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The Syrian Humanitarian Crisis: What Is to Be Done?
No full textThe Syrian Humanitarian Crisis: What Is To Be Done? Experts look at humanitarian concerns in the context of ongoing need for a political solution
WASHINGTON, April 21, 2015 – The Middle East Policy Council’s 80th Capitol Hill Conference took an in-depth look at the complex interaction of political, legal and humanitarian factors related to the ongoing conflict in Syria. As the volume and stress of refugees continues to balloon — exerting pressure on Syria’s neighbors — the panelists ultimately returned to the need for a political solution to the conflict as the only hope for meaningful relief from the refugee crisis.
The panelists included Karen AbuZayd (Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic), Denis Sullivan (Director, Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies), Susan Akram (Clinical Professor, Boston University School of Law, and Sara Roy (Senior Research Scholar, Center for Middle East Studies, Harvard University). Ford Fraker, president of the Middle East Policy Council, introduced the event. Thomas Mattair, executive director, was the moderator. More specific remarks from the panelists: • Karen AbuZayd summarized the work of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, mandated by the UN Human Rights Council. She highlighted some of the commission’s recommendations, including enforcing international law; referring the situation to the ICC; reforming the national justice system; halting child recruitment; increasing foreign assistance; and establishing regional tribunals closer to the problem. • Denis Sullivan noted the nuanced designation between “registered” and other refugees in surrounding countries. Despite the inability of refugees to get business licenses or work legally, some economies in refugee camps can be relatively vital. He also discussed municipal actors, suggesting greater international focus on how donors build capacity through these local points of aid delivery, with an eye towards longer-term institutional development. • Susan Akram presented the varying legal frameworks in place in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to deal with the influx of Syrian refugees. Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon all lack a comprehensive framework, creating moral hazard: refugees are deterred from officially registering. Turkey does have a policy of granting temporary protection to registered refugees. She also stressed the need to consider the crisis from an international point of view, in order to relieve pressure on Syria’s neighbors. • Sara Roy explored whether the humanitarian crisis in Gaza offered lessons for Syria, arguing the importance of the political dimension to refugee crises. In the case of Gaza, the humanitarian focus of the crisis has been used to obscure political and economic progress, leaving Gaza further from its ultimate development goals and generally “aid-dependent.” By changing how the international community interacts with certain populations, humanitarianism can impede progress in these other realms
The Dependent Origins of Independent Agencies: The Interstate Commerce Commission, the Tenure of Office Act, and the Rise of Modern Campaign Finance
Get PDFIndependent regulatory agencies are some of the most powerful institutions in the United States, and we think of them today as designed to be insulated from political control. This Article shows that their origins were the opposite: this model first emerged in the late nineteenth century because it offered more political control.
The modern executive\u27s design of unitary presidential control over most offices, alongside independent regulatory agencies, took shape in the winter of 1886-1887. Congress repealed the Tenure of Office Act, giving the President the unchecked power to dismiss principal officers and ending the Senate\u27s power to protect those officers. Shortly afterward, Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission ( ICC ), the first model for the modern independent agency. These two innovations are a basic foundation for the modern executive branch: the unitary executive\u27s power over most offices, alongside independent regulatory commissions that are sometimes called a \u27fourth branch of government.
This structural change was triggered by a sudden and significant transformation in American campaign finance. In the nineteenth century, parties relied on assessments . Officeholders paying a percentage of their salary as a kickback to their party. Due to the federal prohibition of patronage assessments in 1876 and 1883, the Senate had less incentive to fight for its power over federal offices and assessment money, and the parties were forced to adopt our more recognizable modern system of large special interest campaign contributions. The Senate suddenly needed to increase its access to railroad money, and the ICC was the Senate\u27s means of attracting that money. The existing scholarship on the ICC generally contends that Congress was shifting responsibility, decreasing its own power so that it could punt difficult issues and delegate them to a new commission. To the contrary, this Article shows that the Senate and the President were seizing power, not punting away thorny questions. The ICC was a rejection of a far more independent enforcement model (private civil litigation in federal or state courts) in favor of a shared political accountability model (a commission nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate for six-year terms). This story shows how sudden changes in campaign finance triggered dramatic changes in constitutional design and set the foundation for the modern executive branch
Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution: For Moral Readings and Against Originalisms
No full textIn recent years, some have asked Are we all originalists now? and many have assumed that originalists have a monopoly on concern for fidelity in constitutional interpretation. In Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution, James Fleming rejects originalisms-whether old or new, concrete or abstract, living or dead. Instead, he defends what Ronald Dworkin called a moral reading of the United States Constitution, or a philosophic approach to constitutional interpretation. He refers to conceptions of the Constitution as embodying abstract moral and political principles-not codifying concrete historical rules or practices-and of interpretation of those principles as requiring normative judgments about how they are best understood-not merely historical research to discover relatively specific original meanings. Through examining the spectacular concessions that originalists have made to their critics, he shows the extent to which even they acknowledge the need to make normative judgments in constitutional interpretation. Fleming argues that fidelity in interpreting the Constitution as written requires a moral reading or philosophic approach. Fidelity commits us to honoring our aspirational principles, not following the relatively specific original meanings (or original expected applications) of the founders. Originalists would enshrine an imperfect Constitution that does not deserve our fidelity. Only a moral reading or philosophic approach, which aspires to interpret our imperfect Constitution so as to make it the best it can be, gives us hope of interpreting it in a manner that may deserve our fidelity.https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/books/1011/thumbnail.jp
Income taxation, wealth effects, and uncertainty: Portfolio adjustments with isoelastic utility and discrete probability
Get PDFThe expected utility formulation of the problem of a risk-averse agent’s allocating a portfolio between a safe and a risky asset is widely taken as standing for the proposition that if α* ε (0, 1) is the optimal allocation to the risky asset in the absence of tax, α*/(1-t) is the optimal allocation in the presence of tax at rate t, a finding obtained on the assumption that the return r to the riskless asset is (or is taxed as though it were) zero. In this paper I model the agent as exhibiting constant relative risk aversion and the probability distribution of the risky asset as binomial, and take the riskless rate to be greater than zero. With those assumptions the optimal solution α* depends on the all the parameters of the problem. The key finding of the paper, however, is that the optimal adjustment to taxation does not. That adjustment differs from what has been widely assumed, and depends on r, as well as t, but does not depend on anything else. It reflects in a natural way the response of the agent to the wealth effect of taxation
Dworkin\u27s Perfectionism
Get PDFIn this essay, we shall interpret Dworkin\u27s constitutional theory in light of three varieties of perfectionism: (1) the idea that government should undertake a formative project of inculcating civic virtues and encouraging responsibility in the exercise of rights; (2) the idea that we should interpret the American Constitution so as to make it the best it can be; and (3) the idea that we should defend a Constitution-perfecting theory that would secure not only procedural liberties essential for democratic self-government but also substantive liberties essential for personal self-government. We shall identify three gaps left by Dworkin\u27s work and sketch how we have sought to fill those gaps in the spirit of his work through developing a mild form of constitutional perfectionis
What Will It Take to Address the Global Threat of Antibiotic Resistance?
Get PDFAntibiotic resistance is a global threat that may be beyond the capacity of any one country to address. We assess the three primary issues (access, conservation and innovation) and discuss which require higher levels of global coordination
Explaining Arbitration Law
Get PDFMost fields of law provide guidance on how courts decide cases. In contrast, arbitration law tells judges when not to decide disputes, in deference to private decision-makers selected by the litigants. At such moments, arbitration law normally includes two limbs: first, to hold parties to their bargains to arbitrate; second, to monitor the basic integrity of the arbitral process, so the case will be heard by a fair tribunal that listens before deciding, stays within its mission, and respects the limits of relevant public policy. As we shall see, in applying these principles, the devil lurks in the details of each award, ruling or contract
Trade and History: The Case of EU-Algeria Relations
Get PDFThe recent centennial of Albert Camus’s birth has had little resonance in EU legal scholarship. Yet Camus’s work is a natural entry point into the EU’s trade relations with the global south, and Algeria’s case is a particularly salient one, given the oft-ignored fact that for five years the Algerian nation was a part of the European Economic Community. The onset of a free trade regime between the EU and the former colonies or territories of its member states is often touted as the culminating point in a line of constant progress, from dependency to autonomy and from asymmetry to parity. But a closer look at the experience of Algeria reveals that massive trade diversion resulted, in a not so distant past, from the very birth of the Common Market, and that current policies are not adequately redressing the effects of such lopsided arrangements. The point of these pages, linking the 1960s death of Algeria’s wine exports to the country’s ongoing struggle to diversify its economy, is not to provide generalizable lessons or overarching guidelines for the trade policies of developed nations. The goal is rather to invite particularized, textured inquiries into the meaning of free trade between the EU and each of its partners, taking into account the specific legacies of older patterns of commerce
Addressing Cyber Harassment: An Overview of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
Get PDFThis short piece will take a step back and give an overhead view of the problem of cyber harassment and the destructive impact it can have on victims’ lives. Then, it will address about what the law can do to combat online harassment and how a legal agenda can be reconciled with the First Amendment. Finally, it will turn to recent changes in social media companies’ treatment of online abuse and what that might mean for our system of free expression
Attorney General Kamala Harris to Help Law Enforcement in Investigations of Criminal Invasions of Sexual Privacy
No full textCalifornia’s Attorney General Kamala Harris has created a first-of-its-kind online resource designed to assist law enforcement in understanding and investigating crimes related to the cyber exploitation of a person’s nude images in violation of privacy and without consent (also known as nonconsensual pornography). Before discussing the resources created by AG Harris’s Task Force, let me first briefly explain the destruction caused by nonconsensual pornography, one of the many ways that networked tools can be used to exploit vulnerable individuals and to harass, stalk, terrorize, and ultimately deprive them of life’s crucial opportunities