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Myths, Reasonable Disagreement, And A League Of Democracies, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The United States ' election in 2004 was based on a number of foreign policy myths. Three of the most obvious were:

• The war in Iraq was necessary as a response to the threat of international terrorism. As a result, the world is now a safer place;
• The institutions of the UN are corrupt and do nothing but restrict American power;
• Al Qaeda and international terrorism more generally are extremely significant threats to American national security

Human Rights And The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There has been a vivid tendency this year by the conventional keepers of Washington wisdom to explicate the two presidential candidates' foreign policy views using old frameworks of "hawk" and "dove." Not only is this binary wrong, it fundamentally obscures some rather ironic potentials for how each candidate, if elected president, will focus upon human rights in their foreign policy. McCain's neoconservative view of the world is founded upon the Wilsonian call for democratization-culminating in what he terms a "League of Democracies." To use a concept that Arnold Wolfers first coined, and one which Joshua Muravchik has proffered as well, …

November Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Foreign Policy Myths Debunked." The Nation. October 6, 2008.

America As An Ordinary Nation, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

For decades, scholars of international relations have called attention to the limits of American power. For example, in 1976 Cornel University Press published America as an Ordinary Country: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Future , edited by Richard Rosecrance. As the title indicates, Rosecrance's book analyzed the impact of the economic, military, and foreign policy setbacks of the 1970s on U.S. power. Suddenly the U.S. seemed less the powerful, "indispensible" leader and more the vulnerable, "ordinary" country unable to control external forces lashing the society's economy and foreign policy. These insights led many scholars to call for a reassessment of …

Speak Softly...With Everyone You Can, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From the Monroe Doctrine to the Bush Doctrine, United States foreign policy has been predicated on the assumption that somehow it knows what is best for the rest of the world. Monroe feared a potential encroachment from Russia and meddling in the "American" Hemisphere by the European powers and issued what originally appeared as a modest statement about resistance to intervention by any other country than the United States . Ironically enforced by the British Navy at that time, the Monroe Doctrine went far beyond its modest beginnings to set a precedent for the development of U.S. foreign policy. The …

Marshall V. Northern Virginia Transportation Authority: The Supreme Court Of Virginia Rules That Taxes Can Be Imposed By Elected Bodies Only, Patrick M. Mcsweeney, Wesley G. Russell Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Leaving The House: The Constitutional Status Of Resignation From The House Of Representatives, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Do members of the House of Representatives have a constitutional right to resign their seats? This Article uses that question as a window onto broader issues about the relationship between legislators and citizens and the respective roles of liberalism and republicanism in the American constitutional order. The Constitution explicitly provides for the resignation of senators, presidents, and vice presidents, but, curiously, it does not say anything about resigning from the House of Representatives. Should we allow the expressio unius interpretive canon to govern and conclude that the inclusion of some resignation provisions implies the impermissibility of resignation when there is …

Reconsidering Virginia Judicial Selection, Carl W. Tobias

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Proposed Legislation: A (Second) Modest Proposal To Protect Virginia Consumers Against Defective Products, Peter Nash Swisher

University of Richmond Law Review

The purpose of this article is to suggest a viable, necessary, and eminently reasonable legislative alternative that the Virginia General Assembly should enact for legitimate and pressing public policy reasons in order to properly protect Virginia consumers from defective and unreasonably dangerous consumer products.Adopting this alternative would bring the Commonwealth of Virginia into the mainstream of twenty-first century American, and transnational, products liability law.

Resolving The Unexpected In Elections: Election Officials' Options, S. Candice Hoke, Matt Bishop, Mark Graff, David Jefferson, Sean Peisert

Law Faculty Reports and Comments

This paper seeks to assist election officials and their lawyers in effectively handling the technical issues that can be difficult to understand and analyze, allowing them to protect themselves and the public interest from unfair accusations, inaccuracies in results, and conspiracy theories. The paper helps to empower officials to recognize which types of voting system events and indicators need a more structured analysis and what steps to take to set up the evaluations (or forensic assessments) using computer experts.

The Clear And Present Internet: Terrorism, Cyberspace, And The First Amendment, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Optimal Political Control Of The Bureaucracy, Matthew C. Stephenson

Michigan Law Review

It is widely believed that insulating an administrative agency from the influence of elected officials, whatever its other benefits orjustifications, reduces the agency's responsiveness to the preferences of political majorities. This Article argues, to the contrary, that a moderate degree of bureaucratic insulation from political control alleviates rather than exacerbates the countermajoritarian problems inherent in bureaucratic policymaking. An elected politician, though responsive to majoritarian preferences, will almost always deviate from the majority in one direction or the other Therefore, even if the average policy position of a given elected official tends to track the policy views of the median voter …

"Latinas/Os" And The Politics Of Knowledge Production: Latcrit Scholarship And Academic Activism As Social Justice Action, Margaret E. Montoya, Francisco Valdes

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: Latinos and Latinas at the Epicenter of Contemporary Legal Discourses. Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, March 2007.

Designing Transparency: The 9/11 Commission And Institutional Form, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

Surpassing the low expectations established by previous investigatory commissions and overcoming the political and legal obstacles created by the Bush administration's opposition to its creation, the 9/11 Commission accomplished what appeared to be the impossible: an authoritative investigation, a widely-read final report, and direct influence on significant legislation. This Article argues that the 9/11 Commission represents an important institutional model for encouraging or forcing the Executive Branch to disclose information about an especially significant and controversial past event or future decision. It suggests that Congress or the President consider establishing such commissions when information held by the Executive Branch can …

Only Skin Deep?: The Cost Of Partisan Politics On Minority Diversity Of The Federal Bench, Sylvia R. Lazos Vargas

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: Latinos and Latinas at the Epicenter of Contemporary Legal Discourses. Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, March 2007.

From Hillary Clinton To Lady Macbeth: Or, Historicizing Gender, Law, And Power Through Shakespeare's Scottish Play, Carla Spivack

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Female rule was anomalous in the sixteenth century, therefore, Elizabeth I developed a complex set of symbols, rooted in claims traditionally made by male rulers, to legitimate her claim to rule. Nonetheless, her reign was anxiety-provoking, and this article argues that the years after her death saw a backlash against female power. Part of this backlash consisted of the reworking of the symbols Elizabeth had used. This article examines this process of revision in Shakespeare's play Macbeth and, later, in the responses of King James I to claims of demonic possession.

This article draws together three historical moments - Queen …

Is The Right To Vote Really Fundamental?, Joshua A. Douglas

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article poses a question at the core of our democracy: Is the constitutional right to vote a fundamental right? The answer, surprisingly, is “not always.”

For over forty years, the Supreme Court has fostered confusion surrounding the right to vote by creating two lines of election law cases. In one breath the Court calls the right to vote fundamental and applies strict scrutiny review. In another, the Court fails to recognize the right as fundamental and uses a lower level of scrutiny. These two lines of cases have coexisted, leaving lower courts and litigants with little guidance on how …

La Follette'S Folly: A Critique Of Party Associational Rights In Presidential Nomination Politics, Alan Martinson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Every four years, observers of the presidential nomination season decry the undue influence of those states that hold their primaries first, particularly Iowa and New Hampshire. Currently, Democratic Party rules protect the position of these states. In 2008, two states disregarded party rules in order to move their primaries to a more influential position in the primary season. As punishment for disobeying the rules, the national party diluted the influence of the delegates from these states at the national convention. Legislative solutions to the problems of the current nomination process appear unlikely. Moreover, Supreme Court jurisprudence places no limits on …

Judicial Independence: A Call For Reform, Terence J. Lau

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Insource The Shareholding Of Outsourced Employees: A Global Stock Ownership Plan, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

With the American economy stalled and another federal election campaign season well underway, the “outsourcing” of American jobs is again on the public agenda. Latest figures indicate not only that claims for joblessness benefits are up, but also that the rate of American job-exportation has more than doubled since the last electoral cycle. This year’s political candidates have been quick to take note. In consequence, more than at any time since the early 1990s, continued American participation in the World Trade Organization, in the North American Free Trade Agreement, and in the processes of global economic integration more generally appear …

Book Review Of The Nine: Inside The Secret World Of The Supreme Court, Eric J. Segall

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

How To Entrench A De Facto State Church In Russia: A Guide In Progress, Robert C. Blitt

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing.

To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …

Testimony Before The U.S. House Of Representatives Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee On Agriculture, Rural Development. Food And Drug Administration, And Related Agencies, Regarding The “Commodity Futures Trading Commission”, Michael Greenberger

Congressional Testimony

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development. Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies on the role of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s regulatory efforts Pertaining to excessive speculation within U.S. energy futures markets in general, and futures based on U.S. delivered crude oil contracts.

The Sounds Of Silence: American Criminal Justice Policy In Election Year 2008, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

One of the striking features of the 2008 election cycle has been the absence of crime as a national political issue. Nobody has declared metaphorical war on any type of crime, run an ad about the depredations of a parolee, or even promised 100,000 cops. It may simply be that for a country embroiled in two nonmetaphorical foreign wars and deeply nervous about the state of the economy, crime is a second-order concern. It could be that the big drop in crime of all types throughout the 1990s has made the issue seem less pressing. Whatever the explanation, things are …

Sexual Violence As The Language Of Border Control: Where French Feminist And Anti‐Immigrant Rhetoric Meet, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

When I first arrived in the Paris region in 1999 to do research on the struggle by undocumented immigrants (les sans papiers) for basic human rights, discussions of violence against women were remarkably absent from the public arena. Nongovernmental organizations and researchers had begun to broach the topic, but with little public visibility. However, this changed in late 2000, with a media explosion on the issue of les tournantes, or the gang rapes committed in the banlieues of Paris. Such tournantes involve boys “taking turns” with their friends’ girlfriends, both parties usually being of Maghrebian or North …

Adding Legislation Courses To The First-Year Curriculum, Ethan J. Leib

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Presidential Debates And Deliberative Democracy, Charles W. Collier

UF Law Faculty Publications

Consider democracy in America through the lens of the presidential debates. It is not a pretty picture. From a high point in the nineteenth century (for example, the lengthy Lincoln-Douglas Senate campaign debates of 1858) a declining trajectory can be traced to the present day, with a marked acceleration in the Age of Television. To our polity's discredit, the presidential debate has long since ceased to be a dialogue that might shed light on the candidates' true powers of deliberation. The key to reversing this long decline, I believe, lies in an unlikely place: in the structural features of the …

Slides: The Big Questions, Doug Kenney

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: Doug Kenney, Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado Law School

7 slides

Slides: The Urbanizing West: Limits To Water, Limits To Growth, Lora A. Lucero

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: Lora A. Lucero, AICP, American Planning Association

18 slides