Law Commons^™

Corporate Governance In An Age Of Separation Of Ownership From Ownership, Usha Rodrigues

Scholarly Works

The shareholder empowerment provisions enacted as part of the recent bailout legislation are internally incoherent because they fail to address the short-termist realities of shareholder ownership today. Ownership has separated from ownership in modern corporate America: individual investors now largely hold stock through mutual funds, pension funds, and hedge funds. The incentives of these short-term financial intermediaries only imperfectly reflect the interests of their long-term holders - an imbalance only exacerbated by the bailout’s corporate governance legislation. The bailout’s focus on shareholder empowerment tactics - such as proxy access, say-on-pay, and increased disclosure - makes little sense if shareholders are …

Resolving Interstate Conflicts Over Same-Sex Non-Marriage, Hillel Y. Levin

Scholarly Works

States have adopted several different regimes of recognition for same-sex couples. A few states allow same-sex couples to marry; several others offer marriage-like partnerships (usually called civil unions), which provide all or nearly all of the substantive rights and responsibilities associated with marriage; still others offer marriage-lite partnerships (sometimes called reciprocal benefits arrangements), which provide a small subset of the rights and responsibilities associated with marriage; and, of course, others offer no recognition at all.

What happens when these regimes of recognition collide? For example, what happens when a couple marries in Massachusetts and then moves to a marriage-like state, …

Fueling Controversy, Randy Beck

Scholarly Works

In a recent Yale Law Journal article, Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel question the received wisdom that the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade generated a political backlash, inflaming conflict over abortion and damaging the political process. The evidence they highlight shows that political conflict over abortion predated the Roe opinion, spurred by the Catholic Church and by Republican Party strategists seeking to foster party realignment. This enriched picture of the political and social landscape at the time of the decision undermines any simplistic suggestion that Roe served as “the sole cause of backlash” or “single-handedly caused societal polarization …

Time And Change In Judge-Made Law: Convergence, Divisions Of Authority, And The Restatement, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

In his contribution to Wake Forest Law School’s 2009 Symposium on the Restatement (Third) of Torts, Professor Kenneth Abraham starts with two propositions, one descriptive, the other normative. The descriptive claim is that “tort law . . . is mature and largely stable,” and that “[o]ver time, the law of different states will converge.” As he points out, “The formation of the American Law Institute (“ALI”) itself, and the project of restating the law that the ALI . . . undertook” depends on these premises.

The project of restating the law also depends on a normative premise, namely that …

The Impact Of Labor Unions On Worker Rights And On Other Social Movements, Charles B. Craver

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Labor unions have been in existence for over two hundred years, initially as craft organizations, and more recently as industrial and service organizations. During their existence they have significantly enhanced the wages and fringe benefits of represented workers through the collective bargaining process, and indirectly affected the wages and benefits enjoyed by nonunion employees whose employers provided them with such benefits to preclude their unionization. Unions have also provided members with job security through just cause disciplinary limitations and grievance-arbitration procedures. Over the past sixty years, many social movements have employed union tactics to advance other critical issues such as …

Pollution Limits And Polluters’ Efforts To Comply: The Role Of Government Monitoring And Enforcement, Robert L. Glicksman, Dietrich Earnhart

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This is the first chapter of a book published in 2011 by Stanford University Press that examines empirically compliance with regulatory obligations under the Clean Water Act (CWA). In particular, it examines four dimensions of federal water-pollution control policy in the United States: pollution limits imposed on industrial facilities’ pollution discharges; facilities’ efforts to comply with pollution limits, identified as “environmental behavior”; facilities’ success at controlling their discharges to comply with pollution limits, identified as “environmental performance”; and regulators’ efforts to induce compliance with pollution limits in the form of inspections and enforcement actions, identified as “government interventions.” The authors …

The International Competition Network: Its Past, Current, And Future Role, William E. Kovacic, Hugh Hollman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In its first decade, the International Competition Network has prospered, contributed to the development of widely accepted international policy norms, and come to exemplify the form of voluntary multinational collaboration that commentators have identified as a promising way to facilitate international ordering amid the global decentralization and diversification of economic regulations. This article takes stock of ICN’s achievements, considers why it has succeeded in many of its aims, and asks a number of questions regarding what comes next. It seeks to inform the ICN’s future by offering a way to think of its institutional characteristics to assess its relative advantages. …

Book Review Of Marc Weller, Contested Statehood: Kosovo’S Struggle For Independence, Oxford University Press, 2009 (321 Pp.), Sean D. Murphy

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

How an area measuring no more than about 11,000 square kilometers could become arguably “ground zero” for the formation of post-Cold War international law is a bit of a mystery, but the province (and now country) of Kosovo, in the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries, somehow managed to pull off that feat. In Contested Statehood: Kosovo’s Struggle for Independence Marc Weller provides the best history to date of the Kosovo crisis from the end of the Cold War up to the point that Kosovo’s independence was declared in February 2008. In its July 2009 advisory opinion on that legality of that …

Aggregate Litigation: Critical Perspectives, Roger H. Trangsrud

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

While aggregate litigation has become an integral part of the U.S. civil justice system, it is often the cause of intense controversy among the private bar, the bench, and the academy. In 2009, the American Law Institute completed a project on the Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation, whose goal was to identify good procedures for handling aggregate lawsuits. The completion of these Principles spurred a host of reactions from attorneys, judges, and scholars. At a symposium hosted by The George Washington University Law School, the questions that were posed included: What is the optimal level of aggregation? When …

Privacy And Law Enforcement In The European Union: The Data Retention Directive, Francesca Bignami

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This paper examines a recent twist in EU data protection law. In the 1990s, the European Union was still primarily a market-creating organization and data protection in the European Union was aimed at rights abuses by market actors. Since the terrorist attacks of New York, Madrid, and London, however, cooperation on fighting crime has accelerated. Now, the challenge for the European Union is to protect privacy in its emerging system of criminal justice. This paper analyzes the first EU law to address data privacy in crime-fighting - the Data Retention Directive. Based on a detailed examination of the Directive's legislative …

Judicial Backlash Or Just Backlash? Evidence From A National Experiment, Donald Braman, David Fontana

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The question about whether there is a distinctive public reaction when the Supreme Court decides constitutional issues — the question of judicial backlash — permeates our discussions of constitutional law, yet we have little to no empirical research about how people think about this issue. To answer this question, we conducted an experiment before the midterm congressional elections in the fall of 2010. We hypothesized that people respond to an institution based on whether the institution is seen as supporting or threatening their cultural worldview. Half of study subjects were assigned to a condition in which a constitutional right to …

Indigenous Political Participation: The Key To Rights Realization In The Andes, Stephanie Selekman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

"There is no way back, this is our time, the awakening of the indigenous people. We'll keep fighting till the end. Brother Evo Morales still has lots to do, one cannot think that four years are enough after 500 years of submission and oppression,” said Fidel Surco, a prominent indigenous leader, reflecting on Bolivia’s first indigenous president entering his second term (Carroll & Schipani 2009).

The Andean region is particularly appropriate for examining indigenous political rights because 34-40 million indigenous people reside mostly in this region. The actualization of human rights for Andean indigenous groups is an inherently complex issue, …

Front Matter

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Antitrust And Communications Policy: There's An App For Just About Anything, Except Google Voice, Jason W. Croft

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Navigating The Maze Of End-Of-Life Decisions Regarding The Rejection Of Life Sustaining Treatment, Medical Futility, Physician-Assisted Death, And Abortion, Philip Kim

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Edtx And Transfer Of Venue: Move Over, Federal Circuit - Here Is The Fifth Circuit's Law On Transfer Of Venue, Patrick E. Higginbotham

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Jury In The Edtx: Unsophisticated American Peers Or Idealists Of Property Rights In Patents, Beth Thornburg, Michael Smith, Robert Conklin, Andrei Iancu

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

The History And Development Of The Edtx As A Court With Patent Expertise: From Ti Filing, To The First Markman Hearing, To The Present, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, David Folsom, T. John Ward, Leonard Davis

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tort Liability For Video Game Manufacturers: Will Shifting Public Perceptions Lead To A Change In The Law, Ben A. West

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents - Vol. 35, No. 2 2011

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Kimberly Lanegran On Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone’S Revolutionary United Front. By Myriam Denov. Cambridge, Uk: Cambridge University Press. 2010. 234 Pp., Kimberly Lanegran

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front. By Myriam Denov. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2010. 234 pp.

Steven M. Schneebaum On The Death Penalty And Human Rights. By Sir Fred Phillips. Q.C. Kingston, Jamaica: Caribbean Law Publishing Company. 2009. 101pp., Steven M. Schneebaum

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Death Penalty and Human Rights. By Sir Fred Phillips. Q.C. Kingston, Jamaica: Caribbean Law Publishing Company. 2009. 101pp.

Donald W. Jackson On Prisoners Of America’S Wars: From The Early Republic To Guantanamo. By Stephanie Carvin. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. 336pp., Donald W. Jackson

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Prisoners of America’s Wars: From the Early Republic to Guantanamo. By Stephanie Carvin. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. 336pp.

David P. Forsythe And Charles J. Mach On Empire Of Humanity: A History Of Humanitarianism. By Michael Barnett. Ithaca, Ny: Cornell University Press, 2011. 312pp., David P. Forsythe, Charles J. Mach

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism. By Michael Barnett. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. 312pp.

Introduction: Minority Rights, Joel R. Pruce

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The central thread woven through this Digest is the concept of vulnerability. Minority status, broadly construed, represents a core characteristic that carries with it particular human rights implications. Historically, minorities are frequently targeted for exploitation and scapegoated when things go badly. Without the capacity to protect themselves and without spokespersons to stand with them in solidarity, minority groups are specifically susceptible to gross exercises of power and abuse and too often denied access to channels through which to make claims and demand redress. Violations of minority rights are commonly structural in nature, as discriminatory practices are built into political and …

Human Rights And The Search For Common Ground: A Comparative Study Of Islamic And Christian Thought, Joseph Prud'homme

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Common Ground: Islam, Christianity, and Religious Pluralism. By Paul Heck. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 2009.

Human Trafficking And Minorities: Vulnerability Compounded By Discrimination, Heidi Box

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Human trafficking is an extreme human rights violation that impacts all populations across the globe and is characterized by force, fraud, and coercion intended for exploitation (Palermo Protocol 2000). Currently, human trafficking research is particularly limited by non-standard terminology and a clandestine research population. While estimates of the number of trafficked persons vary widely and are notoriously unsubstantiated, we can still arrive at some conclusions regarding the overall number of trafficked persons. One low estimate suggests that in 2005, at least 2.4 million people had been trafficked into forced labor situations and approximately 12.3 million people were victims of forced …

Lost In Translation: Linguistic Minorities In The European Union, Nirvana Bhatia

Human Rights & Human Welfare

“A nation without a language is a nation without a soul,” declares a Gaelic proverb. Indubitably, language is a product of national identity; it preserves heritage, reflects societal beliefs and values, and expresses a cultural spirit. The current international human rights regime, however, does not recognize an individual’s right to language choice; instead, it promises freedom from linguistic discrimination. The implications are not quite the same and, as a result, states have successfully repressed minority populations by controlling their language options. The European Union in particular—with its panoply of languages—demonstrates an inconsistent approach toward linguistic minorities; it attempts to promote …

Tibetan Refugees' Rights And Services In India, Claudia Artiles

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The Chinese invasion of Tibet, and the Dalai Lama’s subsequent decision to flee in 1959, resulted in the mass influx of Tibetan refugees into India that continues today. It has become clear to the Indian government, as well as to the Tibetan community in exile, that repatriation is unlikely in the near future. Consequently, an evaluation of India’s protection of, and assistance for Tibetan refugees is necessary to ensure their treatment is in accordance with international standards. Unfortunately, such an assessment shows that there is a lack of proper protections and services; this ought to be of particular concern to …