Law Commons^™

Questioning Deference, Christina E. Wells

Missouri Law Review

Part I of this Article discusses executive branch actions in the crises discussed earlier and identifies a pattern of response to certain perceived threated. Part II assesses this historical pattern in light of a psychological understanding of risk assessment, concluding that the pattern is consistent with predictably skewed risk assessment. Part III discusses the psychology of accountability and the possibility that judicial review can serve as a mechanism of accountability and improve executive decision making.

War Fever Symposium:, Geoffrey R. Stone

Missouri Law Review

As Justice Robert Jackson observed more than half a century ago, “[i]t is easy, by giving way to the passion, intolerance and suspicion of wartime, to reduce our liberties to a shadow, often in answer to exaggerated claims of security.” Indeed, the United States has a long and unfortunate history of overreacting to the dangers of wartime. Again and again, Americans have allowed fear to the better of them. Some measure of fear, of course, is inevitable—even healthy—in time of war. Otherwise, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a nation to make the sacrifices war demands. An essential …

Encouraging Courage: Law's Response To Fear And Risk, William B. Fisch

Faculty Publications

Our three papers provide a helpful review of the many things that can go wrong with our system for the protection of civil liberties under the pressures of war or other emergencies. Professor Winfield focuses on the U.S. Attorney General, the non-judicial officer from whom the public might expect the highest fidelity to the law and the constitution. She offers a sobering perspective on the ways in which those expectations can be and have been disappointed. The star of her taxonomy, I take it, is the Leveler, who reaches an independent (and rights-protective!) view of the law and works to …

Questioning Deference, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This article examines the accepted axiom that courts should defer to the government's actions during national security crises even when such actions potentially violate citizens' constitutional rights. The paper questions two assumptions underlying that axiom - first, that executive officials are best equipped to determine when security needs justify liberty infringements and, second, that judges are particularly unqualified to meddle in security issues, even when civil liberties are involved. Relying on psychological theories regarding the role that fear plays in skewing risk assessment and historical analyses of past crises, the paper argues that times of crisis lend themselves to unnecessary …

Aiding Terrorists: Hearing Before The S. Comm. On The Judiciary, 108th Cong., May 5, 2004 (Statement Of David D. Cole, Geo. U. L. Center), David Cole

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

"Accommodations" For The Learning Disabled: A Level Playing Field Or Affirmative Action For Elites?, Craig S. Lerner

Vanderbilt Law Review

A growing number of students in American higher education are being diagnosed as "learning disabled" and then using that diagnosis to secure beneficial "accommodations," such as extra time on exams. These accommodations are often said to be mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This Article challenges the premise that the ADA necessarily requires educational institutions to provide learning disabled students with any accommodations. The ADA defines "disability" as an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. Whether one is substantially limited is determined with reference not to one's innate abilities, but to the skills of the average …

Law, Human Rights, Realism And The “War On Terror”, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror by Michael Ignatieff. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 212pp.

Law And Bioterrorism By Victoria Sutton (Book Review), Jeffrey F. Addicott

Faculty Articles

The best primer for constructing a legal framework surrounding bioterrorism is a wonderfully researched and incisive book by Professor Victoria Sutton. Sutton brings a vast background of experience and expertise to her book, titled Law and Bioterrorism, which is in fact the first legal textbook in the field of law and bioterrorism.

The book begins with a brief examination of the history of law and bioterrorism, from ancient biological warfare to modern times. Drawing upon the lessons of this history, Sutton discusses historical events such as the use of anthrax in World War I, and further examines the rapidly growing …

An Overview Of Public Health In The New Millenium: Individual Liberty Vs. Public Safety, Dorothy Puzio

Journal of Law and Health

This article explores the tensions between creating an effective public health system that would be able to respond to and protect against any public health threat, and protecting individuals against unnecessary intrusions on their civil liberties. It then considers approaches to this issue that might best strike a balance in a democratic society. While many Americans may recognize and even accept that greater security would entail some intrusion into individual rights, there is no formula for striking the appropriate balance. This article attempts to arrive at a workable framework by examining how the United States' public health system works. This …

India's "Patriot Act": Pota And The Impact On Civil Liberties In The World's Largest Democracy, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Racial Profiling: A Critique Of The Economics, Civil Liberties, And Constitutional Literature, And Of Criminal Profiling More Generally, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

New reporting requirements and data collection efforts by over four hundred law enforcement agencies across the country – including entire states such as Maryland, Missouri, and Washington – are producing a continuous flow of new evidence on highway police searches. For the most part, the data consistently show disproportionate searches of African-American and Hispanic motorists in relation to their estimated representation on the road. Economists, civil liberties advocates, legal and constitutional scholars, political scientists, lawyers, and judges are poring over the new data and reaching, in many cases, quite opposite conclusions about racial profiling.