Law and Politics Commons^™

California's War Over The Bay-Delta: Historic Failures And Current Battles, Jessica J. Mao

CMC Senior Theses

California has one highly-coveted possession: the Bay-Delta, which is the second largest estuary in the United States. Today, tensions are higher than ever as Southern California continues to grow and demand water from the Delta, agriculture suffers from drought and less-than-promised water allocations, and aquatic life diminishes due to environmentally damaging processes like pumping and exporting of water elsewhere. This paper will examine the historic policies that have shaped how the Delta has been managed, their successes and failures, and current plans in discussion for continuing improvement of the Delta. The Bay-Delta Conservation Plan and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water …

Stoney Road Out Of Eden: The Struggle To Recover Insurance For Armenian Genocide Deaths And Its Implications For The Future Of State Authority, Contract Rights, And Human Rights, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Sarig Armenian, David Mcclure

Scholarly Works

The Armenian Genocide during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire continues to represent one of history’s underappreciated atrocities. Comparatively few people even know about the 1.5 million deaths or the government-sponsored extermination attempt that provided Hitler with a blueprint for the Nazi Holocaust. Unlike the Holocaust, however, there was never any accounting demanded of those responsible for the Armenian Genocide. In the aftermath of both tragedies, insurers seized upon the resulting disarray and victimization to deny life insurance benefits owed as a result of the killings. American-based litigation to vindicate rights under the Armenian polices faced substantial legal and …

Latino Voters 2012 And Beyond: Will The Fastest Growing And Evolving Electoral Group Shape U.S. Politics?, Sylvia R. Lazos

Scholarly Works

The author reviews two recent books, Marisa A. Abrajano’s Campaigning to the New American Electorate: Advertising to Latino Voters (2010) and Marisa A. Abrajano’s and R. Michael Alvarez’s New Faces New Voices: The Hispanic Electorate in America (2010). These books are part of a growing literature that scientifically studies the evolving Latino electorate, and attempts to answer difficult questions about this ethnic group’s electorate cohesiveness and how candidates might be able to influence the Latino electorate. A careful read of Abrajano’s recent books brings additional understanding to Latino voter behavior, and by implication, how this key group will influence the …

A Commentary: Presidents Adams And Jefferson, With A Few Others, Discuss Health Reform With A Disabled Lawyer, Gary C. Norman

Journal of Law and Health

Washington lawyers constitute strategic actors within executive, legislative, and judicial forums. This Article discusses the interaction of Washington lawyers in these branches of government regarding healthcare law and policy. The Article discusses how access to technology inhibits a disabled lawyer from equal involvement in the governmental process. The Article also thematically presents the position Presidents Adam and Jefferson would likely harbor on healthcare reform. Public discourse must be more intellectual like that of the founding generation, and it should be improved in its civility.

Tax Court Appointments And Reappointments Improving The Process, Danshera Cords

University of Richmond Law Review

This article explores the problems with the appointment and reappointment process of judges to the United States Tax Court, particularly focusing on the recent politicization of the process. Until 1992, the process ensured the appoint-ment of only well-qualified judges to the Tax Court bench. However, beginning with the administrations of Presidents William J. Clinton and George W. Bush, the President infused politics into the nomination process, causing the process to slow and creating vacancies on the court. Such delays threaten the court's effectiveness and disrupt its operations. To solve this problem, the author endorses changing the statute to allow Tax …

Congressional Inquiry And The Federal Criminal Law, J. Richard Broughton

University of Richmond Law Review

This article supports constraint of the modern federal criminal law regime through greater attention to, and use of, congressional investigation and over =sight powers. Through an analysis of the 2009 and 2010 United States House of Representatives hearings on over-criminalization, this article asserts that Congress has political and constitutional incentives to use its investigation and oversight powers to address these problems. Conventional wisdom asserts that political disincentives to reduce the federal criminal law regime and weaknesses in investigative and oversight powers limit congressional effectiveness.

The War On Terror: Where We Are And How We Got There, Michael B. Mukasey

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Obama Administration And The Prospects For A Democratic Presidency In A Post-9/11 World, Peter M. Shane

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Secrecy And Self-Governance, Geoffrey R. Stone

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ten Years On: Military Justice And Civil Liberties In The Post-9/11 Era, Eugene R. Fidell

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Foreign Relations Authority After 9/11, Martin S. Flaherty

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Constitutionality Of The Niqab Ban In Egypt: A Symbol Of Egypt’S Struggle For A Legal Identity, Luna Droubi

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fisher V. Grutter, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is no reason for the Supreme Court to have granted certiorari in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Unless, of course, the Court plans to overrule Grutter v. Bollinger—the case on which the Texas affirmative action plan at issue in Fisher was based. If that is its plan, the Court can invalidate the Texas program on some narrow ground that masks the magnitude of what it is doing. Or it can explicitly overrule Grutter—a case that no longer commands majority support on a Supreme Court whose politics of affirmative action has now been refashioned by …

Considering The Libel Trial Of Émile Zola In Light Of Contemporary Defamation Doctrine, Peter A. Zablotsky

Touro Law Review

Touro Law School's three-day conference on the Dreyfus affair provided an opportunity to re-examine the libel trial Émile Zola. A modern view on tort law is provided to analyze this case as if it unfolded today.

Due Process In American Military Tribunals After September 11, 2001, Gary Shaw

Touro Law Review

The Authorization for Use of Military Force ("AUMF") provides broad powers for a president after September 11, 2001. President Bush, under the AUMF, claimed he had the power to hold "enemy combatants" without due process. This gave rise to two questions that the article addresses: "Could they be held indefinitely without charges or proceedings being initiated? If proceedings had to be initiated, what process was due to the defendants?"

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission And The Politics Of Governmental Investigations, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

In May 2009, Congress passed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act which created the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, an independent, bipartisan panel tasked to examine the causes of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States.

Franklin Roosevelt never created an independent commission to investigate Wall Street, but the Pecora hearings, the eponymous investigation of Wall Street wrongdoing run by a former New York prosecutor, captivated the country. For sixteen months in the worst depths of the Great Depression, Ferdinand Pecora paraded a series of elite financiers before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee. In one hearing after …

Democracy Promotion: Done Right, A Progressive Cause, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

By the beginning of the Obama Administration, democracy promotion had become a rather tarnished idea, and understandably so. Like Islam or Christianity, much blood has been shed beneath its banner. It may be true that democracies don’t go to war with one another, but they certainly go to war, and their wars kill people just as dead as the wars undertaken by illiberal regimes. Anyone on the political left can tell the story: During the Cold War, the United States fought endless proxy wars and engaged in a great deal of overt and covert mischief, all in the name of …

The Micro And Macro Causes Of Prison Growth, John F. Pfaff

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rejecting Sovereign Immunity In Public Law Litigation, Howard M. Wasserman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Nonprofits, Politics, And Privacy, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Journal Articles

The first Part of this Article briefly reviews and contrasts the history and current rules governing disclosure and privacy in the federal tax, federal tax exemption, and federal election law contexts. This review reveals that both the cost-benefit approach and the right-to-privacy approach can be found in this history, but to a greater or lesser extent depending on the context. The second Part explores these two different approaches and the extent to which the existing disclosure rules reflect those approaches. This Part shows that the rules are sometimes but not always based both on the cost-benefit approach to disclosure, in …