Law Commons^™

The Tea Party, The Constitution, And The Repeal Amendment, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Given that the Tea Party is a right-of-center movement, it does not take an empiricist to know that most Tea Partiers hold right-of-center views on a variety of issues. This does not mean, however, that the Tea Party movement is about immigration policy or social issues like abortion, any more than the gun-rights movement is about any other beliefs that may be held by a majority of gun-rights advocates. Instead, the Tea Party movement is about two big subjects: first, the undeniable recent surge in national government spending and debt, and second, what Tea Partiers perceive as a federal government …

Withdrawing From International Custom: Terrible Food, Small Portions, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Curtis A. Bradley and Mitu Gulati’s Withdrawing from International Custom brings to mind the old joke recounted by Woody Allen in Annie Hall: “Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ’em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.’” Similarly, while Bradley and Gulati attack international law’s current prohibition of unilateral withdrawal from custom, they propose an alternative that differs only modestly from it (small portions). At the same time, the doctrinal change they propose would take customary international law in the …

Chasing The Greased Pig Down Wall Street: A Gatekeeper’S Guide To The Psychology, Culture And Ethics Of Financial Risk-Taking, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The current financial crisis has once again focused attention on lawyers, corporate directors and auditors as gatekeepers, who are expected to introduce some degree of cognitive independence to the task of risk assessment and risk management in public companies, including financial services firms. This essay examines the psychological and cultural forces that may distort risk perception and risk motivation in hyper-competitive firms, beyond the standard economic incentives associated with agency costs and moral hazards, warning gatekeepers against too easily assuming that all is well when insiders display high levels of intensity, focus and devotion to hard-to-achieve goals. In fact, these …

Fred Zacharias’S Skeptical Moralism, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Fred Zacharias's articles, Rethinking Confidentiality, published in two parts, were a sensational start to an illustrious career. Fred conducted the first and one of the best empirical studies of confidentiality in years, surveying lawyers and clients in Tompkins County, New York, about what lawyers actually told clients about confidentiality and its exceptions, and what difference the exceptions made in whether clients withheld information from their lawyers.

The Evolution Of International Environmental Law, Edith Brown Weiss

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the last forty years, international environmental law has evolved rapidly, as environmental risks have become more apparent and their assessment and management more complex. In 1972, there were only a few dozen multilateral agreements, and most countries lacked environmental legislation. In 2011, there are hundreds of multilateral and bilateral environmental agreements and all countries have one or more environmental statutes and/or regulations. Many actors in addition to States shape the development, implementation of, and compliance with international environmental law. Moreover, environment is increasingly integrated with economic development, human rights, trade, and national security. Analyzing the evolution of international environmental …

Celebrating 100 Years Of The Georgetown Law Journal, Sherman L. Cohn

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It was 1911. Georgetown Law was then forty-one years old. It was an undergraduate program, as a college degree was unnecessary. Indeed, it was only a dozen years or less since Georgetown had begun to require a high school diploma for admission and had expanded to a three-year program. The degree granted was an LL.B., a bachelor of law, usually the first academic degree the student received. The school had recently grown to over 900 students. It was time to move forward.

That year, three dynamic young men enrolled at Georgetown: Eugene Quay, Horace H. Hagan, and John Cosgrove. They …