Law Commons^™

Dream Palaces Of Law: Western Constructions Of The Muslim Legal World, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

Western distortions of the Muslim East nearly always take the same form, irrespective of who in the West is doing the distorting. One common theme can be generally gleaned from any projections of the Muslim East in the West, in any Western country, among nearly every community, including, and perhaps especially, our own academic community. This is the perception of the near ubiquitous role of Islam and, more germane to my remarks, Islamic law, of a historic, medieval kind, in governing the legal order of Muslim states, including Iraq, in a manner that can be entirely distorting. In these brief …

Building The Bottom Up From The Top Down, A. Michael Froomkin

Articles

"Bottom up" governance. "Self-organization." These are among the most talismanic virtue-words of modern political discourse. Yet the reality is that in politics, "self-organization" is rare, being hard to initiate and even harder to sustain. As Oscar Wilde once complained about socialism, it "requires too many evenings." Governance as we tend to know it depends primarily on hierarchical institutions, or on close coordination within small groups. True partnerships, conversations among engaged equals, do not seem to scale. Indeed, whether one believes the fundamental problem to be something about the economics of group formation, the iron law of oligarchy, or something in …

'We, The Paparazzi': Developing A Privacy Paradigm For Digital Video, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

In January 2009, the Camera Phone Predator Alert bill was introduced into Congress. It raised serious concerns about privacy rights in the face of digital video technology. In so doing, it brought to light a worrying gap in current privacy regulation - the lack of rules relating to digital video privacy. To date, digital privacy regulation has focused on text records that contain personal data. Little attention has been paid to privacy in video files that may portray individuals in inappropriate contexts, or in an unflattering or embarrassing light. As digital video technology, including inexpensive cellphone cameras, is now becoming …

From Domain Names To Video Games: The Rise Of The Internet In Presidential Politics, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Senator Barack Obama's historic victory in the 2008 election marks some important milestones - notably that this country is ready for its first African-American president. His win also underscores the importance of understanding today's Internet as a campaign tool. No longer is the Internet a one-way communications medium between candidate and electorate. It is now a powerful multi-directional networking tool. It can bridge physical and virtual spaces in a way never before possible, bringing previously latent social and political groups together. Senator Obama's campaign strategists understood and capitalized on the capabilities of what has recently become known as Web 2.0 …

Treaties And The Separation Of Powers In The United States: A Reassessment After Medellin V. Texas, Ronald A. Brand

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This article considers Chief Justice Roberts' majority opinion in the case of Medellin v. Texas. Like much of the commentary on this case, the article considers the international law implications of the opinion and its consideration of the doctrine of self-executing treaties. The primary focus here, however, consistent with the symposium in which this paper was presented, is on the opinion's implications for the separation of powers and for federalism. While the opinion's discussion of international law and treaty implementation can be considered dicta, the separation of powers and federalism portions may be seen as more directly necessary to …

Voices Saved From Vanishing, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

Jurists Uprooted: German-speaking Émigré Lawyers in Twentieth-century Britain examines the lives of eighteen émigré lawyers and legal scholars who made their way to the United Kingdom, almost all to escape Nazism, and analyzes their impact on the development of English law.

Proposing A Place For Politics In Arbitrary And Capricious Review, Kathryn A. Watts

Articles

Current conceptions of “arbitrary and capricious” review focus on whether agencies have adequately explained their decisions in statutory, factual, scientific, or otherwise technocratic terms. Courts, agencies, and scholars alike, accordingly, generally have accepted the notion that influences from political actors, including the President and Congress, cannot properly help to explain administrative action for purposes of arbitrary and capricious review. This means that agencies today tend to sweep political influences under the rug even when such influences offer the most rational explanation for the action.

This Article argues that this picture should change. Specifically, this Article argues for expanding current conceptions …

The Politics Of Intellectual Property, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

In May 2005, Keith Aoki invited me to participate on a panel on "The Politics of Copyright Law" at the 2006 Association of American Law Schools ("A.A.L.S. ") mid-year meeting workshop on Intellectual Property in Vancouver, British Columbia. The panel, renamed "The Politics of Intellectual Property," and moderated by Keith, included talks by Justin Hughes, Mark Lemley, Jay Thomas, and me, and it was followed by three concurrent sessions on "The Politics Concerning Moral Rights," "The Politics of Global Intellectual Property, " and "The Politics of Patent Reform." I'm not sure what the organizing committee had in mind when it …

Barack Obama, Margarita Lopez Torres, And The Path To Nomination, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Operating within these regimes, Obama was able to mount a credible--and ultimately successful--challenge to the leadership's choice for the nomination while Lopez Torres could not. This article offers an explanation why. It argues that Obama succeeded where Lopez Torres failed because the nomination process Obama traversed was more penetrable and more contestable than the one Lopez Torres faced.

Quick Off The Mark? In Favor Of Empowering The President-Elect, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

The United States’s presidential transition period is too long. Between November 7, 2008, and January 20, 2009, the media quickly identified a “‘leadership vacuum.’” In contrast to those of President-elect Obama, President Bush’s approval ratings were at historic lows. One reporter commented in late November, “The markets, at least, seem to be listening to one [P]resident—and he’s not the one in the Oval Office,” and another noted that “everyone . . . ignores the actions of the lame duck.”

Pangloss Responds, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

I am afraid that William Shieber and I are speaking past each other. I agree wholeheartedly with his assertion that anyone who believes that political appointees do not exert a considerable influence over the antitrust agencies is naïve. However, Technocracy and Antitrust does not advance the Panglossian view that the antitrust agencies are apolitical, if by that we mean that robotic machines devoid of human perspective or ideological commitment churn out scientifically predetermined antitrust results.