly defined, e-commerce refers to sales or purchases transacted over open or public networks, such as the Internet, independent of whether the payment is made on the network. Employing a broader definition, e-commerce may also include sales and purchases made over closed or private networks, such as electronic data interchange ("EDI") and debit or credit cards.' This article will focus on the narrower definition of e-commerce and, more specifically, business-to-consumer ("B-to-C") transactions rather than business-to-business ("B-to-B") transactions.

In the first part of this …

Entrepreneurial Open Source Software Hackers: Mysql And Its Dual Licensing, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

Hackers often quibble about commercializing software, yet most will readily sell their programming services. Richard Stallman, the father of free software, has always recognized that hackers have a right to make money. Aside from selling programming services, however, Stallman's disciples seem to frown upon commercializing software. Other hackers, labeling themselves "open source" developers, have warmed to the possibility that free software may be profitable.

This article describes one of the most promising business models for hackers, called "dual licensing." In this model, hackers offer the same code under two different licenses: a commercial license and an open source license. Licensees …

“The Corporate Conscience” And Other First Amendment Follies In Pacific Gas & Electric

San Diego Law Review

No abstract provided.

Remembering The Forgotten Ones: Protecting The Elderly From Financial Abuse

San Diego Law Review

There is nothing new about fraudulently taking money from people, particularly the elderly. The elderly population is rapidly increasing, however, and is readily accessible by telephone and mail. As a result, the elderly are easy targets for financial abuse. Such abuse can emanate from several sources, including people the victims know and trust, particularly family and friends.

Perpetrators can be people upon whom the elderly depend for care. Abuse can also come from strangers with whom elderly victims have no direct contact. This Article focuses primarily on the financial abuse of the elderly by strangers.

A Plain Meaning Interpretation Of Erisa’S Preemption And Saving Clauses: In Support Of A State Law Preemption Of Section 1132(A) Of Erisa’S Civil Enforcement Provisions

San Diego Law Review

Most of that change has involved the direction in which the Court has taken its interpretation of the phrase “relate to” as contained in ERISA’s express preemption clause. Changing course after approximately twenty-five years of expansively interpreting the preemption clause, the Court has moved from a very broad interpretation of “relate to,” as announced in Pilot Life v. Dedeaux, to a more practical, case-by-case evaluation that principally asks whether a disputed state law interferes with ERISA’s purposes and objectives, as discussed in New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Insurance Co1 If the state …