Legislation Commons^™

Flying Into Mecca: When Gender Should Be A Bona Fide Occupational Qualification For Expatriation Assignments In Female-Hostile Host Countries, Richard F. Brueckner

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note examines the tension between preserving cultural identity and navigating the demands of globalization, particularly in the context of employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It focuses on the "bona fide occupational qualification" (BFOQ) exception, which allows employers to discriminate based on certain qualifications essential to the job. The analysis critiques the narrow interpretation of BFOQ by courts and explores its application in religious and gender discrimination cases, proposing a balanced approach to reconcile business needs with anti-discrimination principles.

Mandatory Ultrasound Statutes And The First Amendment, Shifting The Constitutional Perspective, Cheri D. Smith

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The jurisprudence of abortion law is replete with instances in which the concerns of the woman seeking the procedure have taken a back seat. The newest battleground in abortion regulation involves mandatory ultrasound statutes touted as informed consent regulations. The analysis of courts confronting these statutes has turned on whether the mandatory disclosures violate the physician's First Amendment right to be free from compelled speech. The particular breed of statute at issue in this paper requires a physician not only to perform an ultrasound, but also to make the images visible to the woman, to make audible the heartbeat, and …

Toward A Jurisprudence Of Drug Regulation, Matthew Herder

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Efforts to foster transparency in biopharmaceutical regulation are well underway: drug manufacturers are, for example, legally required to register clinical trials and share research results in the United States and Europe. Recently, the policy conversation has shifted toward the disclosure of clinical trial data, not just trial designs and basic results. Here, I argue that clinical trial registration and disclosure of clinical trial data are necessary but insufficient. There is also a need to ensure that regulatory decisions that flow from clinical trials — whether positive (i.e. product approvals) or negative (i.e. abandoned products, product refusals, and withdrawals) — are …

Climate Geoengineering And Dispute Settlement Under Unclos And The Unfccc: Stormy Seas Ahead?, Meinhard Doelle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper considers the potential for the UNCLOS and UNFCCC regimes to be faced with disputes at the intersection between the management of climate change and ocean governance. Using the example of geo-engineering, the chapter considers how tensions between climate mitigation and management and conservation goals are likely to be addressed under the two regimes. The paper explores the capacity of the existing dispute resolutions mechanisms under the two regimes to deal with these tensions, conflicts and overlap.

Measure L: Sacramento Checks And Balances Act Of 2014, Christine Dugger, Amanda Kelly

California Initiative Review (CIR)

No abstract provided.

A Diamond In The Rough: Trans-Substantivity Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And Its Detrimental Impact On Civil Rights, Suzette Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Protecting American Innovators By Combating The Decline Of Patents Granted To Small Entities, W. Keith Robinson

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The new patent laws and recent economic trends indicate that there is a difficult time ahead for small entities. American entrepreneurs and small businesses have created several of the major technological innovations in the past forty years. However, statistics indicate that patents granted to small entities have declined. In the wake of this trend, the U.S. Patent system has undergone significant changes. Currently, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) is in the process of implementing the policies and procedures outlined in its five-year strategic plan. Further, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”), the largest patent reform law since …

Bridging The Justice Gap: Exploring Approaches For Improving Indigent Access To Civil Counsel, Kelsey Atkinson

Pomona Senior Theses

The United States is among one of the only democratic industrialized nations in the world that does not provide guaranteed access to civil representation in cases involving basic human need. This leaves indigent litigants who are at risk of losing their homes or their children left to seek counsel through insufficient pro-bono programs or limited scope legal self-help centers. This thesis provides a history of the struggle for the right to civil counsel, known as Civil Gideon, and explores a variety of proposed solutions to bridge the justice gap for indigent litigants. Despite considerable support for Civil Gideon among scholars …

The Siren Is Calling: Economic And Ideological Trends Toward Privatization Of Public Police Forces, Karena Rahall

Faculty Articles

The landmark Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United has opened the floodgates to allow unlimited corporate campaign donations, and Supreme Court doctrine is shifting back to the Lochner-era's focus on economic rights. At the same time, there are efforts underway across the United States to privatize public services in order to alleviate what proponents claim is a shortfall in revenue due to the recession. Within those privatization efforts, public policing has become a new front, with outsourcing and wholesale privatization of the police underway. This article adds to the existing scholarship a political analysis of privatization efforts, including how lobbying …

Fictions Of Omniscience, Karen Petroski

Kentucky Law Journal

Recent studies of the legislative process have questioned the rationales for many principles of statutory interpretation. One of those traditional rationales is the so-called fiction of legislative omniscience, thought to underlie many judicial approaches to statutory decisions. This Article presents the first comprehensive analysis of judicial assertions about legislative awareness and proposes a different way of understanding them. The proposed perspective compares fictions of legislative omniscience with similar but more widely accepted imputations of knowledge in other areas of law; it also draws on recent findings from other disciplines on the use and comprehension of statements about fictional situations. The …

Panel I: Disclosure And Notice Practices In Private Data Collection, Lorrie Cranor, Brett Frischmann, Ryan Harkins, Helen Nissenbaum

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Locality V. Online Travel Company: Does The Bell Finally Toll For Quill Corp. V. North Dakota, Jaan Rannik

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

A Reflection On Erisa Claims Administration And The Exhaustion Requirement, James A. Wooten

Journal Articles

This essay, prepared in connection with the Drexel Law Review Symposium, ERISA at 40: What Were They Thinking?, examines ERISA’s regime for administering benefit claims and, in particular, the requirement that participants exhaust their plan’s review procedures before filing suit to recover benefits. Like other key elements of ERISA’s claims regime, the exhaustion requirement is a judicial creation that is not articulated in ERISA’s text. Interestingly, former congressional staffers who attended the Symposium said they assumed participants would be required to exhaust plan review procedures but failed to include such a requirement in the legislation. After reviewing the development of …

Determining Extraterritoriality, Franklin A. Gevurtz

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

This Article addresses an underexplored but critical aspect of the presumption against extraterritoriality. The presumption against extraterritoriality-which the United States Supreme Court has increasingly invoked in recent years-calls for courts to presume that Congress does not intend U.S. statutes to govern events outside the United States. The most difficult issue presented by the presumption arises when relevant events occur both inside and outside the United States, as in the classic example, if a shooter on one side of the border kills a victim on the other, or if, as in the leading case, false statements originating inside the United States …

Toward Greater Guidance: Reforming The Definitions Of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Matthew W. Muma

Michigan Law Review

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 is the cornerstone of the United States’ efforts to combat the involvement of U.S. companies and individuals in corruption abroad. Enforced by both the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the Act targets companies and individuals that pay bribes to “foreign officials,” a nebulous category of persons that includes everyone from foreign cabinet members to janitors at companies only partially owned by a foreign state. After only sporadic enforcement in the early years of the Act’s existence, the SEC and DOJ now bring many cases annually. This increased …

The United Nations Watercourses Convention On The Dawn Of Entry Into Force, Ryan Stoa

Faculty Publications

The United Nations Watercourses Convention entered into force in August 2014. Despite overwhelming support when signed in 1997, the ratification process has been slow. As a binding treaty, the Watercourses Convention provides hope that its provisions will articulate legal principles of transboundary water management capable of promoting cooperation and regional agreements. Despite entry into force, however, global support for the Watercourses Convention is weak, concurrent efforts to develop treaty regimes governing water resources create competition for resources and may obscure understandings of international water law, and the foundational principles of the Watercourses Convention remain ambiguous. These limitations are illustrated in …

Florida Water Management Districts And The Florida Water Resources Act: The Challenges Of Basin-Level Management, Ryan Stoa

Faculty Publications

Florida’s plentiful freshwater resources are indispensable to the state’s municipal, agricultural, and environmental interests. As such, decision-makers presiding over complex water management decisions wield extraordinary powers. The Water Resources Act of Florida vests these powers in five water management districts drawn according to hydrological (not political) boundaries. The water management districts have robust technical, financial, and regulatory powers, and hold the key to Florida’s sustainable development. But with the stakes so high, Florida’s water management districts are at the center of a broader fight for control of water resources. In particular, transboundary water conflicts, political pressure, and ecological needs show …

Speaking Of Science: Introducing Notice And Comment Into The Legislative Process, Gregory Dolin

All Faculty Scholarship

Congress enacts, on a nearly continuous basis, a variety of laws that affect scientific research and progress. Some of these laws have an unquestionably positive effect. For instance, Congress's creation of the National Institutes of Health, the National Academy of Sciences, and NASA; its various appropriations to fund ground-breaking research; and a multitude of other laws have incalculably advanced human knowledge, and it is to Congress's great credit that these laws have been and are continuing to be enacted. However, not all laws that affect the progress of sciences are an unalloyed good. Quite the opposite, often the laws aim …

Joint Works Under United States Copyright Law: Judicial Legislation Through Statutory Misinterpretation, Michael B. Landau

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

An Institutional Alchemy: India’S Two Parliaments In Comparative Perspective, Shubhankar Dam

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

India has a parliamentary system. But articled in India’s Constitution is a provision that authorizes the President to occasionally enact legislation without involving Parliament. Such presidential legislation are called ordinances, not Acts; and rather than enact, the President promulgates them. Textually, ordinances are bounded by several ‘controls’. They are limited to circumstances when at least one House of Parliament is not in session, and the President is satisfied that the circumstances are such that immediate action is necessary. And without such formal parliamentary approval after a specified duration, they cease to exist. But after sixty years of constitutional practice these …

Private Law In The Gaps, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Journal Articles

Private law subjects like tort, contract, and property are traditionally taken to be at the core of the common law tradition, yet statutes increasingly intersect with these bodies of doctrine. This Article draws on recent work in private law theory and statutory interpretation to consider afresh what courts should do with private law in statutory gaps. In particular, it focuses on statutes touching on tort law, a field at the leading edge of private law theory. This Article's analysis unsettles some conventional wisdom about the intersection of private law and statutes. Many leading tort scholars and jurists embrace a regulatory …

Elementary Statutory Interpretation: Rethinking Legislative Intent And History, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article argues that theorists and practitioners of statutory interpretation should rethink two very basic concepts—legislative intent and legislative history. Textualists urge that to look to legislative history is to seek an intent that does not exist. This article argues we should put this objection to bed because, even if groups do not have minds, they have the functional equivalent of intent: they plan by using internal sequential procedures allowing them to project their collective actions forward in time. What we should mean by legislative “intent” is legislative “context.” For a group, context includes how groups act—their procedures. Once one …

The Constitution And Legislative History, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article, the author provides an extended analysis of the constitutional claims against legislative history, arguing that, under textualists’ own preference for constitutional text, the use of legislative history should be constitutional to the extent it is supported by Congress’s rulemaking power, a constitutionally enumerated power.

This article has five parts. In part I, the author explains the importance of this question, considering the vast range of cases to which this claim of unconstitutionality could possibly apply—after all, statutory interpretation cases are the vast bulk of the work of the federal courts. She also explains why these claims should …

Tarrification Of The Coastwise Trade Laws, Keith E. Diggs

Michigan Law Review

The coastwise trade laws prohibit foreign vessels and mariners from transporting goods or passengers between American ports. These anticompetitive laws punish American producers and consumers yet barely sustain a dwindling merchant marine. Every attempt to repeal the laws encounters insurmountable political resistance. Reformers of the coastwise trade laws, then, should instead try to convert the prohibition on foreign involvement into a tariff.

The Judicial Duty To Scrutinize Legislation, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Declaration of Independence famously declared, “[w]e hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” It then affirmed “[t]hat to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” This last sentence has proven to be problematic.

If “consent of the governed” means the consent of a majority of “We the people,” then the “consent of the governed” can be used to violate the unalienable …

From Contract To Legislation: The Logic Of Modern International Lawmaking, Timothy Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

The future of international lawmaking is in peril. Both trade and climate negotiations have failed to produce a multilateral agreement since the mid-1990s, while the U.N. Security Council has been unable to comprehensively respond to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. In response to multilateralism's retreat, many prominent commentators have called for international institutions to be given the power to bind holdout states-often rising or reluctant powers such as China and the United States-without their consent. In short, these proposals envision international law traveling the road taken by federal systems such as the United States and the European Union: from contractual …

Extraterritorial Impacts Of Recent Financial Regulation Reforms: A Complex World Of Global Finance, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Comments On The September 29, 2014 Fsb Consultative Document, ‘Cross-Border Recognition Of Resolution Action’, Steven L. Schwarcz, Mark Jewett, Bruce Leonard, Catherine Walsh, David Kempthorne

Faculty Scholarship

This CIGI Paper No. 51 was released on December 3, 2014 by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) as a response to the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) Consultative Document, “Cross-Border Recognition of Resolution Action.” Principally authored by CIGI Senior Fellow Steven L. Schwarcz (who works with the think tank’s International Law Research Program), the Paper comments on the policy measures proposed by the FSB, an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system, to address the cross-border legal uncertainties of troubled systemically important financial firms. In that context, the Paper explains why a statutory approach …

The Growth Of Incarceration In The United States: Exploring Causes And Consequences, Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, F. Stevens Redburn

Publications and Research

After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of incarceration in the United States more than quadrupled in the past four decades. The Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration in the United States was established under the auspices of the National Research Council, supported by the National Institute of Justice and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to review evidence on the causes and consequences of these high incarceration rates and the implications of this evidence for public policy.

Our work encompassed research on, and analyses of, the …

Information Use In Decision Making By Parliamentarians In Ghana, Hawa Osman Ms, Dominic Dankwah Agyei Mr.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Information is an important ingredient in decision making by Ghanaian parliamentarians. The objective of the study was to determine the types of information members of parliament (MPs) needed, how they acquired and utilized them in the decision making processes and the problems they encountered in finding relevant information.

The survey method was used for the study. Data was collected from a sample of 115 parliamentarians through the use of questionnaire. The data collected were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS).

Some of the key findings of the study are that MPs consulted many sources of information some …