Law Commons^™

Legal Case For Russian Intervention In Georgia, Nicolai N. Petro

Fordham International Law Journal

This Article examines the legal argument for Russia's military intervention in Georgia. Russia's emphasis on the legal justification for intervention should be viewed as a significant step to the adaptation of Russian foreign policy to post-Soviet norms. Finally, having weathered this crisis, Russia will increasingly construct its foreign policy arguments with an eye toward both following and shaping international law. Part I discusses the various legal documents Russia used in order to justify its intervention in Georgia. Part II gives a critique of the Russian intervention as a peace keeping operation to protect citizens. The article concludes questioning the circumstances …

"For These Reasons, The Chamber: Denies The Prosecutor's Request For Referral": The False Hope Of Rule 11 Bis, Amelia S. Canter

Fordham International Law Journal

This Note will examine decisions from two of the potential transfer cases, Prosecutor v. Gaspard Kanyarukiga and Prosecutor v.YussufMunyakazi, and discuss their implications for the ICTR." Part I addresses the early history of the ICTR, including the initial criticisms leveled against it and its rocky relationship with Rwanda. It also examines the introduction of 11 bis and the changes made by Rwanda to come into compliance with the Rule's requirements. Part II discusses the referral decisions themselves. Finally, Part III assesses the different approaches taken by the two chambers within their respective denials. Through an examination of the reasons given …

Pacta Sunt Servanda And State Promises To Foreign Investors Before Bilateral Investment Treaties: Myth And Reality, Jason Webb Yackee

Fordham International Law Journal

In their 1959 proposal to build a new international legal order founded upon principles of human dignity, Professors Myres McDougal and Harold Lasswell admonished international legal scholars to continuously reappraise the suitability and necessity of existing international legal institutions, taking due notice of the "myths" on which current arrangements are based and justified.' The aim of this Article is to take McDougal and Lasswell's admonition seriously in analyzing one of the persistent myths that serves to explain and to justify bilateral investment treaties ("BIT"s) that form the backbone of the modern system of international investment law. The author’s aim is …

The Virtues Of Medicare, Jill R. Horwitz

Reviews

Most of us look forward to a heaven where people don't get sick. But if they do, health care would be traded among fully informed patients and providers in perfectly competitive and frictionless markets. In that perfect world, sick citizens simply shop for doctors the way they shop for other consumer goods. The better doctors, like the most elegant hotel rooms and fanciest cars, would cost more than inferior doctors. Patients would consult their utility meters and, with appropriate attention to discounting over an infinite lifetime, choose accordingly. After each treatment, the patients would know the quality of their outcome …

Plainly Wrong: The High Court Takes The Low Road, David E. Wilkins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The court's most recent salvo in the Long case is no exception. I wrote about this case in April in this paper when the court had just heard oral arguments. My column was titled "A Matter of Disrespect" because in reading the transcript of the oral arguments, it was plainly evident in the questions raised by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia that they had very little respect for the legitimacy of tribal courts or their decisions.

The question that must be asked: Why are tribal courts treated differently than non-Indian courts? Not willing to confront this head-on, …

Can Congress Authorize The Opponents Of Self-Financed Candidates To Receive Extra-Large Contributions?, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Is the so-called Millionaires’ Amendment, which permits federal candidates who are running against self-funded opponents to receive contributions significantly above the standard federal statutory ceiling constitutional?

Federal law caps contributions to federal candidates, but the Supreme Court has ruled that limits on how much money a candidate can contribute to his or her own campaign are unconstitutional. This case tests the 2002 Millionaires’ Amendment, which enables candidates for Congress running against self-financing opponents to obtain contributions well above the ordinary statutory ceiling and also imposes additional reporting requirements on self-funding candidates.

Front Matter

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead, advisors, and Table of Contents for the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review Volume 3 (2008).

Indigenous Languages Under Siege: The Native American Experience, Allison M. Dussias

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

How have Native American languages, like the languages of other indigenous peoples around the world, arrived at this crisis stage? Is this simply the result of the passage of time, in an environment in which non-Native American society's sheer numbers, and its ever-present English-language media, including the "cultural nerve gas of television, inevitably swamp Native American languages and lead to their replacement by English? Or has this situation resulted from more deliberate action on the part of the dominant society, acting through its laws and other mechanisms of government power? We should also ask, given that so many Native American …

International Trafficking In Persons: Suggested Responses To A Scourge Of Humankind, Franklyn M. Casale

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

"International Trafficking in Persons: Suggested Responses to a Scourge of Humankind", a statement presented by Rev. Monsignor Franklyn M. Casale (St. Thomas University President) to the Distinguished Members of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Introductory Remarks, Siegfried Wiessner

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Introductory remarks by Siegfried Wiessner, Professor of Law & Director, Graduate Program in Intercultural Human Rights, for the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review Annual Symposium.

Race-Conscious Student Assignment Plans After Parents Involved: Bringing State Action Principles To Bear On The De Jure/De Facto Distinction, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, a sharply divided Supreme Court struck down two race-conscious school assignment plans aimed at achieving greater racial integration of the public schools. Taking Parents Involved as a starting point, this Article looks ahead to the future of litigation over student assignment plans. By striking down the Seattle and Louisville plans, the decision may "require hundreds of school districts to rethink race-based policies that they use voluntarily to desegregate schools." At the very least, the 5-4 ruling almost certainly did not put an end to race-conscious integration plans or …

Remixing Obviousness, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

In April 2007, the Supreme Court, for the first time in 41 years, decided a case about the basic contours of patent law's nonobviousness standard. The case, KSR, upends 25 years of Federal Circuit jurisprudence, and on a legal requirement that every patent must satisfy. In this essay, I show how KSR dismantles two predicates that have long shaped Federal Circuit nonobviousness cases - namely, the intertwined premises that hindsight-driven distortion is the gravest risk to an accurate nonobviousness requirement, and that the person of ordinary skill in the art (from whose perspective nonobviousness is judge) is singularly uncreative. In …

Culture, Sovereignty, And Hollywood: Unesco And The Future Of Trade In Cultural Products, Christopher M. Bruner

Scholarly Works

On October 20, 2005, the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization (UNESCO) adopted a treaty - by a vote of 148-2, with 4 abstentions - that legitimates domestic legal measures aimed at the protection of local producers of cultural activities, goods and services. Opposed by the United States and Israel, the Convention represents a major diplomatic victory for Canada and France - its principal proponents - and a major blow to Hollywood and the United States, audiovisual products being among America's most lucrative exports. Both Canada and France, like many countries around the world, have long …

The Fetishization Of Independence, Usha Rodrigues

Scholarly Works

According to conventional wisdom, a supermajority independent board of directors is the ideal corporate governance structure. Debate nevertheless continues: empirical evidence suggests that independent boards do not improve firm performance. Independence proponents respond that past studies reflect a flawed definition of independence.

Remarkably, neither side in the independence debate has looked to Delaware, the preeminent state source for corporate law. Comparing Delaware's notions of independence with those of Sarbanes-Oxley and its attendant reforms reveals two fundamentally different conceptions of independence. Sarbanes-Oxley equates independence with outsider status. An independent director is one who lacks financial ties to the corporation and is …

"I'M Sorry, I Can't Answer That": Supreme Court Confirmations, Judicial Independence, And Positive Legal Scholarship, Lori A. Ringhand

Scholarly Works

The United States Constitution grants to the Senate the duty to provide its “advice and consent” to the appointment of Supreme Court Justices. Just how senators should exercise that duty, however, is deeply contested. Much of the dispute about the Senate's role involves the appropriate scope of questions the senators should ask, and what nominees should be expected to answer, at the confirmation hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Opponents of vigorous senatorial questioning argue that such questioning infringes on the independence of the judiciary; proponents argue that the nominees' failure to answer probing questions hinders the Senate's constitutional …

Making The Law: Unpublication In The District Courts, Hillel Y. Levin

Scholarly Works

In recent years, one particular area of focus for legal scholars concerned about the increasing privatization and opacity of courts has been the issue of systematic unpublication of judicial opinions by the appellate courts. Judges have issued dueling opinions on the constitutionality of the practice and traded polemics on its appropriateness. Practitioners – whose voices often seem lost (or at least muted) on issues like this – are in the thick of the debate. No longer merely academic, this debate has even spawned a change in the rules of appellate procedure (one that amusingly pulled off the difficult feat of …

Environmental Law, Eleventh Circuit Survey, Travis M. Trimble

Scholarly Works

In 2007 the Eleventh Circuit interpreted the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Rapanos v. United States, regarding the federal government’s jurisdiction over waters under the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), and held that in order for federal jurisdiction to exist over a water that is not navigable in fact, the water must have a “significant nexus” with a water that is navigable in fact. Also under the CWA, the court partially reversed a granting of summary judgment to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, holding that the department had improperly excluded some types of evidence in approving Florida’s 2002 …

A Tribute To Robert L. Oakley: Remembering Bob Oakley, Roger F. Jacobs

Journal Articles

A tribute to Robert L. Oakley, Professor and Law Librarian (1945-2007).

Amicus (Volume 6, Issue No. 2) (Winter 2008), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Amicus

No abstract provided.

The Federal Marriage Amendment And The False Promise Of Originalism, Thomas Colby

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article approaches the originalism debate from a new angle - through the lens of the recently defeated Federal Marriage Amendment. There was profound and very public disagreement about the meaning of the FMA - in particular about the effect that it would have had on civil unions. The inescapable conclusion is that there was no original public meaning of the FMA with respect to the civil unions question. This suggests that often the problem with originalism is not just that the original public meaning of centuries-old provisions of the Constitution is hard to find (especially by judges untrained in …

Quanta V. Lg Electronics: Frustrating Patent Deals By Taking Contracting Options Off The Table?, F. Scott Kieff

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Quanta v. LG Electronics may make it significantly more difficult to structure transactions involving patents. While this decision does make a group of players into winners in the immediate term for existing patent deals (this group includes any customer who, like Quanta, buys patented parts without buying a patent license), almost everyone is likely to come out a loser going forward.

The Court in Quanta decided that a patent license that LG Electronics sold only to Intel - and explicitly limited to exclude Intel's customers, like Quanta, and priced to reflect these modest ambitions …

The Gay Panic Defense, Cynthia Lee

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this article, I examine the use of gay panic defense strategies in the criminal courtroom. I argue that such strategies are problematic because they reinforce and promote negative stereotypes about gay men as sexual deviants and sexual predators. Gay panic defense strategies are also troubling because they seek to capitalize on unconscious bias in favor of heterosexuality which is prevalent in today's heterocentric society. Most critics of the gay panic defense have proposed that judges or legislatures should bar gay panic arguments from the criminal courtroom. I take a contrary position and argue that banning gay panic arguments from …

Understanding Privacy (Chapter One), Daniel J. Solove

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Privacy is one of the most important concepts of our time, yet it is also one of the most elusive. As rapidly changing technology makes information increasingly available, scholars, activists, and policymakers have struggled to define privacy, with many conceding that the task is virtually impossible.

In UNDERSTANDING PRIVACY (Harvard University Press, May 2008), Professor Daniel J. Solove offers a comprehensive overview of the difficulties involved in discussions of privacy and ultimately provides a provocative resolution. He argues that no single definition can be workable, but rather that there are multiple forms of privacy, related to one another by family …

Law Library Briefs, Roger Williams University School Of Law Library

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Biased Assimilation, Polarization, And Cultural Credibility: An Experimental Study Of Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Paul Slovic, John Gastil, Geoffrey L. Cohen, Douglass A. Kysar

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

We present the results from the second in a series of ongoing experimental studies of public perceptions of nanotechnology risks. Like the first study, the current one found that members of the public, most of whom know little or nothing about nanotechnology, polarize along cultural lines when exposed to information about it. Extending previous results, the current study also found that cultural polarization of this sort interacts with the perceived cultural identities of policy advocates. Polarization along expected lines grew even more extreme when subjects of diverse cultural outlooks observed an advocate whose values they share advancing an argument they …

Who Fears The Hpv Vaccine, Who Doesn't, And Why? An Experimental Study Of The Mechanisms Of Cultural Cognition, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Geoffrey L. Cohen, Paul Slovic, John Gastil

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The cultural cognition hypothesis holds that individuals are disposed to form risk perceptions that reflect and reinforce their commitments to contested views of the good society. This paper reports the results of a study that used the controversy over mandatory HPV vaccination to test the cultural cognition hypothesis. Although public health officials have recommended that all girls aged 11 or 12 be vaccinated for HPV - a virus that causes cervical cancer and that is transmitted by sexual contact - political controversy has blocked adoption of mandatory school-enrollment vaccination programs in all but one state. A multi-stage experimental study of …

Standard-Setting By The United Nations Commission On Human Rights: An Overview From Its Inception In 1947 Until The Creation Of The Human Rights Council In 2006, Dinah L. Shelton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article discusses the standard-setting role of the Commission and Sub-Commission of the United Nations. The article describes the creation of the Commission, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Commission’s art in creating human rights treaties, and the use of non-binding instruments and other methods of standard-setting. The article concludes that the Commission accomplished a moderate amount and argues that the UN must retain an independent body to ensure protection of human rights.

United States V. Gourde: Curtailing Privacy In The Technological World, Joseph Perera

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

New Legal Frontier: Mass Information Loss And Security Breach, Chad Pinson

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Ill Wind: Libraries And Interlibrary Loan Of Audiovisuals, Carol Simpson

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.