Law Commons^™

Sovereignty As Discourse, Robert L. Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments In Us Copyright Law – Part Ii, Caselaw: Exclusive Rights On The Ebb?, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The 1976 Act announces broad exclusive rights, offset by a myriad of specific exemptions, and one wide exception for "fair use." In words and intent, the exclusive rights are capacious, but new technologies may have caused some of the general phrases to become more constraining than might have been expected from a text whose drafters took pains to make forward-looking. Thus, the scope of the reproduction right turns on the meaning of "copy;" the reach of the distribution right on "distribute copies" and "transfer of ownership;" the range of the public performance right on "public" and "perform." Entrepreneurs and users …

Homes With Tails: What If You Could Own Your Internet Connection?, Tim Wu, Derek Slater

Faculty Scholarship

America's communications infrastructure is stuck at a copper wall. For the vast majority of homes, copper wires remain the principal means of getting broadband services. The deployment of fiber optic connections to the home would enable exponentially faster connections, and few dispute that upgrading to more robust infrastructure is essential to America's economic growth. However, the costs of such an upgrade are daunting for private sector firms and even for governments. These facts add up to a public policy challenge.

Our intuition is that an innovative model holds unrealized promise: household investments in fiber. Consumers may one day purchase and …

Introduction: The Challenge Of Lionel Tate, Elizabeth S. Scott, Laurence Steinberg

Faculty Scholarship

Legal reforms over the past generation have transformed juvenile crime regulation from a system that viewed most youth crime as the product of immaturity into one that is ready to hold many youths to the standard of accountability imposed on adults. Supporters of these reforms argue that they are simply a response to the inability of the traditional juvenile court to deal adequately with violent youth crime, but the legal changes that have transformed the system have often been undertaken in an atmosphere of moral panic, with little deliberation about consequences and costs.

In this book we argue that a …

The 'High Crime Area' Question: Requiring Verifiable And Quantifiable Evidence For Fourth Amendment Reasonable Suspicion Analysis, Andrew Ferguson, Damien Bernache

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article proposes a legal framework to analyze the "high crime area" concept in Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion challenges.Under existing Supreme Court precedent, reviewing courts are allowed to consider that an area is a "high crime area" as a factor to evaluate the reasonableness of a Fourth Amendment stop. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000). However, the Supreme Court has never defined a "high crime area" and lower courts have not reached consensus on a definition. There is no agreement on what a "high-crime area" is, whether it has geographic boundaries, whether it changes over time, whether it …

Codes And Codification: United States Law, Lewis Grossman

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

An entry in the forthcoming Oxford Encylopedia of Legal History (Stanley Katz ed.).

Decisions About Coercion: The Corporate Attorney-Client Privilege Waiver Problem, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

For almost a decade, law reviews and hearing rooms have resounded with cogent arguments that, for corporations at least, the attorney-client privilege has been chilled, eroded, attacked, or even killed by the federal government's misuse of its bargaining leverage. Yet it is unclear whether this rhetoric is overstated or understated. Given that most federal criminal defendants plead guilty, and that an extraordinarily large percentage of them provide information and testimony against others in order to avoid harsh sentences (or to avoid being charged at all), one could as easily say that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution …

A Multilateral Solution For The Income Tax Treatment Of Interest Expenses, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

Recent developments – including greater taxpayer sophistication in structuring and locating international financing arrangements, increased government concerns with the role of debt in sophisticated tax avoidance techniques, and disruption by decisions of the European Court of Justice of member states' regimes limiting interest deductions – have stimulated new laws and policy controversies concerning the international tax treatment of interest expenses. National rules are in flux regarding the financing of both inbound and outbound transactions.

Heretofore, the question of the proper treatment of interest expense has generally been looked at from the perspective of either inbound or outbound investment. As a …

"They Say I Am Not An American…": The Noncitizen National And The Law Of American Empire, Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

The American papers sometimes contain tales about persons who have forgotten who they are, what are their names, and where they live. The Porto [sic] Ricans find themselves in the same predicament as those absent-minded people. To what nationality do they belong? What is the character of their citizenship? ... [l]f since they ceased to be Spanish citizens they have not been Americans [sic] citizens, what in the name ·of heaven have they been?

A House Still Divided, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

In response to Adam B. Cox, Immigration Law's Organizing Principles, 157 U. PA. L. REv. 341 (2008).

Adam Cox's Immigration Law's Organizing Principles contests the traditional view that immigration law and alienage law – in his terms, "selection rules" and "regulation rules" – are distinct categories with legal and moral salience. Building upon prior scholarship that also called the distinction into question, Cox offers important insights into why this dividing line does not have the sharp conceptual edges that the jurisprudence would suggest exist. Despite the analytical persuasiveness of Cox's argument, I am not convinced that it will destabilize the …

Our Uniform Patent System, Clarisa Long

Faculty Scholarship

Patent reform arouses passions among the affected industries, whether they are plaintiffs or defendants, willing users or unwilling participants in the patent system. The key question, therefore, is: How should we structure the patent system in order to best promote innovation in the U.S. economy?

Torture And The Professions, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper examines the roles played by the learned professions in torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment carried out by the United States in the war on terrorism. It takes lawyers, physicians, psychologists, and anthropologists as its case studies. It originated as the keynote speech at the Association of Practical and Professional Ethics annual meeting in 2007.

Glimpses Of The Priest As Dean, Legislator, And Friend, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Rothstein offers details on how he crossed paths with Father Drinan and how they became good friends and professional colleagues.

Teaching Evidence, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article was published as part of the 2006 teaching issue of the Saint Louis University Law Journal. The teaching series was created as a forum for scholars, judges, and students to discuss methods for the effective teaching and learning of particular law school courses. In this essay, Professor Rothstein describes his philosophy and methods for teaching evidence.

The Doj Risks Killing The Golden Goose Through Computer Associates/Singleton Theories Of Obstruction, Julie R. O'Sullivan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The DOJ, through its corporate criminal charging policy, puts a premium on corporate cooperation with prosecutors. The "partnership" that the DOJ's cooperation policy demands of corporations is extremely valuable. But the DOJ threatens to kill its own golden goose by bringing a spate of high-profile prosecutions of corporate executives (Sanjay Kumar, Stephen Richards, and Greg Singleton) for obstruction of an "official proceeding" premised on their lies to the corporation's own counsel.

Rights Over Borders: Transnational Constitutionalism And Guantanamo Bay, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay argues that the most profound implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush may lie not in what it says about the place of law in the war on terror, but in what it reflects about the Supreme Court’s altered conceptions of sovereignty, territoriality, and rights in the globalized world.

Boumediene was groundbreaking in at least three respects. For the first time in its history, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a law enacted by Congress and signed by the president on an issue of military policy in a time of armed conflict. Also for the first …

No Reason To Believe: Radical Skepticism, Emergency Power, And Constitutional Constraint, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay reviews Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule’s Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts, which I consider the most serious, sustained, and thoughtful effort to defend the Bush administration’s aggressive tactics in the war on terror yet written. That the book is ultimately deeply flawed only underscores the failure of the Bush administration’s approach.

Where most historians view with regret the excesses of past security crises, from the criminalization of speech during World War I to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, Posner and Vermeule advance the contrarian view that the system worked exactly …

Terror Financing, Guilt By Association And The Paradigm Of Prevention In The ‘War On Terror’, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

"Material support" has become the watchword of the post-9/11 era. Material support to groups that have been designated as "terrorist" has been the U.S. government's favorite charge in post-9/11 "terrorism" prosecutions. Under immigration law, material support is a basis for deportation and exclusion - even where individuals have been coerced into providing support by the terrorist group itself. And under the Military Commissions Act, it is now a "war crime."

This essay argues that the criminalization of "material support" to designated "terrorist organizations" is guilt by association in twenty-first-century garb, and presents all of the same problems that criminalizing membership …

Fighting Women: The Military, Sex, And Extrajudicial Constitutional Change, Jill Elaine Hasday

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court in Rostker v. Goldberg (1981) upheld male-only military registration, and endorsed male-only conscription and combat positions. Few cases have challenged restrictions on women's military service since Rostker, and none have reached the Supreme Court. Federal statutes continue to exclude women from military registration and draft eligibility, and military regulations still ban women from some combat positions. Yet many aspects of women's legal status in the military have changed in striking respects over the past quarter century while academic attention has focused elsewhere. Congress has eliminated statutory combat exclusions, the military has opened many combat positions to women, …

Lawfare And Legal Ethics In Guantánamo, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper, part of a symposium on the legal profession, focuses on the lawyers – some civilian and some military – who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay. These include civilian counsel representing Guantánamo prisoners in habeas proceedings, as well as civilian and military defense counsel for those facing trial before military commissions. Using published sources as well as interviews with some of the lawyers, the paper examines the tactics by which the U.S. government has tried to disrupt the effective representation of Guantánamo detainees. In the case of habeas lawyers, whose very presence at Guantánamo is unwelcome by the government, …

The Outrageous God: Emotional Distress, Tort Liability, And The Limits Of Religious Advocacy, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When Matthew Snyder died fighting for his country, his memory was celebrated, and his loss mourned. The Westboro Baptist Church conducted a celebration of a different kind by picketing near Matthew’s funeral service. The church held signs that read, “You are going to hell,” “God hates you,” “Thank God for dead soldiers,” and “Semper fi fags.” In the weeks following the funeral, the church posted on its website, godhatesfags.com, an “epic” entitled “The Burden of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder.” Matthew’s burden, as the church saw it, was that he had been “raised for the devil” and “taught to defy …

What Yoder Wrought: Religious Disparagement, Parental Alienation And The Best Interests Of The Child, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Despite its grounding in a specific and peculiar set of facts, the strict scrutiny mandate of Wisconsin v. Yoder (decided in 1972) has changed the constitutional landscape of custody cases - - and it has done so in a way that is unsound both as a matter of law and policy. Following Yoder, most courts require a showing of harm to the child, or a substantial threat of harm to the child, before placing any restrictions on exposure to a parent’s religious beliefs and practices. This harm standard leaves children in an untenable position when parents compete for “spiritual custody,” …

Book Review Of Bradin Cormack, A Power To Do Justice: Jurisdiction, English Literature, And The Rise Of Common Law, 1509-1625 (2007), Jennifer Locke Davitt

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

"A Power to Do Justice" by Bradin Cormack is a scholarly work offering a critical examination of several sixteenth-century literary texts. Cormack shows how those texts reflect a shifting understanding of the legal concept of jurisdiction during that period.

Scottish Common Sense And Nineteenth-Century American Law: A Critical Appraisal, John Mikhail

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

One overriding concern I have with Susanna Blumenthal's insightful and stimulating article, "The Mind of a Moral Agent: Scottish Common Sense and the Problem of Responsibility in Nineteenth-Century American Law," is whether there is anything sufficiently distinctive about Scottish Common Sense philosophy that justifies the role Blumenthal ascribes to it. One could probably replace "Common Sense philosophy" in Blumenthal's formulation with something as diffuse as "The Enlightenment," or even "Western jurisprudence," without significantly altering its import, because the assumption that rational and moral faculties are innate and universal is common to most writers in these traditions. There are subtle differences …

On The Commander-In-Chief Power, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since September 11, the Bush administration has asserted broad, exclusive presidential war powers under the Commander in Chief Clause. However, the minimalist language of the Clause never specifies what powers a commander in chief possesses. This paper argues, based on military history, original understanding, and the contemporary theory of civilian-military relations, that the commander-in-chief power is narrow rather than broad. In ancient and feudal societies, like contemporary military dictatorships, civilian and military dominion are fused to consolidate power in the hands of a single leader – a warrior-king or fighting executive, whose military prowess validates the claim to civilian rule. …

Can Constitutionalism Be Leftist?, Louis Michael Seiman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this essay, written for a symposium on the work of Mark Tushnet, I examine Tushnet’s effort to defend popular constitutionalism in his powerful and subtle book entitled ATaking the Constitution Away from the Courts,” I ask whether the book succeeds in reconciling constitutionalism with leftism. If there is anyone who could accomplish this task, it is Tushnet. He is without question our most thoughtful constitutional leftist. And yet, the book, at least taken at face value, fails to achieve its goal. To the extent that the book argues for constitutionalism, it abandons leftism, and to the extent it is …

Gone In Sixty Milliseconds: Trademark Law And Cognitive Science, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Trademark dilution is a cause of action for interfering with the uniqueness of a trademark. For example, consumers would probably not think that "Kodak soap" was produced by the makers of Kodak cameras, but its presence in the market would diminish the uniqueness of the original Kodak mark. Trademark owners think dilution is harmful but have had difficulty explaining why. Many courts have therefore been reluctant to enforce dilution laws, even while legislatures have enacted more of them over the past half century. Courts and commentators have now begun to use psychological theories, drawing on associationist models of cognition, to …

Disintegration, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The silver lining behind the Supreme Court's decision to disintegrate the Seattle and Louisville public schools is that the decision also runs the risk of disintegrating judicial review. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 holds that the Constitution bars voluntary, race-conscious efforts by two local school boards to retain the racial integration that they worked so hard to achieve after Brown. In so holding, the Court curiously reads the Equal Protection Clause as preventing the use of race to pursue actual equality, and instead insists on a type of formal "equality" that has historically …

The Choice Between Madison And Fdr, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This exchange is about three clauses that have often been used by the courts since the New Deal to expand federal power: the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Taxation Clause, from which the spending power has (at least until today) been construed. This Essay addresses the originalist interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Prosecuting Sexual Violence In Correctional Settings: Examining Prosecutors' Perceptions, Brenda V. Smith

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 20031 (PREA) is the first piece of federal legislation, which expressly and exclusively addresses sexual abuse of persons in custody. Notwithstanding passage of the Act, there is clear belief, echoed by correctional leaders, that prosecutors are reluctant at best, and unwilling at worst, to prosecute cases of sexual violence in correctional settings. In order to gather information on prosecutor interest in and capacity to prosecute these cases, the National Institute of Corrections Project on Addressing Prison Rape at the Washington College of Law the (the NIC/WCL Project) collected data from state and federal prosecutors. …