Law Commons^™

Landmark Ruling On Whaling From The International Court Of Justice, Mark P. Simmonds

Mark P. Simmonds, OBE

On 31 March 2014, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Japan’s whaling activities in Antarctica did not comply with Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), which permits whaling for scientific purposes. Copious and confusing media commentary followed the decision. This included seemingly conflicting reports from within Japan, which initially indicated whole-hearted compliance with the ruling, which required this whaling to cease, but later suggested that implementation by Japan might be limited to a brief halt followed by a launch of a new Antarctic ‘research’ programme including lethal take.

The Effectiveness Of The Endangered Species Act: A Quantitative Analysis, Martin F.J. Taylor, Kieran F. Suckling, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Population trends for 1095 species listed as threatened and endangered under the Endangered Species Act were correlated with the length of time the species were listed and the presence or absence of critical habitat and recovery plans. Species with critical habitat for two or more years were more than twice as likely to have an improving population trend in the late 1990s, and less than half as likely to be declining in the early 1990s, as species without. Species with dedicated recovery plans for two or more years were significantly more likely to be improving and less likely to be …

Balancing Inclusion And “Enlightened Understanding” In Designing Online Civic Participation Systems: Experiences From Regulation Room, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart, Josiah Heidt, Jackeline Solivan

Cynthia R. Farina

New forms of online citizen participation in government decision making have been fostered in the United States (U.S.) under the Obama Administration. Use of Web information technologies have been encouraged in an effort to create more back-and-forth communication between citizens and their government. These “Civic Participation 2.0” attempts to open the government up to broader public participation are based on three pillars of open government—transparency, participation, and collaboration. Thus far, the Administration has modeled Civic Participation 2.0 almost exclusively on the Web 2.0 ethos, in which users are enabled to shape the discussion and encouraged to assess the value of …

Better Inputs For Better Outcomes: Using The Interface To Improve E-Rulemaking, Cynthia Farina, Claire Cardie, Thomas Bruce, Erica Wagner

Cynthia R. Farina

We believe that e-rulemaking does indeed have potential to increase both the transparency of, and participation in, regulatory policymaking. We argue in this paper that this potential can be realized only if the public interface at www.regulations.gov is substantially redesigned.

Regulationroom: Field-Testing An Online Public Participation Platform During Usa Agency Rulemakings, Cynthia R. Farina, Josiah Heidt, Mary J. Newhart, Joan-Josep Vallbé

Cynthia R. Farina

Rulemaking is one of the U.S. government's most important policymaking methods. Although broad transparency and participation rights are part of its legal structure, significant barriers prevent effective engagement by many groups of interested citizens. RegulationRoom, an experimental open-government partnership between academic researchers and government agencies, is a socio-technical participation system that uses multiple methods to alert and effectively engage new voices in rulemaking. Initial results give cause for optimism but also caution that successful use of new technologies to increase participation in complex government policy decisions is more difficult and resource-intensive than many proponents expect.

Rulemaking 2.0: Understanding And Getting Better Public Participation, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart

Cynthia R. Farina

More than a decade after the launch of Regulations.gov, the government-wide federal online rulemaking portal, and nearly four years since the Obama Administration directed agencies to use “innovative tools and practices that create new and easier methods for public engagement,” there are still more questions than answers about what value social media and other Web 2 .0 technologies can bring to rulemaking–and about how agencies can realize that value. This report, commissioned by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, begins to provide those answers. Drawing on insights from a number of disciplines and on three years of actual …

Using Natural Language Processing To Improve Erulemaking [Project Highlight], Claire Cardie, Cynthia R. Farina, Thomas R. Bruce

Cynthia R. Farina

This paper describes in brief Cornell’s interdisciplinary eRulemaking project that was recently funded (December, 2005) by the National Science Foundation.

The Value Of Words: Narrative As Evidence In Policymaking, Dmitry Epstein, Josiah Heidt, Cynthia Farina

Cynthia R. Farina

Policymakers today rely primarily on statistical, financial, and other forms of technical data as their basis for decision-making. Yet, there is a potentially underestimated value in substantive reflections of the members of the public who will be affected by a particular piece of regulation. We discuss the value of narratives as input in the policy making process, based on our experience with Regulation Room–a product of an interdisciplinary initiative using innovative web technologies in real-time online experimentation. We describe professional policymakers and professional commenters as a community of practice that has limited shared repertoire with the lay members of the …

Climate-Induced Sea Level Rise And Sustainable Coastal Management: The Influence Of Existing Policy Frameworks On Risk Perception, Chad J. Mcguire

Chad J McGuire

Federal Civil Rights Litigation Pursuant To 42 U.S.C. §1983 As A Correlate Of Police Misconduct, Philip M. Stinson, Steven L. Brewer Jr, Theresa M. Lanese, Mallorie A. Wilson

Philip M Stinson

Police officers acting in their official capacity are subject to being sued in federal court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §1983 for violating constitutional rights under the color of law. Using data obtained in a larger study on police crime in the United States, names of more than 5,500 nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers who were arrested during the years 2005-2011 were checked against the civil case party master name index of the federal courts’ Public Access to Courts Electronic Records (PACER) system. Findings indicate that more than 20% of the police officers who were arrested for committing one or more …

Voting By Elderly Persons With Cognitive Impairment: Lessons From Other Democratic Nations, Jason Karlawish, Richard Bonnie

Jason Karlawish

No abstract provided.

Addressing The Ethical, Legal, And Social Issues Raised By Voting By Persons With Dementia, Jason H. Karlawish, Richard J. Bonnie, Paul S. Appelbaum, Constantine Lyketsos, Bryan James, David Knopman, Christopher Patusky, Rosalie A. Kane, Pamela S. Karlan

Jason Karlawish

This article addresses an emerging policy problem in the United States participation in the electoral process by citizens with dementia. At present, health care professionals, family caregivers, and long-term care staff lack adequate guidance to decide whether individuals with dementia should be precluded from or assisted in casting a ballot. Voting by persons with dementia raises a series of important questions about the autonomy of individuals with dementia, the integrity of the electoral process, and the prevention of fraud. Three subsidiary issues warrant special attention: development of a method to assess capacity to vote; identification of appropriate kinds of assistance …

Tradition?! Traditional Cultural Institutions On Customary Practices In Uganda, Joanna R. Quinn

Joanna R. Quinn

On Patenting Human Organisms Or How The Abortion Wars Feed Into The Ownership Fallacy, Yaniv Heled

Yaniv Heled

The idea of ominous technologies that put human individuals or parts of their bodies under someone else's control has been stirring emotions and terrifying people for centuries. It was a recent offshoot of this idea--the notion of “patenting humans”--that mobilized certain members of Congress to pass legislation prohibiting the issuance of patent claims “directed to or encompassing a human organism.” The values underlying this legislation may well have been agreeable, even admirable. Yet, the actual motivation for it was misguided; its execution, deeply flawed; its potential outcomes, hazardous

This Article reviews the history and background of this prohibition. It fleshes …

Alter Rules Of Liability, Yaniv Heled

Yaniv Heled

No abstract provided.

Invisible No More: Domestic Workers Organizing In Massachusetts And Beyond, Natalicia Tracy, Tim Sieber, Susan Moir Scd

Tim Sieber

Domestic workers across the country are making it clear that, even in a difficult political environment, it is possible to make gains for low-wage workers. For the first time in many, many decades, domestic workers are finding ways to win. They are creat
ing policy change that will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers in tangible and substantial ways. The 2014 Massachusetts Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights is the most expansive codification of rights for this long-overlooked part of the labor force ever to be enacted. In one sense, there is nothing new about domestic workers organizing …

A Critical Examination Of The Climate Engineering Moral Hazard And Risk Compensation Concern, Jesse Reynolds

Jesse Reynolds

Losing The Message: Some Policy Implications Of Anthropocentric Indirect Arguments For Environmental Protection, Chad J. Mcguire

Chad J McGuire

Winning Safer Workplaces: A Manual For State And Local Policy Reform, Rena I. Steinzor

Rena I. Steinzor

We set out to compile a list of rules and policies that could be implemented by state and local governments to provide better protections for U.S. workers. This manual includes more than two dozen such ideas, organized into thematic chapters: Chapter 1: Empowering Workers, with proposals designed to strengthen workers' individual and collective power to demand changes in their workplaces; Chapter 2: Making Sure Crime Doesn't Pay, with ideas for strong enforcement of workplace health and safety rules that will punish bad actors and deter similar behavior;Chapter 3: Strengthening Institutions, with recommendations intended to bolster government agencies' efforts to protect …

The Conventional Option, Gregory Koger

Gregory Koger

Human Rights, Women, And Third World Development, Winston E. Langley

Winston E. Langley

As part of the effort to inaugurate a new international socio-political order after World War II, international emphasis was given to certain moral and legal entitlements we have come to call human rights. That emphasis initially found its most forceful expression in the Charter of the United Nations, which not only asserts its members' faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, as well as in the equal rights of men and women of all nations, but also recites its members' commitment to employ international machinery for the promotion of the social and economic …

Sewer Syndicalism: Worker Self-Management In Public Services, Eric M. Fink

Eric M Fink

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, municipal governments in various US cities assumed responsibility for utilities and other services that previously had been privately operated. In the late twentieth century, prompted by fiscal crisis and encouraged by neo-liberal ideology, governments embraced the concept of “privatization,” shifting management and control over public services to private entities.

Despite disagreements over the merits of privatization, both proponents and opponents accept the premise of a fundamental distinction between the “public” and “private” sectors, and between “state” and “market” institutions. A more skeptical view questions the analytical soundness and practical significance of these …

The Limits Of Regulatory Science In Transnational Governance Of Transgenic Plant Agriculture And Food Systems, Taiwo Oriola

Taiwo Oriola

The current national and transnational regulatory and policy framework for transgenic plant agriculture and food is arguably largely defined by science. Notably, transgenic plant agriculture policy deference to science is ostensibly premised on the general perception that science is neutral, objective, reliable, and agnostic. This is exemplified by cases ranging from Alliance for Bio-integrity v Donna Shalala, European Communities: Measures Affecting the Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products, to European Commission v Republic of Poland, in which conscientious, ethical, religious, and cultural oppositional grounds to transgenic plant agriculture and food were trumped by scientific imperatives. However, the lack of unanimity …

Response To Questions In The First White Paper, 'Modernizing The Communications Act', Randolph J. May, Richard A. Epstein, Justin (Gus) Hurwitz, Daniel Lyons, James B. Speeta, Christopher S. Yoo

Daniel Lyons

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has begun a process to review and update the Communications Act of 1934, last revised in any material way in 1996. As the Committee begins the review process, this paper responds to questions posed by the Committee that all relate, in fundamental ways, to the question: "What should a modern Communications Act look like?" The Response advocates a "clean slate" approach under which the regulatory silos that characterize the current statute would be eliminated, along with almost all of the ubiquitous 'public interest' delegation of authority found throughout the Communications Act. The replacement regime …

Financial Security Scorecard: A State-By-State Analysis Of Economic Pressures Facing Future Retirees, Christian Weller, Nari Rhee, Carolyn Arcand

Christian Weller

As Americans increasingly worry about their retirement prospects, states play an important and growing role in retirement security policy. States already manage long-term care programs for the elderly through Medicaid. Concerned about the impact of future elder poverty on state and local budgets and their local economies, a number of states are exploring the creation of low-cost and low-risk retirement savings plans for private sector workers who lack access to pensions or 401(k)s on the job. Some states have developed programs to help older workers find work.

This report presents the Financial Security Scorecard, designed to inform state-level stakeholders and …

Book Review Of Can Might Make Rights? Building The Rule Of Law After Military Interventions, Lan Cao

Lan Cao

No abstract provided.

Reflections On Market Reform In Post-War, Post-Embargo Vietnam, Lan Cao

Lan Cao

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Policing And The Poetics Of Everyday Life., Rodger E. Broome Phd

Rodger E. Broome

Policing and the poetics of everyday life. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 256 pp. ISBN 978-0-252-03371-1 (cloth). $42.00. Policing and the Poetics of Everyday Life is a hermeneutical-aesthetic analysis within a human scientific approach of modern policing in the United States. It is an important study of police-citizen encounters informed by hermeneutic aesthetic thought and the author’s professional experience as a veteran with a Seattle area police department in Washington, USA.

Shelter Poverty: Housing Affordability Among Asian Americans, Michael E. Stone

Michael E. Stone

Relatively little research has been conducted that focuses on the housing situation of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (hereafter generally referred to as Asian Americans), especially on the national level. From a review of about 30 articles and reports over the past decade that examine racial/ethnic housing situations nationally, only one specifically addressed housing problems of Asian Americans (Hansen, 1986) while two others included Asian Americans along with other populations of color. Of the remaining articles, most used the terms race, racial discrimination, or segregation in their titles, yet did not include Asian Americans in the studies. Of particular note, …

Shelter Poverty In Boston: Problem And Program, Michael E. Stone

Michael E. Stone

This paper argues, first, that most housing problems—in Boston and throughout the nation—are ultimately the result of the squeeze between inadequate incomes, on the one hand, and the cost of profitably providing housing on the other. It is also argued that housing cost and incomes together are the most decisive determinants of the overall quality of life of families and communities. Third, it is contended that the long history of inadequate attempts to cope with the affordabiiity problem have not only failed to solve the problem, but have indeed contributed significantly to the broader and serious problems of the overall …