Law Commons^™

A Law Library Development Project In Iraq: Looking Back Two Years Later, Kimberli Kelmor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Sometimes you get a chance to work on a project so complex, even you don't come to fully understand its impact until years later. At least that has been the experience for me regarding the opportunity I had to work in Iraq with the International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI) from February 2004 to January 1, 2006. As I reported in a previous essay, IHRLI, an institute of the DePaul University College of Law headed by Cherif Bassiouni, received a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Higher Education and Development (HEAD) contract to work with three Iraqi law schools.' …

A Plea For Reality, Roy A. Schotland

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Legend has it that a long-ago Chief Justice of Texas said, “No judicial selection system is worth a damn.” This view has been all but proven by American experience; nothing else in American law matches this subject in terms of the volume of written debate and endless sweat spent working for change. The selection system for federal judges is unchanged but far from untroubled, and

the States have never used a common method . . . . [O]ne can identify almost as many different methods . . . as there are States in the Union . . . . Moreover, …

District Of Columbia V. Heller And Originalism, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On June 26, 2008, the United States Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, striking a District of Columbia statute that prohibits the possession of useable handguns in the home on the ground that it violated the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Justice Scalia's majority opinion drew dissents from Justice Stevens and Justice Breyer. Collectively, the opinions in Heller represent the most important and extensive debate on the role of original meaning in constitutional interpretation among the members of the contemporary Supreme Court.

This article investigates the relationship between originalist constitutional …

Financial Crisis Containment, Anna Gelpern

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article maps financial crisis containment - extraordinary measures to stop the spread of financial distress - as a category of legal and policy choice. I make three claims.

First, containment is distinct from financial regulation, crisis prevention and resolution. Containment is brief; it targets the immediate term. It involves claims of emergency, rule-breaking, time inconsistency and moral hazard. In contrast, regulation, prevention and resolution seek to establish sound incentives for the long term. Second, containment decisions deviate from non-crisis norms in predictable ways, and are consistent across diverse countries and crises. Containment invariably entails three kinds of choices: choices …

The Conscience Of A Court, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author explains his conclusion that the Supreme Court, as a matter of conscience, considers racial discrimination to be good for America. That conclusion, he argues, offers the only plausible account of the Court's repeated insistence on displacing populist efforts to promote racial equality with the Court's own, more-regressive, version of expedient racial politics. Although the Court has had what is at best a checkered history when called upon to adjudicate claims of racial injustice, until now, the contemporary Court might arguably have been accorded the benefit of the doubt. But after its five-to-four ruling in the 2007 Resegregation case, …

Assuming Personal Responsibility For Improving The Environment: Moving Toward A New Environmental Norm, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is general agreement that we are nearing the end of achieving major gains in pollution abatement from traditional sources, that a significant portion of the remaining environmental problems facing this country is caused by individual behavior, and that efforts to control that behavior have either failed or not even been made.

The phenomenon of individuals as irresponsible environmental actors seems counterintuitive when polls show that people consistently rate protecting the environment among their highest priorities, contribute to environmental causes, and are willing to pay more to protect environmental resources.

This article is the author's second effort at understanding why …