Law Commons^™

Public Consultation On A Multilateral Reform Of Investment Dispute Settlement, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In March 2017 CCSI made a submission to the European Commission (EC) in response to its “Public consultation on a multilateral reform of investment dispute settlement.” CCSI’s submission consisted of a response to the form questionnaire created by the EC and a supplementary “Position Paper” to explain in greater depth CCSI’s views on the EC’s proposed Multilateral Investment Court (MIC).

In its Position Paper, CCSI emphasizes the importance of international investment and international law to sustainable development objectives. The submission stresses, however, that the EC’s proposed MIC does not address, and therefore does not remedy, the most problematic aspects of …

Rise Of The Digital Regulator, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

The administrative state is leveraging algorithms to influence individuals’ private decisions. Agencies have begun to write rules to shape for-profit websites such as Expedia and have launched their own online tools such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mortgage calculator. These digital intermediaries aim to guide people toward better schools, healthier food, and more savings. But enthusiasm for this regulatory paradigm rests on two questionable assumptions. First, digital intermediaries effectively police consumer markets. Second, they require minimal government involvement. Instead, some for-profit online advisers such as travel websites have become what many mortgage brokers were before the 2008 financial crisis. …

Weak Law V Strong Ties: An Empirical Study Of Business Investment, Law And Political Connections In China, Wei Zhang, Ji Li

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Based on a large-scale survey of Chinese entrepreneurs, our study explores how institutions (formal and informal) influence investment decisions made by private companies. The study finds that, consistent with the conventional view, a more effective legal system is correlated with short-term general investment, and that the judiciary is important mainly because of its restraint over the state. The role of effective courts, however, diminishes when private entrepreneurs consider making long-term investment. We find a positive association between the entrepreneurs’ political backgrounds and their R&D investment, suggesting that Chinese courts, in spite of decades of reform, are not yet viewed as …

Legislative Exhaustion, Michael Sant’Ambrogio

William & Mary Law Review

Legislative lawsuits are a recurring by-product of divided government. Yet the Supreme Court has never definitively resolved whether Congress may sue the executive branch over its execution of the law. Some scholars argue that Congress should be able to establish Article III standing when its interests are harmed by executive action or inaction just like private parties. Others, including most prominently the late Justice Antonin Scalia, argue that intergovernmental disputes do not constitute Article III “cases” or “controversies” at all. Rather, the Framers envisioned the political branches resolving their differences through nonjudicial means.

This Article proposes a different approach to …

Preventing An Air Panopticon: A Proposal For Reasonable Legal Restrictions On Aerial Surveillance, Jake Laperruque

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Digital Technology And Analog Law: Cellular Location Data, The Third-Party Doctrine, And The Law's Need To Evolve, Justin Hill

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

"I Want My File": Surveillance Data, Minimization, And Historical Accountability, Douglas Cox

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

February 26, 2017: What’S The Worst Thing President Trump Is Doing?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What’s the Worst Thing President Trump is Doing?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

February 18, 2017: What The Rule Of Law Looks Like, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What the Rule of Law Looks Like“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Egg Freezing On Company Dollars: Making Biological Clock Irrelevant?, Madhumita Datta

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

In an attempt to boost gender diversity, two of the technology giants of Silicon Valley, Apple and Facebook, announced in October 2014 that they would cover the costs of freezing eggs, so that women employees who want to pursue both motherhood and a serious career could conveniently ‘time’ their pregnancy. Intel followed suit in October 2015. Unlike other reproductive benefits aiming to cure a biological deficiency such as infertility, employers promote egg freezing as an investment towards women employees’ career success. Women employees may take advantage of this benefit for non-medical reasons to delay pregnancy and childbirth because of the …

A Call For Limiting Absolute Privilege: How Victims Of Domestic Violence, Suffering With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Are Discriminated Against By The U.S. Judicial System, Jerrell Dayton King, Donna J. King

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

The U.S. court system often traumatizes victims of domestic violence (“DV”) through institutional gender discrimination, which has plagued women throughout the United States since colonial American times. In many ways the court system becomes a participant in re-victimizing and continuing the abuse of the DV victim. Abusive power and control of women exposes them to DV in alarming numbers; this causes many DV victims to experience severe trauma that results in psychological injuries such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”). In the court system, the DV abuser enters the legal process with an advantage over his victim who suffers from PTSD. …

Refugee Roulette: A Comparative Analysis Of Gender-Related Persecution In Asylum Law, Joanna J. Kallinosis

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

From the moment Rodi Alvarado Pena married a Guatemalan army officer at the age of 16, she was subjected to intensive abuse, and all her efforts to get help where unsuccessful. Her husband raped and sodimized her repeatedly, attempted to abort their child by violently kicking her in the spine, dislocated her jaw, attempted to cut her hands off with a machete, kicked her in her genitals and used her head to break windows. He terrified her by bragging about his power to kill innocent civilians with impunity and all of Rodi’s pleas for help from the Guatemalan government were …

A Problem Of Competing Interests: A Detailed Look At Transgender Children In Schools, Corinne Cundiff

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

Discrimination of transgender students is an area of the law that is rapidly developing. Unfortunately for schools trying to find guidance in the law, there are conflicts regarding how schools are to work with their transgender students when it comes to access to gender specific spaces, including bathrooms and locker rooms. There is currently a disagreement among federal agencies, the courts, and the legislature regarding the protection gender identity should receive in the law. The difference of opinion among the various branches of the government equates to problems for schools that are trying to navigate this area of the law. …

February 1, 2017: First They Banned The Muslims, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “First They Banned the Muslims“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Vanishing Common Law Judge, Neal Devins, David Klein

Faculty Publications

The common law style of judging appears to be on its way out. Trial courts rarely shape legal policymaking by asserting decisional autonomy through distinguishing, limiting, or criticizing higher court precedent. In an earlier study, we demonstrated the reluctance of lower court judges to assert decisional autonomy by invoking the holding–dicta dichotomy. In this Article, we make use of original empirical research to study the level of deference U.S. district court judges exhibit toward higher courts and whether the level of deference has changed over time. Our analysis of citation behavior over an eighty-year period reveals a dramatic shift in …

Protean Statutory Interpretation In The Courts Of Appeals, James J. Brudney, Lawrence Baum

William & Mary Law Review

This Article is the first in-depth empirical and doctrinal analysis of differences in statutory interpretation between the courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. It is also among the first to anticipate how the Supreme Court’s interpretive approach may shift with the passing of Justice Scalia.

We begin by identifying factors that may contribute to interpretive divergence between the two judicial levels, based on their different institutional structures and operational realities. In doing so, we discuss normative implications that may follow from the prospect of such interpretive divergence. We then examine how three circuit courts have used dictionaries and legislative …

Tweeting #Justice: Audio-Visual Coverage Of Court Proceedings In A World Of Shifting Technology, Itay Ravid

Faculty Publications

The debate over whether to allow cameras into courtrooms refuses to fade away. In 2015 alone, U.S. federal courts completed a five-year experiment with cameras in courts, New Zealand published new guidelines for audio-visual coverage, and Scotland completely revised its former broadcast policy. These jurisdictions, and others around the globe, constantly struggle to design model practices that successfully balance freedom of the press, transparency, and public access to information, with rights to a fair trial and privacy. The constant need to rethink coverage policies can be attributed in large part to the advancement of technology, providing the media innovative tools …

January 20, 2017: Welcome, President Trump, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Welcome, President Trump“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

'Pyrates' Of The Lyceum: Big Pharma, Patents, And Academic Freedom In Neoliberal Times, James Mcgillivray

PhD Dissertations

Academic freedom and freedom of expression are threatened by the corporatised university. As neoliberal policies embed themselves in all aspects of public (if not private) life, freedom of expression and academic freedom are being degraded and denigrated in the university, in the popular press, in the law, and in public life. The influence of intellectual property rights and proprietary claims surrounding patents are muzzling freedom of thought by corporate interests. Universities and the freedom of academic researchers to explore their fields have become casualties on this neoliberal battlefield. This political economy seeks to expose the free market contagion involved with …

Using Course-Subject Co-Occurrence (Csco) To Reveal The Structure Of An Academic Discipline: A Framework To Evaluate Different Inputs Of A Domain Map, Peter A. Hook

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

This article proposes, exemplifies, and validates the use of course-subject co-occurrence (CSCO) data to generate topic maps of an academic discipline. A CSCO event is when two course-subjects are taught in the same academic year by the same teacher. 61,856 CSCO events were extracted from the 2010-11 directory of the American Association of Law Schools and used to visualize the structure of law school education in the United States. Different normalization, ordination (layout), and clustering algorithms were compared and the best performing algorithm of each type was used to generate the final map. Validation studies demonstrate that CSCO produces topic …

January 10, 2017: The Public Trust Litigation, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Public Trust Litigation“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Rwu First Amendment Blog: Dean Michael Yelnosky's Blog: The First Amendment And Public Sector Union "Dues" 1-9-2017, Michael J. Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

January 5, 2017: Why Law Matters, The Presidential Transition, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Why Law Matters, the presidential transition“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

January 4, 2017: Is Secularism A Nonnegotiable Aspect Of Liberal Constitutionalism?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Is Secularism A Nonnegotiable Aspect of Liberal Constitutionalism?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Moguls And The Media 1-2-2017, David A. Logan, Roger Williams University

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Has Nihilism Politicized The Supreme Court Nomination Process?, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Campus Misconduct, Sexual Harm And Appropriate Process: The Essential Sexuality Of It All, Katharine Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The International Criminal Court In Africa: Impartiality, Politics, Complementarity And Brexit, Bartram Brown

All Faculty Scholarship

I have known and been inspired by Henry J. Richardson III and his scholarship for many years. A hallmark of his work has been his focus upon African-American interests in international law and also upon the rights and interests of African states. In acknowledgement of that intellectual debt, it is my honor to dedicate the following article to this festschrift celebrating his life and work.

The Other Securities Regulator: A Case Study In Regulatory Damage, Anita Krug

All Faculty Scholarship

Although the Securities and Exchange Commission is the primary securities regulator in the United States, the Department of Labor also engages in “securities regulation.” It does so by virtue of its authority to administer the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the statute that governs the investment of retirement assets. In 2016, the DOL used its securities regulatory authority to adopt a rule that, for the first time, designates securities brokers who provide investment advice to retirement investors as fiduciaries subject to ERISA’s stringent transaction prohibitions. The new rule’s objective is salutary, to be sure. However, this Article shows that, …

Keeping The Internet Invisible: Television Takes Over, Henry Perritt

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.