Law Commons^™

The Problem Of Moral Dirigisme: A New Argument Against Moralistic Legislation, Mario Rizzo

Mario Rizzo

This Article applies a theory of rational choice to moral decisionmaking. In this theory, agents act primarily on local and personal knowledge to instantiate moral principles, virtues and moral goods. The State may seek to prevent them from acting as they independently determine by prescribing or proscribing certain conduct by formal legal means. If its purpose is to ensure that people act morally or become better persons, we call this “moral dirigisme.” Our thesis is that the need to use decentralized knowledge to determine the moral status of an act makes the task of the moral dirigiste well-neigh impossible. The …

Retuning The Harmonization Of Eu Asylum Law: Exploring The Need For An Eu Asylum Appellate Court, Ariel Meyerstein

Ariel Meyerstein, JD, PhD

This Comment takes as its starting point the adoption of the first five pieces of harmonized legislation created as part of the EU’s asylum regime overhaul of the early 2000s and proposes constructive solutions to compensate for the inadequate results of the May 2004 negotiations in Brussels. Specifically, it is proposed that an EU-wide asylum appellate court could assist the Member States in completing the work they started by creating a comprehensive harmonization consistent with international law.

The Two Faces Of Intercountry Adoption: The Significance Of The Indian Adoption Scandals, David M. Smolin

David M. Smolin

This article summarizes international law, and the law of India and the United States, relevant to intercountry adoption. The article then presents extensive information and analysis of a major series of adoption scandals in Andhra Pradesh, India. The article uses this analysis of law and a major series of adoption scandals to present the "two sides of intercountry adoption:" positively, as a humanitarian act, and negatively as a form of child trafficking. The weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the intercountry adoption system that led to the Indian adoption scandals are extensively analyzed.

Intercountry Adoption As Child Trafficking, David M. Smolin

David M. Smolin

This article analyzes when intercountry adoption constitutes a form of child trafficking, particularly under international law. The article reviews relevant Treaties on the subjects of slavery and human trafficking, as well as analyzing the problem of money and adoption within the domestic (United States) adoption system.

The Effect Of Auburn University’S Business-Engineering-Technology Program On The Predisposition Towards Entrepreneurship In Business And Engineering Graduates, Paul Swamidass, Daniel Butler

Paul Swamidass

The unique Business-Engineering-Technology (BET) minor at Auburn University trains business and engineering students in teamwork and entrepreneurship. All eleven graduates of the first BET class (2003) and nineteen graduates from the second BET class (2004) were surveyed to assess their entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and abilities. Their responses were compared against the Auburn University norm for graduating seniors. The norm was developed using 254 responses from business and engineering students who were cohorts of the BET students. In this lock-step program, students design and develop three different products and matching businesses to exploit their products. Over the two years, they prepare …

Fairness In Consumer Law: A Vague, Flexible Notion, Anna Giordano Ciancio

Anna Giordano Ciancio Dr.

Fairness in Consumer Law: a vague, flexible notion This paper focuses on the notion of ‘fairness’ in consumer law with regard to the issue of unfair terms in consumer standard form contracts. This issue is addressed through a comparative analysis concerning the meaning of fairness as well as (un-)fairness related concepts. In particular, emphasis is placed on the intertextual, semantic links existing between ‘ fairness ‘ and ‘reasonableness’ as notions that prevail in the English legal system. As a reference normative text, the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (UCTA) is examined and compared to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts …

Free And Fair Elections, Riccardo Pelizzo

riccardo pelizzo

This chapter argues that the freedom and the fairness of elections are threatened by old and new (and emerging) threats. In fact, the freedom and the fairness of elections are threatened not only by political violence, intimidation and electoral fraud which can be regarded as the ‘old’ or ‘traditional’ threats, but they are also threatened by the absence of plural sources of independent information, conflict of interests and , above all, corruption

L'Efficacia Legislativa Dei Governi: Quali Cause?, Riccardo Pelizzo

riccardo pelizzo

Il proposito di questo articolo e’ di cercar di capire quali fattori facilitino e magari causino, un’efficace azione legislativa dei governi. Questa analisi comparata e, per quanto possibile, quantitativa, e’ resa possibile dal lavoro svolto da Doering e dai suoi collaboratori che hanno raccolto, pazientemente e sapientemente, dati preziosi sulla azione legislativa dei governi, sulla efficacia di tale azione legislativa e sulle possibili cause di tale efficacia in 18 democrazie europee

Tort Law Through Time And Culture: Themes Of Economic Efficiency, M Stuart Madden

M Stuart Madden

Hellenic philosophers assessed the goals of society as: (1) the protection of persons and property from wrongful harm; (2) protection of the individual’s means of survival and prosperity; (3) discouragement of self-aggrandizement to the detriment of others; and (4) elevation of individual knowledge that would carry forward and perfect such principles.

Roman law was replete with proscriptions against forced taking and unjust enrichment, and included rules for ex ante contract-based resolution of potential disagreement. Customary law perpetuated these efficient economic tenets within the Western World and beyond.

The common law, in turn, has nurtured many of the same ends. From …

Troubling The Definition Of Pornography: Little Sisters, A New Defining Moment In Feminists' Engagement With The Law?, Lara Karaian

Lara Karaian

This article explores feminism’s relationship to the legal regulation of pornography. Of particular interest to the author is how the defining moment of the Butler decision has been opened up to contestation and complication by Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium et. al. v. Minister of Justice et al., a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision regarding Canada Customs violations of the free expression and equality rights of a Vancouver-based gay and lesbian bookstore. The focus of the article is on the role that the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) played in both Butler and Little Sisters. The …

Garda Diversion Of Young Offenders: An Unreasonable Threat To Due Process Rights?, Liz Campbell

Liz Campbell

Diversion programmes play a significant role in the field of youth justice, as an alternative to the conventional court process, which aim to prevent the entry of the child into the formal justice system. This article seeks to establish whether the purported benefits of the pre-trial police diversion programme in Ireland outweigh any infringements on the rights of the child. Firstly, the salient legislative provisions are briefly elucidated, and then the application of the Programme to date is examined. Next, the issue of whether traditional due process rights are relevant or necessary in the context of the Garda diversion programme …

Succeeding In A Cross-Disciplinary, International, Student Design-Team Project: Auburn University/University Of Plymouth Experience, Paul Swamidass, Bob Bulfin, David Grieve, Chetan Sankar, Venu Vulasa

Paul Swamidass

Globalization has turned product design upside down. Members of a single design team in multinational firms may be located in several countries such as the USA, UK, Italy, India and so on. It is a challenge to give engineering and business students a taste of this experience. Auburn University’s Business-Engineering-Technology (B-E-T) program, and the College of Engineering, University of Plymouth, participated in a joint effort to replicate real-life product design process with a mixture of engineering and business students. This paper describes the experience, its lessons and compares it with other attempts at multinational student design-team projects.

Big Government And Its Wars On Crime: Crime Control As A Method Of Government Expansionism, Paul R. Rickert

Paul R Rickert

The federal government has expanded to meet perceived social needs and as issues come to the forefront that Washington elites believe they can fix. Consequently, they expand the power and role of the government. One way this is done is through progressive criminalization of once held freedoms. Consider the first drug laws, consider the war on poverty, consider the tax code, the new war on drugs, and hate-crimes legislation. Although tax law is not criminal law per-se, in the end, choosing not to pay taxes results in prosecution. Laws and regulations ultimately must have “teeth” for it to be effective. …

Embracing Segregation: The Jurisprudence Of Choice And Diversity In Race And Sex Separatism In Schools, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, segregation based on race and sex is sweeping the nation's educational systems. Courts are rapidly dismantling desegregation orders, and when those desegregation orders end, school districts racially resegregate. At precisely the same time this end to racial desegregation is occurring, the government is beginning to sponsor sex segregation in schools as well. The No Child Left Behind Act provides over $400 million in federal funds for experiments in education, such as single-sex schools and classes. Embracing Segregation draws connections between the end of racial desegregation and the beginning of government-sponsored sex segregation …

The Evolution Of Employment Discrimination Law In The 1990s: A Preliminary Empirical Investigation, John Donohue, Peter Siegelman

John Donohue

No abstract provided.

Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities, And Organizational Maintenance: The U.S. Supreme Court, 1955 To 1994, Jeff L. Yates, Andrew B. Whitford, William Gillespie

Jeff L Yates

In this study, we examine agenda setting by the U.S. Supreme Court, and ask the question of why the Court allocates more or less of its valuable agenda space to one policy issue over others. Our study environment is the policy issue composition of the Court's docket: the Court's attention to criminal justice policy issues relative to other issues. We model the Court's allocation of this agenda space as a function of internal organizational demands and external political signals. We find that this agenda responds to the issue priorities of the other branches of the federal government and the public. …

Appointing Federal Judges: The President, The Senate, And The Prisoner's Dilemma, David S. Law

David S. Law

This article argues that the expansion of the White House's role in judicial appointments since the late 1970s, at the expense of the Senate, has contributed to heightened levels of ideological conflict and gridlock over the appointment of federal appeals court judges, by making a cooperative equilibrium difficult to sustain. Presidents have greater electoral incentive to behave ideologically, and less incentive to cooperate with other players in the appointments process, than do senators, who are disciplined to a greater extent in their dealings with each other by the prospect of retaliation over repeat play. The possibility of divided government exacerbates …

Princípios Do Direito À Cidade, Rafael De Oliveira Alves

Rafael de Oliveira Alves

No abstract provided.