Law Commons^™

The Ugly Truth About Appearance Discrimination And The Beauty Of Our Employment Discrimination Law, William R. Corbett

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

The keynote speaker for the conference begins by reminding the audience that a mere quarter of a century earlier there was no federal law that expressly prohibited discrimination in employment based on physical appearance. Considering the difficulty of crafting and enacting an appearance-based employment discrimination law should lead to a fuller appreciation of not only our employment discrimination laws generally, but also the Americans with Disabilities Act specifically.

The Law And Economics Of Identity, Rafael Gely

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

"24 Social norms, for example, have long had an important impact on gender roles in employment specifically with respect to work/family concerns.25 Moreover, one of the central conclusions of the famous Hawthorne experiments of the 1930s26 was that employee work effort is significantly influenced by the norms of the employee's workgroup with respect to what constitutes an appropriate work level or output.27 Applying this analysis, employees are deemed not "irrational" when they don't increase output in response to increased employer incentive pay; they are simply responding to workplace social norms-i.e., they don't want to be ostracized by fellow employees as …

Preservationism, Or The Elephant In The Room: How Opponents Of Same-Sex Marriage Deceive Us Into Establishing Religion, Justin T. Wilson

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

The overwhelming majority of support for bans on same-sex civil marriage has come from religious believers, and the so-called "secular justifications" for these bans are mere pretexts for religious beliefs that homosexuality, homosexuals, and same-sex couples are evil or sinful. Courts should take a hard look at the substantive justifications offered in support of same-sex marriage bans, bearing in mind that (1) these justifications are universally offered by religious believers but are infrequently offered by credentialed Secularists, and (2) they are the result of a studied use of pretextual, secular-sounding language to cloak a religiously-motivated bias against homosexuals and same-sex …

Whose Public, Whose Order? Imperium, Region, And Normative Friction, Christopher J. Borgen

Faculty Publications

Theories of international law and politics are a product of their times. They focus on the issues of the day (or of the immediate past) and their assumptions are often the assumptions of the society in which they were born. Perhaps that it is why so many international relations scholars were surprised by the end of the Cold War: Their theories were so informed by bipolarity that they were unable to see the actual changes that would transform the state system. As international relations scholars are re-assessing their theories in a post-Cold War world, lawyers may do the same concerning …

The "Federalism Five" As Supreme Court Nominees, 1971-1991, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

This article looks back at the Senate confirmation hearing testimonies of five Supreme Court nominees. Following their appointments to the Court, these justices—Chief Justice Rehnquist and Associate Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas—generally voted together in path-breaking federalism cases. They reinvigorated constitutional law limits or decreed new ones on national legislative power, supported the "sovereignty" of state governments, and thus came to be known in some circles as the Rehnquist Court's "Federalism Five." As nominees testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, these "federalism" justices did not announce, or for the most part even much hint at, what came to …

White Challengers, Black Majorities: Reconciling Competition In Majority-Minority Districts With The Promise Of The Voting Rights Act, Janai S. Nelson

Faculty Publications

Majority-minority districts have been the subject of extensive, and often rancorous, critique and debate. In their prime, these districts nearly single-handedly changed the face of American politics by enabling racial minorities to elect their preferred candidates who reflected both their interests and identity. However, precisely at the point when these districts achieve an optimal balance of majority and minority populations and host multi-candidate competition, they reveal a frailty that not only thwarts their immediate purpose but contradicts both the express and implicit goals of their source: The Voting Rights Act of 1965. Majority-minority districts possess an inherent limitation that contradicts …

Towards A Madisonian, Interest-Group-Based, Approach To Lobbying Regulation, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Faculty Publications

Recent lobbying scandals involving Jack Abramoff and Representative Tom DeLay have created a much-needed impetus for legislative reform of the lobbying process. But the question cries out: Will Congress actually enact any of the multitude of reform proposals currently on the table, and if it does, will any of those reforms make a difference in how the lobbying process operates? History suggests that the answer is "no."

This Article examines the reasons for Congress's persistent failure to enact effective lobbying reform and posits that the primary cause is an underlying disjunct between legislators' and the public's views about the value …

The (Boundedly) Rational Basis Of Trademark Liability, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

This article argues that trademark infringement and dilution are best understood as commercial behavior that manipulates the cognitive biases of consumers, and as such threatens to render their heuristic judgments persistently inaccurate. In this view, trademark liability—whether imposed under the label of infringement or dilution—serves neither to protect property rights of trademark owners, nor to protect them against the unfair trade practices of competitors, but to shape consumer markets in such a way as to conform to the innate cognitive processes of boundedly rational consumers. The trademark regime can thus be understood as a legal apparatus designed (albeit perhaps unconsciously) …

Williston As Conservative-Pragmatist, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

In her pathbreaking article, "Restatement and Reform: A New Perspective on the Origins of the American Law Institute, Professor N.E.H. Hull rejects the conventional wisdom about the conservative, even reactionary, character of the First Restatements. The truth, she argues, is more subtle. The Restatements, and the larger ALI project of which they were a part, reflect the "'progressive-pragmatic"' worldview of the law professors most responsible for their creation. These professors were reformers. They rejected the formalism of earlier generations; for them, law was not a conceptual system but a practical tool for promoting beneficial social goals. They tempered their zeal …

Imagining Sovereignty, Managing Secession: The Legal Geography Of Eurasia's "Frozen Conflicts", Christopher J. Borgen

Faculty Publications

The interrelated concepts of sovereignty, self-determination, and the territorial integrity of states form a Gordian knot at the core of public international law. These concepts encompass not only how we define the classic actors of the international system—states—but also how seriously international law takes claims of civil and political rights. This Article considers how geographic concepts can be used to try to untangle—or slice through this knot of issues.

The frozen conflicts of Eurasia are a series of ongoing secessionist crises in the post-Soviet states of Moldova, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. I will use the example of the so-called "frozen conflict" …

Judging International Judgments, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

What effect should rulings of international courts have in domestic courts? In the U.S., debate has centered on a series of rulings by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the application of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). The VCCR, a multilateral treaty that the United States ratified in 1969, grants foreign nationals the right to seek the assistance of their consulates in the event that local authorities arrest them. An Optional Protocol to the VCCR gives the ICJ jurisdiction over disputes relating to the interpretation and application of the treaty. Since the late 1990s, the ICJ repeatedly …

Law, Responsibility, And The Brain, Owen D. Jones, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs, Christopher D. Frith

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article addresses new developments in neuroscience, and their implications for law. It explores, for example, the relationships between brain injury and violence, as well as the connections between mental disorders and criminal behaviors. It discusses a variety of issues surrounding brain fingerprinting, the use of brain scans for lie detection, and concerns about free will. It considers the possible uses for, and legal implications of, brain-imaging technology. And it also identifies six essential limits on the use of brain imaging in courtroom procedures.

Endowment Effects In Chimpanzees, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan, Susan P. Lambeth, Mary Catherine Mareno, Amanda S. Richardson, Steven Schapiro

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Human behavior is not always consistent with standard rational choice predictions. The much-investigated variety of apparent deviations from rational choice predictions provides a promising arena for the merger of economics and biology. Although little is known about the extent to which other species also exhibit these seemingly irrational patterns of human decision-making and choice behavior, similarities across species would suggest a common evolutionary root to the phenomena.

The present study investigated whether chimpanzees exhibit an endowment effect, a seemingly paradoxical behavior in which humans tend to value a good they have just come to possess more than they would have …

The Patent Office Meets The Poison Pill: Why Legal Methods Cannot Be Patented, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

In 2003, for the first time in its 170-year history, the United States Patent Office began awarding patents for novel legal innovations, in addition to traditional inventions such as the telephone or airplane. Commentators have accepted the Patent Office's power to grant legal method patents, but at the same time have criticized this new type of patent on policy grounds. But no one has suggested that the Patent Office exceeded its authority by awarding patents for legal methods, until now.

In the Patent Act of 1952, which is still in effect today, Congress established certain requirements for patentability, including a …

Front Matter

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead, advisors, and Table of Contents for the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review Volume 2 (2007).

New Modalities Of Sovereignty: An Indigenous Perspective, June Mccue

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Remarks by June McCue, University of British Colombia Professor of Law, entitled "New Modalities of Sovereignty: An Indigenous Perspective".

Standing With Dignity: Protecting Indigenous Rights And Traditional Ways In The United States, Carrie Dann

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Remarks by Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone activist, entitled "Standing with Dignity: Protecting Indigenous Rights and Traditional Ways in the United States".

The 1951 Convention And The 1967 Protocol Relating To The Status Of Refugees: Evolution And Relevance For Today, Pierre-Michel Fontaine

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

One may justifiably wonder why the relevance of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, ("Convention"), which has been called alternatively a "Bill of Rights for Refugees" and a "Magna Carta for Refugees," would be made an issue in a discussion on refugee law. The fact is that it became quite fashionable in some circles within the refugee advocacy community in the late 1980's and early 1990's to boldly claim that the 1951 Convention (its Protocol was rarely mentioned in this context) was no longer relevant to most refugee situations. Such a claim continues to be made today, …

Global Legal Pluralism, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article grapples with the complexities of law in a world of hybrid legal spaces, where a single act or actor is potentially regulated by multiple legal or quasi-legal regimes. In order to conceptualize this world, I introduce literature on legal pluralism, and I suggest that, following its insights, we need to realize that normative conflict among multiple, overlapping legal systems is unavoidable and might even sometimes be desirable, both as a source of alternative ideas and as a site for discourse among multiple community affiliations. Thus, instead of trying to stifle conflict either through an imposition of sovereigntist, territorially-based, …

Behavioral Biology, The Rational Actor Model, And The New Feminist Agenda, Naomi R. Cahn, June Carbone

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this paper, we will incorporate gender consciousness into critiques of the rational actor model by revisiting Carol Gilligan's account of moral development. Economics itself, led by the insights that have come from game theory, is reexamining trust, altruism, reciprocity and empathy. Behavioral economics, defined as "the combination of psychology and economics that investigates what happens in markets in which some of the agents display human limitations and complications," further explores the implications of a more robust conception of human motivation. We argue that the most likely source for a comprehensive theory will come from the integration of behavioral economics …

Law And Technology Podcasts, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

This article lists a select handful of useful podcasts covering topics such as technology policy, law, and web development.

The Animal Question: The Key To Coming To Terms With Nature, Jim Mason

Animal Law Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Animal Law Review

Front Matter includes Title Page, masthead, advisors, and Table of Contents for Animal Law Review Vol. 13, Issue 2.

Why "Managing" Biodiversity Will Fail: An Alternative Approach To Sustainable Exploitation For International Law, Kyle Ash

Animal Law Review

The role of humans in mass extinctions necessitates an assessment of the collective human psychology responsible for the degradation of Earth’s life support systems. In this paper, the Author will cite instruments and discourse relevant to international environmental law to illustrate how an antiquated conception of biological hierarchies is condoned whenever other species are mentioned. As reflected in the law, humans do not just believe we are existentially unconnected with the rest of life, but that we have more right to live on the planet. This, ironically, allows us to rationalize activities that destroy the planet, even for ourselves. Nature …

Animal Testing In Cosmetics: Recent Developments In The European Union And The United States, Laura Donnellan

Animal Law Review

Animal welfare has become a recent issue in the policy of the European Union. Since the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, the welfare of animals was only considered in relation to the proper functioning of the common market. Animals were seen as commodities whose interests were intertwined with agricultural and environmental policy. Over the years, the position has changed somewhat. Although a Treaty basis exists for animal welfare, the protection of animals has not yet been recognized as an important policy area of its own, and thus worthy of legal protection. As a positive step in …

Humane Education, Dissection, And The Law, Marcia Goodman Kramer

Animal Law Review

Students regularly encounter animal dissection in education, yet humane education receives little attention in animal law. This article analyzes the status of humane education laws in the United States. It discusses the range of statutory protections, from student choice laws to bans on vivisection. The article then analyzes the litigation options for students who do not wish to dissect, including constitutional claims and claims arising under student choice laws. The article concludes by calling for additional legislation to protect students who have ethical objections to dissection.

2006 Legislative Review, Marjorie A. Berger

Animal Law Review

No abstract provided.

2006 Animal-Law Related Articles, Brett Cattani

Animal Law Review

Animal Law is pleased to introduce as a new annual feature a bibliography of animal law-related articles published in law reviews and law journals during the previous year. For ease of reference, each article has been placed into a relevant category and each category provides a non-exhaustive list of potential topic examples. Some articles may appear in more than one category. Although we have made every effort to be as comprehensive as possible and present a complete listing of 2006 articles, this list may not be all-inclusive. We hope this compilation will serve as a useful resource in exploring contemporary …

Front Matter

Animal Law Review

Front Matter includes title page, masthead, advisors, and table of contents for Animal Law Review Volume 14, Issue 1.

Finding Our Voice: Challenges And Opportunitites For The Animal Law Community, Pamela Frasch

Animal Law Review

No abstract provided.