5033 research outputs found
Sort by
Picturing Moral Arguments in a Fraught Legal Arena: Fetuses, Photographic Phantoms and Ultrasounds
Get PDFThis article investigates the movement in the U.S. that seeks to regulate the abortion decision by mandating ultrasounds prior to the procedure. The article argues that this reform effort is misguided not only because it is ineffective, but also because ultrasounds provide misleading information and are part of shaming practices that degrade the dignity of women. Both of these problems violate the main tenets of Planned Parenthood of Southern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992). Central to the article’s argument and novelty is that the pro-ultrasound movement’s mistake is both legal and cultural. It misunderstands the nature of visual technology by failing to comprehend the complex and contradictory messages that images communicate. It also misjudges the legal relevance of photographic images. By exploring cases on reproductive freedom and constitutional rights alongside aesthetic theory concerning photography and film, this article explains the legal and philosophical flaws of the mandatory ultrasound legislation proliferating throughout the nation
POV: Enlisting State Police to Enforce Immigration Law a Mistake
No full textReversing the policy of his predecessor Deval Patrick (Hon’14), Governor Charlie Baker announced on June 2 that the Massachusetts State Police will now be permitted to detain suspected noncitizens. Baker insists that without this collaboration he has “concerns about restricting law enforcement’s ability to do their job.” But enlisting the state police to enforce federal immigration law is a costly mistake
A Friendly Amendment
Get PDFHeather Gerken comes to praise Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor. 1 I come to praise Gerken’s valiant effort to recast the Windsor opinion along more convincing lines.2 Gerken does not propose a wholesale substitute for Justice Kennedy’s analysis. She suggests a shift in emphasis that lends Kennedy’s explanation for condemning DOMA a surprising jurisprudential significance. Where some us have seen yet another lamentable paean to the sovereignty of the states, Gerken detects the faint hint of the “nationalist” school of federalism that she and others have nurtured in recent years.3 Gerken does not (yet) attach relevant significance to Justice Kennedy’s predicate holding that Windsor presented the question of DOMA’s validity in a justiciable posture. I want to contend that there, too, Kennedy may have recognized (implicitly and even more faintly) that the values we should associate with federal structure are not well served by sovereignty-based allocations of power
Informed Consent and the First Amendment
Get PDFFor more than two decades, states have been adding to the things that physicians must say and do to obtain “informed consent” — and thereby testing the constitutional limits of states\u27 power to regulate medical practice. In 1992, the Supreme Court upheld states\u27 authority to require physicians to provide truthful information that might encourage a woman to reconsider her decision to have an abortion, finding that such a requirement did not place an “undue burden” on the woman
Persistent Overoptimism about Economic Growth
No full textSince 2007, Federal Open Market Committee participants have been persistently too optimistic about future U.S. economic growth. Real GDP growth forecasts have typically started high, but then are revised down over time as the incoming data continue to disappoint. Possible explanations for this pattern include missed warning signals about the buildup of imbalances before the crisis, overestimation of the efficacy of monetary policy following a balance-sheet recession, and the natural tendency of forecasters to extrapolate from recent data
Finding Normal: Natural Rates and Policy Prescriptions
No full textOver the past several years, the Federal Open Market Committee’s longer-run forecasts of the short-term interest rate and unemployment rate have steadily declined. These forecasts reflect the Committee’s views about the levels of the policy interest rate and unemployment rate that will eventually prevail when the economy returns to normal. A simple monetary policy rule illustrates how the reductions in these forecasts can imply a lower projected path for the policy rate
The Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice in Our Time, by Christopher J. Lebron
Get PDFIdeal theory seeks to identify the basic conditions of social justice but does not tell us how to achieve them. Christopher Lebron’s important new book The Color of Our Shame is a philosophically enterprising venture in non-ideal theory, suggesting how we might bring about racial equality in America. A reader who is passingly familiar with civil rights developments of the 1950s and 1960s might imagine that racial inequality is a disappearing vestige of past discrimination; so an essential step in Christopher Lebron’s argument is to establish that racial inequality remains a grave issue half a century later. That task is taken up in chapter 3, which focuses on criminal law and welfare policy as illustrations. If the reader ventures beyond that chapter’s brief discussion and examines the wider literature cited in the endnotes, she can begin to understand why one writer dubs the current system “the new Jim Crow.
Federalism, Marriage, and Heather Gerken\u27s Mad Genius
Get PDFIn her characteristically astute and engaging essay, Professor Heather Gerken offers a sensitive and sympathetic reading of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in United States v. Windsor.1 Her core claim is that Windsor—and the transformation of political and legal support for same-sex marriage in the United States—demonstrate how “federalism and rights work together to promote change” and, in particular, how federalism furthers the equality and liberty values of the Fourteenth Amendment.2 This is a natural line of argument for Gerken to develop with respect to Windsor, as she has produced an incredible body of scholarship dedicated to what she calls the “nationalist school of federalism”—a theory of federalism that understands “state power [as] a means to achieving a well-functioning national democracy.”3 We are fortunate that she has turned her attention to same-sex marriage, federalism, and the “many mysteries” of Windso
Phishing & VAT Fraud in CO2 Permits: DICE in the EU-ETS Now; DICE in Power Tomorrow
Get PDFIn accordance with Directive 2003/87/EC of October 13, 2003, trade in greenhouse gas emissions commenced in the European Union (EU) on January 1, 2005. The EU-Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) was born.
The EU has a Value Added Tax (VAT). VAT is a transaction-based levy on all trade in goods and services. Each Member State has a VAT as a condition of membership. Until January 3, 2017 transactions in CO2 permits are taxed as services. After this date they are exempt as financial instruments.
This change in VAT treatment of CO2 permits is directly attributable to rampant fraud in the market. Fraud has been so severe in CO2 permits that public trust in the EU’s emissions trading scheme has been undermined. Important lessons have been learned about controlling fraud from efforts made in the emissions markets. Unfortunately, time and political patience have run out. This paper considers a particular phishing attack in the CO2 market – the January 18, 2011 attack on the Czech registry. The focus of this paper is not on this very sensational fraud; it is on the ETS/ VAT overlap, and the ability to apply what has been learned here to the trade in gas and electricity. Careful consideration of this overlap demonstrates why the Digital Invoice Customs Exchange (DICE) proposal works as an effective fraud prevention mechanism.
The moral of this story is that what we have learned can be directly applied to the commodity energy market. We know how that these markets can be secured. We need:
(a) an Independent Transaction Log, and (b) a secure self-verifying digital invoice, and (c) a system of automated invoice cross-checking (the customs exchange).
Can this be done? Quite simply, “yes.”
A call placed to Kim Mayyasi, SmartCloud’s CEO presented this question. Not surprisingly, the response was: “… implementing a real-time transaction database of all power sales in the EU with advanced reasoning for back room analytics could implement the DICE proposal to eliminate MTIC from the EU power markets, and it could do so for the EU CO2 market right now. This is a typical challenge that our technology was designed to handle.
Protecting Syrian Refugees: Laws, Policies, and Global Responsibility Sharing
Get PDFThis article provides an excerpt of a report that maps out how the Syrian refugee crisis is being played out in four of the main states hosting the refugees, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey. This excerpt focuses on the laws and policies in the host states and how they are creating particularly devastating consequences for Palestinian refugees. The excerpt sets out the Report’s conclusions and recommendations, primarily the call for a global Comprehensive Plan of Action (cpa), with various components within and outside the Middle East region that build on existing legal obligations to better allocate responsibility for the refugee population and lift the overwhelming and unsustainable burden from the current frontline host states. The conclusions and recommendations combine legal and policy measures that would allow close the Palestinian refugee ‘protection gap,’ stem the phenomenon of trafficking and disasters-at-sea, prevent further fallout of the Syrian humanitarian crisis, and create incentive amongst the larger community of states to intervene to end the regional conflict