Law Commons^™

The Political Dynamics Of Mandatory State Constitutional Convention Referendums: Lessons From The 2000s Regarding Obstacles And Pathways To Their Passage, John J. Dinan

Montana Law Review

State Constitutional Convention Referendums

Have American Indians Been Written Out Of The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Jessica M. Wiles

Montana Law Review

Written out of RFRA

Acknowledging America’S First Sovereign: Incorporating Tribal Justice Systems Into The Legal Research And Writing Curriculum, Samantha A. Moppett

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

Marie Setian (Marie) drove to Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut, with her husband and another couple for a day of gambling, dining, and entertainment. After gambling for a little while, the couples went to the Festival Buffet. At the buffet’s seafood station, Marie placed some shrimp on her plate. As she walked to the international station, her left foot slipped on something, and she fell to the floor. As a result of the fall, Marie experienced soreness, swelling, and discomfort in her knee. Eventually, she underwent surgery and participated in extensive physical therapy. Her knee will never be the …

Scientific Evidence As Foreign Law, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Most contemporary debates about scientific evidence focus on admissibility under Daubert and the Federal Rules of Evidence. That bias is quite understandable-after all, it is the framework imposed by the United States Supreme Court. Daubert, however, rests on a fundamental assumption: that courts should treat scientific facts like any other adjudicative facts ultimately left to the jury. Perhaps the involvement of specialized knowledge requires judges to act as gatekeepers to ensure some basic level of reliability, but under Daubert, scientific facts are still just facts. As I will argue, scientific facts fit awkwardly into the conventional framework for conceptualizing and …

Reinventing Lisbon: The Case For A Protocol To The Lisbon Agreement (Geographical Indications), Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Doha Development Agenda (Doha Round) of multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) may fail unless a solution to the establishment of a multilateral register for geographical indications on wines and spirits (GIs) foreseen in the TRIPS Agreement is found. Failure of the Doha Round would entail serious intended and unintended consequences for the world trading system. Europe’s insistence on a Doha deal on GIs in now accompanied by demands from several developing countries for an extension of GI protection to products other than wines and spirits. Those demanders consider the current emphasis on alcoholic beverages to …

Locating The International Interest In Intranational Cultural Property Disputes, Joseph P. Fishman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article considers the extent to which there may be an international interest in how intranational disputes over cultural property are settled. Drawing on the norms underlying recent global scrutiny of states’ destruction of cultural objects located within their own territory, I identify two factors that may justify internationalizing otherwise domestic conflicts over cultural property: discriminatory intent and harm to cultural diversity. I argue that where neither of these concerns is implicated, the international community should pursue a policy of non-intervention, both because local authorities are likely to be more competent adjudicators and because eliciting a global referendum on cultural …

Design Principles For Carbon Emissions Reduction Programs, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Paul C. Stern, Gerald T. Gardner, Thomas Dietz, Jonathan M. Gilligan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The goal, articulated by President Obama in 2009, of reducing U.S. carbon emissions 17% from the 2005 level by 2020 iseminently achievable without new technology or appreciable sacrifice by energy users. However, achieving it will in part require sophisticated energy efficiency and conservation programs. To overcome institutional and behavioral barriers, these programs will need to implement six principles of effective design derived from 30 years of behavioral and social science research. We focus on the household sector, but believe our general conclusions likely apply to other sectors as well.

We recently developed an analysis for the household sector--energy use in …

Policy Challenges Of The Heterogeneity Of The Value Of Statistical Life, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Economic research has developed estimates of the heterogeneity of the value of statistical life (VSL) on dimensions such as individual age, income, immigrant status, and the nature of the risk exposure. This paper examines the empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of VSL and explores the potential implications for the valuation of regulatory policies. Previously, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unsuccessfully sought to adopt a simple age discount percentage for VSL based on survey evidence. However, labor market estimates of VSL indicate a pattern that tracks lifetime consumption trajectories, as the VSL rises with age and eventually tapers off but …

Obama's Equivocal Defense Of Agency Independence, Kevin M. Stack

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

You can't judge a President by his view of Article II. At the very least, only looking to a President's construction of Article II gives a misleading portrait of the actual legal authority recent Presidents have asserted.

President Obama is no exception, as revealed by his defense of the constitutionality of an independent agency from challenge under Article II in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board' (PCAOB) in the Supreme Court this term. The PCAOB is an independent agency, located inside the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), created to regulate accounting of public companies in the wake of …

Government Dragnets, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article examines group-focused police investigation techniques - for instance, roadblocks, drug testing programs, area or industry-wide health and safety inspections, data mining, and camera surveillance - a phenomenon referred to as "government dragnets" because these general searches and seizures attempt to cull out bad actors through ensnaring a much larger number of individuals who are innocent of any wrongdoing. The courts have imposed few limitations on dragnets. Recent commentary has either advocated an even more laissez-faire attitude toward these group search and seizures or, at the other end of the spectrum, proposed schemes that would make most of them …

Ecosystem Services And Federal Public Lands: Start-Up Policy Questions And Research Needs, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Essay, based on my presentation at Duke Law School's 2009 symposium, Next Generation Conservation: The Government's Role in Emerging Ecosystem Service Markets, briefly examines this emerging policy front and proposes a set of key policy questions, research needs, and options for building on the policy work that has been done to date. Part I outlines the basic context for thinking about the role federal public lands might play in the management of ecosystem services, and why using the ecosystem services concept in public land policy is worth considering. Part II proposes several key research paths that must be addressed …

The Limits Of A National Renewable Portfolio Standard, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Commentary Article, Professor Rossi highlights some of the distributional and operational problems presented by a national renewable portfolio standard ("RPS") in electric power. He also offers several solutions to these problems as a way of advancing a cautionary defense of a national RPS. Ultimately, Professor Rossi concludes that addressing climate change will need to involve more systemic and larger scale modifications to regulation of the electric power industry, including addressing infrastructure issues such as transmission and carbon pricing.

Siting Transmission Lines In A Changed Milieu: Evolving Notions Of The "Public Interest" In Balancing State And Regional Considerations, Jim Rossi, Ashley C. Brown

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article discusses how state public utility law presents a barrier to the siting of new high voltage transmission lines to serve renewable resources, and how states could approach its evolution in order to preserve a role for state regulators in a new energy economy in which renewable energy will play a significant role. The traditional approach to determining the "public interest" in siting transmission lines is well on its way to obsolescence. Two developments over the past fifteen years have begun to challenge this paradigm. First, policies at the federal level and in many states have encouraged increased competition …

"Our Cities Institutions" And The Institution Of The Common Law, Bernadette Meyler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The audiences of early modern English drama were multiple, and they intersected with the legal system in various ways, whether through the cross-pollination of the theaters and the Inns of Court, the representations of the sovereign’s justice performed before him, or the shared evidentiary orientations of jurors and spectators. As this piece written for a symposium on “Reasoning from Literature” contends, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure addressed to these various audiences the question of whether the King should judge in person. In doing so, it drew on extant political theories suggesting that the King refrain from exposing himself to public censure …

Probabilities In Probable Cause And Beyond: Statistical Versus Concrete Harms, Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Finding The Middle Ground In Collection Development: How Academic Law Librarians Can Shape Their Collections In Response To The Call For More Practice-Oriented Legal Education, Leslie A. Street, Amanda M. Runyon

Library Staff Publications

To examine how academic law libraries can respond to the call for more practice-oriented legal education, the authors compared trends in collection management decisions regarding secondary sources at academic and law firm libraries. The results of their survey are followed by recommendations about how academic and firm librarians can work together to best provide law students with materials they will need in practice.

Finding Data And Statistics On Judges, Leslie A. Street

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

They Can Do What!? Limitations On The Use Of Change-Of-Terms Clauses, Peter A. Alces, Michael M. Greenfield

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Cy Pres Relief And The Pathologies Of The Modern Class Action: A Normative And Empirical Analysis, Martin H. Redish, Peter Julian, Samantha Zyontz

Faculty Scholarship

Since the mid 1970s, federal courts have taken the doctrine of cy pres relief from the venerable law of trusts and adapted it for use in the modern class action proceeding. In its original context, cy pres was utilized as a means of judicially designating a charitable recipient when, for whatever reason, it was no longer possible to fulfill the original goal of the maker of the trust. The purpose of cy pres was to provide “the next best relief” by finding a recipient who would resemble the original donor’s recipient as much as possible. In the context of class …

Georgia Journal Of International And Comparative Law Editorial Board, 2010-2011, Georgia Journal Of International And Comparative Law

Materials from All Student Organizations

No abstract provided.

The Blameless Corporation, Larry D. Thompson

Scholarly Works

This article is a clarification and expansion of the author's previous oral statements published in The American Criminal Law Review 46-4--a Symposium Issue on "Achieving the Right Balance: The Role of Corporate Criminal Law in Ensuring Corporate Compliance."

The Story Of Us: Resolving The Face-Off Between Autobiographical Speech And Information Privacy, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

Increasingly more “ordinary” Americans are choosing to share their life experiences with a public audience. In doing so, however, they are revealing more than their own personal stories, they are exposing private information about others as well. The face-off between autobiographical speech and information privacy is coming to a head, and our legal system is not prepared to handle it.

In a prior article, I established that autobiographical speech is a unique and important category of speech that is at risk of being undervalued under current law. This article builds on my earlier work by addressing the emerging conflict between …

Power, Exit Costs, And Renegotiation In International Law, Timothy L. Meyer

Scholarly Works

Scholars have long understood that the instability of power has ramifications for compliance with international law. Scholars have not, however, focused on how states’ expectations about shifting power affect the initial design of international agreements. In this paper, I integrate shifting power into an analysis of the initial design of both the formal and substantive aspects of agreements. I argue that a state expecting to become more powerful over time incurs an opportunity cost by agreeing to formal provisions that raise the cost of exiting an agreement. Exit costs - which promote the stability of legal rules - have distributional …

Ensuring Government Accountability During Public Health Emergencies, Fazal Khan

Scholarly Works

The main argument of this Article is that the gravest threat to civil liberties during a public health emergency (PHE) stems from federal powers premised on post-9/11 national security justifications, not putative state powers under the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA). While I concur with earlier assessments that the MSEHPA is seriously flawed and that PHEs should be construed as primarily federal issues, going forward, more critical attention needs to be focused on the federal role during PHEs as the initially alarming MSEHPA appears to be more of a paper tiger. First, as the responses to Hurricane Katrina …

Summary Of Ramirez V. State, 126 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 22, Anthony R. Sassi

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction in the Second Judicial District Court, pursuant to a jury verdict of second-degree felony murder by means of child abuse, neglect, or endangerment.

Summary Of Strickland V. Waymire, 126 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 25, Keith Pickard

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Appeal from a district court summary judgment ordering appellants’ recall elections to proceed based upon a reading of Article 2, Section 9 of the Nevada Constitution whereby any registered voter may sign the recall petition to reach the 25% numerical threshold. The Supreme Court unanimously held that only those voters who actually voted in the election which seated the officials may count toward the 25% threshold.

Amicus (Volume 9) (Summer 2010), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Amicus

No abstract provided.

Legal Beagle Blog (July 2010), Roger Williams University School Of Law Library

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

All Politics Are Suboptimal, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Despite its intentions and founding principles, the United Nations is fundamentally a political organization and therefore subject to the machinations of states as they seek to maximize their self interest, protect their reputations, and advance their power. The UN Security Council itself is a product of World War II and reflects a settlement from the end of the war that many perceive as highly inappropriate to the balance of power and global realities of the world today.

Overcoming History And Human Rights At The Un, Sonia Cardenas

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Criticism is most useful when it imagines viable alternatives. This is why the most recent wave of outrage over the elections to the UN Human Rights Council seems counter-productive. Yes, egregious human rights violators have been elected to the Council. Yes, Iran was kept off the Council in exchange for a seat on the women’s rights commission . And, yes, the elections were uncontested, with regional blocs putting forth the same number of candidates as vacancies. These facts have led observers to describe the body as a farce, as all pretense, and to decry US participation in the Council.