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Articles 1 - 30 of 78
Full-Text Articles in Law
§ 5:34 Waiver Of Privilege — Inadvertent Or Involuntary Disclosure, Laird Kirkpatrick, Christopher B. Mueller
§ 5:34 Waiver Of Privilege — Inadvertent Or Involuntary Disclosure, Laird Kirkpatrick, Christopher B. Mueller
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In their first twenty years (1975-1995), the federal rules of evidence changed little. However, changes have accelerated since 1993, with creation of the Evidence Rules Advisory Committee which meets regularly and proposes changes to the rules almost every year. One change, which grew out of the work of a special committee, was the addition of an entirely new provision, Rule 502, which governs waiver of attorney-client privilege. This rule became law in 2008 through congressional enactment (privilege rules must be passed by Congress in order to take effect). Sections 5:34 discusses this new provision. Under "Privileges: Rule 501,"section 5:34 discusses …
The Financial Services Industry's Misguided Quest To Undermine The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.
The Financial Services Industry's Misguided Quest To Undermine The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Congress decided to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) after concluding that federal bank regulators had utterly failed to protect consumers during the credit boom leading up to the financial crisis. Because of the prudential regulators’ systemic failures, Congress vested CFPB with sole responsibility and clear accountability for protecting consumers of financial services. Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act delegates broad rulemaking and enforcement powers to CFPB. To insulate CFPB from political influence, Title X grants CFPB substantial autonomy as well as an assured source of funding from the Federal Reserve System.
The …
Kiobel, Subject Matter Jurisdiction, And The Alien Tort Statute, Bradford R. Clark
Kiobel, Subject Matter Jurisdiction, And The Alien Tort Statute, Bradford R. Clark
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
The Supreme Court is currently reviewing the Second Circuit’s decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, a case holding that federal courts lack jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) over claims against corporations. Although the parties have focused on issues of corporate liability under the ATS, there is a logically antecedent question of subject matter jurisdiction that the Court should decide before considering corporate liability. All of the parties in Kiobel — whether corporate or individual — are aliens. Understood in its full legal and historical context, the ATS was a jurisdictional statute that did not apply to suits …
The Benefits To Be Derived From Post-Negotiation Assessments, Charles B. Craver
The Benefits To Be Derived From Post-Negotiation Assessments, Charles B. Craver
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Lawyers negotiate regularly, but few ever take the time when they have completed such critical interactions to ask themselves how they did. If they hope to improve their bargaining capabilities, they should take a few minutes after their more significant interactions to ask themselves some basic questions. Were they thoroughly prepared, and did they establish elevated but realistic aspirations? How did the negotiation stages develop? What bargaining techniques did they employ, and how did they counteract the tactics used by the other side? What did they do that they wished they had not done? What did they not do that …
Forward To Festschrift Honoring Chief Judge Rader, Martin J. Adelman
Forward To Festschrift Honoring Chief Judge Rader, Martin J. Adelman
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This Forward discusses papers that highlight the judicial work of Chief Judge Rader in the field of patent law.
Behavioral Economics: Implications For Regulatory Behavior, William E. Kovacic, James C. Cooper
Behavioral Economics: Implications For Regulatory Behavior, William E. Kovacic, James C. Cooper
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Behavioral economics (BE) examines the implications for decision-making when actors suffer from biases documented in the psychological literature. This article considers how such biases affect regulatory decisions. The article posits a simple model of a regulator who serves as an agent to a political overseer. The regulator chooses a policy that accounts for the rewards she receives from the political overseer — whose optimal policy is assumed to maximize short-run outputs that garner political support, rather than long-term welfare outcomes — and the weight the regulator puts on the optimal long run policy. Flawed heuristics and myopia are likely to …
Insuring Against A Derivative Disaster: The Case For Decentralized Risk Management, Jeffrey Manns
Insuring Against A Derivative Disaster: The Case For Decentralized Risk Management, Jeffrey Manns
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This Article makes the case for a decentralized risk management strategy for identifying and defusing future bubble markets. It suggests how the government can enlist private "gatekeeper guarantors" to provide integrated insurance and monitoring roles to complement the government’s management of systemic risks. It proposes the enactment of a federal mandate that systemically significant financial entities (or participants in systemically significant financial sectors) secure private guarantees to cover a percentage of their potential liabilities (above a loss threshold). Gatekeeper guarantors would act as “circuit breakers” of systemic risk by serving as self-interested monitors of risk taking and tying clients’ coverage …
The Wto’S Revised Government Procurement Agreement - An Important Milestone Toward Greater Market Access And Transparency In Global Public Procurement Markets, Robert D. Anderson, Steven L. Schooner, Collin D. Swan
The Wto’S Revised Government Procurement Agreement - An Important Milestone Toward Greater Market Access And Transparency In Global Public Procurement Markets, Robert D. Anderson, Steven L. Schooner, Collin D. Swan
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In December of 2011, the Parties to the World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) adopted significant revisions to the Agreement. The revised Agreement comprises (a) a much-needed modernization of the text of the Agreement, (b) an expansion of related market-access commitments by the Parties, and (c) a set of Future Work Programs intended to enhance transparency among the Parties and improve the administration of the Agreement. In these unstable economic times, the importance of the GPA and its improvements cannot be overstated.
This article also bemoans the media's misrepresentation of the ongoing process of China's negotiated accession into the …
Nullifying The Debt Ceiling Threat Once And For All: Why The President Should Embrace The Least Unconstitutional Option, Neil H. Buchanan, Michael C. Dorf
Nullifying The Debt Ceiling Threat Once And For All: Why The President Should Embrace The Least Unconstitutional Option, Neil H. Buchanan, Michael C. Dorf
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In August 2011, Congress and the President narrowly averted economic and political catastrophe, agreeing at the last possible moment to authorize a series of increases in the national debt ceiling. This respite, unfortunately, was merely temporary. The amounts of the increases in the debt ceiling that Congress authorized in 2011 were only sufficient to accommodate the additional borrowing that would be necessary through the end of 2012. In an economy that continued to show chronic weakness -- weakness that continues to this day -- the federal government would pre-dictably continue to collect lower-than-normal tax revenues and to make higher-than-normal expenditures, …
When You Pass On, Don't Leave The Passwords Behind: Planning For Digital Assets, Naomi R. Cahn, Gerry W. Beyer
When You Pass On, Don't Leave The Passwords Behind: Planning For Digital Assets, Naomi R. Cahn, Gerry W. Beyer
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
The universe of digital assets is vast, including email accounts, picture and video storage sites, social networking sites, domain names, games and related sites; professional sites and backups; as well as online banking and business accounts. Moreover, digital assets go beyond online accounts to include your own personal or work computers, their hardware and software. If your clients are smart about their digital life, then they have numerous usernames, passwords, and security questions for their accounts. Trust and estates lawyers are increasingly helping to plan for the care of digital assets upon their client’s incapacity or death, providing advice concerning …
Commitment Bonds, Michael B. Abramowicz
Commitment Bonds, Michael B. Abramowicz
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This Article introduces compensating commitment bonds, which make it more affordable for a government, entity, or individual to commit to some course of action. These bonds, like traditional government or corporate bonds, can generate revenue for committing parties. A bond seller makes a commitment and promises to pay a forfeit if the seller fails to meet the bond conditions. The bond buyer pays the seller to be contractually designated as the recipient of any amounts the bond seller forfeits. This approach has potential application in a range of legal situations. Governments and other parties may use such bonds to facilitate …
Using Law And Equity For Poor And The Environment, Dinah L. Shelton
Using Law And Equity For Poor And The Environment, Dinah L. Shelton
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This chapter discusses ways of overcoming “adaptation apartheid,” a term used to describe the differences in reactions to environmental disasters between poor and wealthy people and countries. The chapter focuses on “environmental protection and poverty alleviation.” The first section describes the connections between poverty and environmental damage, and the second section discusses distributive justice, defined as “an ethical imperative based on the notion of moral reciprocity.” Third, the chapter lists the sources of law pertaining to environmental justice, including private law, regulation, market mechanisms, and rights-based approaches. The chapter concludes by noting the advantages and challenges to a rights-based approach …
International Trade And Investment Law And Carbon Management Technologies, Steve Charnovitz
International Trade And Investment Law And Carbon Management Technologies, Steve Charnovitz
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases will require the development of carbon management technologies that are not currently available or that are not currently cost-effective. While market mechanisms such as carbon pricing must play a central role in stimulating the development of these technologies, governmental policy aimed at fostering carbon management technologies and lowering their costs must also play a part. Both types of policies will form part of an optimal greenhouse gas control portfolio. This article develops a framework of international trade and investment law insofar as they may affect carbon management technologies. While it is commonly perceived that international …
Cross-Examining The Defendant About Other Witnesses, Stephen A. Saltzburg
Cross-Examining The Defendant About Other Witnesses, Stephen A. Saltzburg
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article examines United States v. Schmitz, 634 F.3d 1247 (11th Cir. 2011) to illustrate how a court addressed the fairness of singling out the testifying defendant for cross-examination about his/her belief that the government's witnesses are lying or not.
Reasonableness With Teeth: The Future Of Fourth Amendment Reasonableness Analysis, Cynthia Lee
Reasonableness With Teeth: The Future Of Fourth Amendment Reasonableness Analysis, Cynthia Lee
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This essay assesses the past, the present, and the future of Fourth Amendment reasonableness analysis. Part I focuses on the past. For much of the twentieth century, the Court embraced what is called the warrant preference view of the Fourth Amendment under which a search was considered reasonable if the government obtained a search warrant prior to the search or an exception to the warrant requirement applied. Part II focuses on the present. Even though it still treats as reasonable both searches conducted pursuant to a warrant and searches that fall within a well established exception to the warrant requirement, …
A House Of Cards Falls: Why 'Too Big To Debar' Is All Slogan And Little Substance, Jessica Tillipman
A House Of Cards Falls: Why 'Too Big To Debar' Is All Slogan And Little Substance, Jessica Tillipman
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
“A House of Cards Falls: Why ‘Too Big to Debar’ is All Slogan and Little Substance” is a critical response to the article, "FCPA Sanctions: Too Big to Debar" by Drury D. Stevenson and Nicholas J. Wagoner, which aptly demonstrates a common, yet fundamentally flawed understanding of the FAR 9.4 suspension and debarment regime. "Too Big to Debar" asserts that when large government contractors violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), they should be “punished” by being debarred from the procurement system. Indeed, despite FAR 9.4’s clear directive to use debarment only for the purpose of protecting the government, not …
Affirmatively Inefficient Jurisprudence?: Confusing Contractors’ Rights To Raise Affirmative Defenses With Sovereign Immunity, Steven L. Schooner, Pamela Kovacs
Affirmatively Inefficient Jurisprudence?: Confusing Contractors’ Rights To Raise Affirmative Defenses With Sovereign Immunity, Steven L. Schooner, Pamela Kovacs
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In M. Maropakis Carpentry v. United States, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upset the commonly understood rules of practice and procedure for government contracts dispute litigation. In what the Supreme Court might view as a drive-by jurisdictional ruling, the court held that a contractor must file its own claim for time extensions before it can defend against a government claim for liquidated damages. Two Court of Federal Claims cases then confirmed fears that the decision would create a significant, disruptive, and disadvantageous change in procedural posture for a large number of contractors defending against government …
Geoengineering And The Science Communication Environment: A Cross-Cultural Experiment, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, Tor Tarantola, Carol L. Silva
Geoengineering And The Science Communication Environment: A Cross-Cultural Experiment, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, Tor Tarantola, Carol L. Silva
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
We conducted a two-nation study (United States, n = 1500; England, n = 1500) to test a novel theory of science communication. The cultural cognition thesis posits that individuals make extensive reliance on cultural meanings in forming perceptions of risk. The logic of the cultural cognition thesis suggests the potential value of a distinctive two-channel science communication strategy that combines information content (“Channel 1”) with cultural meanings (“Channel 2”) selected to promote open-minded assessment of information across diverse communities. In the study, scientific information content on climate change was held constant while the cultural meaning of that information was experimentally …
Women In The Post-Conflict Process: Reviewing The Impact Of Recent U.N. Actions In Achieving Gender Centrality, Naomi R. Cahn
Women In The Post-Conflict Process: Reviewing The Impact Of Recent U.N. Actions In Achieving Gender Centrality, Naomi R. Cahn
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
The post-conflict terrain provides multiple opportunities for transformation on many different levels: protecting civilians, providing accountability for human rights violations committed during hostilities, reforming local and national laws, reintegrating soldiers, rehabilitating and providing redress for victims, establishing or re-establishing the rule of law, creating human rights institutions and new governance structures, altering cultural attitudes, improving socioeconomic conditions, and transforming gender roles and women’s status. This Article explores the effort to make gender central in the various legal and political regimes and processes in operation post-conflict, and specifically reviews SCR 1325 and its successor resolutions to assess their real contributions towards …
An Addendum To Cox And Posner: A Visa To 'Snitch', Eleanor Marie Brown
An Addendum To Cox And Posner: A Visa To 'Snitch', Eleanor Marie Brown
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Cox and Posner’s landmark contribution is the first article to have highlighted the challenges of information asymmetry in immigration screening. While Cox and Posner have undoubtedly made a significant contribution, there is a critical oversight in their framework: they do not discuss the importance of targeted ex post mechanisms of screening educational elites. This Essay is an attempt to remedy Cox and Posner’s omission. Why is this oversight so problematic? In the post-9/11 world, U.S. immigration policy currently finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. While immigrant educational elites are critical to U.S. economic growth, terrorist networks have stepped …
The End Of Men Or The Rebirth Of Class? How Hanna Rosin Leaves Out The 1% & Family Law Fails The Other 99%, Naomi R. Cahn, June Carbone
The End Of Men Or The Rebirth Of Class? How Hanna Rosin Leaves Out The 1% & Family Law Fails The Other 99%, Naomi R. Cahn, June Carbone
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article argues that much of what has been described as “the end of men” is in fact the recreation of class. Greater inequality among men and among women has resurrected class differences and changed the way men and women relate to each other and channel resources to their children. While women have in fact gained ground in the workplace and acquired greater ability to live, work, play and raise children without men, a mere relative move towards sex equality only masks the more fundamental changes occurring in American society and the continuing existence of patriarchy. First, the improved freedom …
The Merger Agreement Myth, Jeffrey Manns, Robert Anderson
The Merger Agreement Myth, Jeffrey Manns, Robert Anderson
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Practitioners and academics have long assumed that financial markets value the deal-specific legal terms of public company acquisition agreements, yet legal scholarship has failed to subject this premise to empirical scrutiny. The conventional wisdom is that markets must value the tremendous amount of time and money invested in negotiating and tailoring the legal provisions of acquisition agreements to address the distinctive risks facing each merger. But the empirical question remains of whether markets actually price the legal terms of acquisition agreements or whether they solely value the financial terms of mergers. To investigate this question, we designed a modified event …
In Defense Of Judicial Empathy, Thomas B. Colby
In Defense Of Judicial Empathy, Thomas B. Colby
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
President Obama has repeatedly stated that he views a capacity for empathy as an essential attribute of a good judge. And conservatives have heaped mountains of scorn upon him for saying so—accusing him of expressing open contempt for the rule of law. To date, the debate has been surprisingly one-sided. One federal judge has recently noted that “President Obama’s statement that judges should have ‘empathy’ was met with strong criticism from his opponents and uncomfortable silence from his supporters.” This Article seeks to offer a sustained defense of the President’s call for empathy in judging. Its argument is neither grounded …
Book Review Of The Law Of International Responsibility (James Crawford, Alain Pellet, And Simon Olleson Eds., Oxford University Press, 2010), Sean D. Murphy
Book Review Of The Law Of International Responsibility (James Crawford, Alain Pellet, And Simon Olleson Eds., Oxford University Press, 2010), Sean D. Murphy
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
If one were to affix a label to the first decade of work by the UN International Law Commission in this century, a good one to choose would be the “decade of codifying international responsibility.” No fewer than five projects relating to that general topic were brought to a conclusion by the Commission in the space of ten years, constituting a formidable effort at codification that may well influence the field of public international law for years to come. Given that the Commission had spent decades considering, as part of a single project, myriad aspects of state responsibility, in some …
Book Review Of The Law Of International Responsibility (James Crawford, Alain Pellet, And Simon Olleson Eds., Oxford University Press, 2010), Sean D. Murphy
Book Review Of The Law Of International Responsibility (James Crawford, Alain Pellet, And Simon Olleson Eds., Oxford University Press, 2010), Sean D. Murphy
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
If one were to affix a label to the first decade of work by the UN International Law Commission in this century, a good one to choose would be the “decade of codifying international responsibility.” No fewer than five projects relating to that general topic were brought to a conclusion by the Commission in the space of ten years, constituting a formidable effort at codification that may well influence the field of public international law for years to come. Given that the Commission had spent decades considering, as part of a single project, myriad aspects of state responsibility, in some …
Downgrading Rating Agency Reform, Jeffrey Manns
Downgrading Rating Agency Reform, Jeffrey Manns
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
The Dodd-Frank Act promised to usher in sweeping changes to overhaul the rating agency industry whose shortcomings helped to pave the way to the financial crisis. But two years after the Act’s passage, hopes have given way to disappointment. The most important challenges of how to enhance rating agency competition, accuracy, and accountability remain largely open questions. The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) has made progress in heightening rating agency oversight and addressing the most egregious abuses that fueled the financial crisis. But rating agency reforms have fallen far short of their potential due to the Act’s competing objectives to …
Beginning Testimony With An Overview Witness, Stephen A. Saltzburg
Beginning Testimony With An Overview Witness, Stephen A. Saltzburg
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article examines United States v. Moore, 651 F.3d 30 (D.C. Cir. 2011) to illustrate how a court dealt with the prosecutor's use of a summary, or introductory, witness to set forth an overview or outline of a case.
Romeo And Juliet Online And In Trouble: Criminalizing Depictions Of Teen Sexuality, Dawn C. Nunziato
Romeo And Juliet Online And In Trouble: Criminalizing Depictions Of Teen Sexuality, Dawn C. Nunziato
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
As teenagers explore their sexuality and seek to memorialize and exchange information related to their sexual development, their instantaneous ability to memorialize and share images with others, via cell phones or the Internet, presents a host of new problems to which our society must respond intelligently. The recent trend of harshly punishing these teens under the child pornography regime is not an intelligent solution. In light of this wave of prosecutorial overreaching, state and federal child pornography laws should be revised to specifically exempt sexting by minors from the reach of such laws. Child pornography laws were created to punish …
It's Not Purely Academic: Using Practitioners To Increase The Rigor And Practical Learning In Scholarly Writing, Karen Thornton
It's Not Purely Academic: Using Practitioners To Increase The Rigor And Practical Learning In Scholarly Writing, Karen Thornton
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Law schools that are building new courses and adding to their existing curriculum in an effort to offer more practical legal training may be overlooking the practical skills that can be developed through an existing graduation requirement - upper level writing. At The George Washington University Law School a practitioner-taught Scholarly Writing course focuses on the practical application of academic writing and prepares 2L students for the demanding expectations of the 2L summer associateship/internship. This Article describes the ABA standard for upper level writing, explains how the adjunct-taught program at GW Law provides skills training and professional development, and addresses …
Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence Of Law Beyond Borders (Introduction), Paul Schiff Berman
Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence Of Law Beyond Borders (Introduction), Paul Schiff Berman
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
We live in a world of legal pluralism, where a single act or actor is potentially regulated by multiple legal or quasi-legal regimes imposed by state, substate, transnational, supranational, and nonstate communities. Navigating these spheres of complex overlapping legal authority is inevitably confusing, and we cannot expect territorial borders to solve all the problems that arise because legal norms inevitably flow across such borders. At the same time, trying to create one universal set of legal rules is also often unsuccessful because the sheer variety of human communities and interests thwarts such efforts. Instead, we need an alternative jurisprudence, one …