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Making Room for the Past in the Future: Managing Urban Development with Cultural Heritage Preservation
Get PDFFew would disagree that art and architecture are indispensable aspects of the collective human experiences. But can there be “too much” of it? How much is “too much?” Could art and cultural heritage be a hindrance to progress, urbanization, and sustainability? Which art is worth saving? A growing question is how to balance and reconcile expanding urban needs with efforts to preserve cultural heritage. Many cities across the global face this fresh moral dilemma. Cities like Istanbul, Rome, and Cairo––heirs to great empires, with history and art cursing through every alley, are still modern-day metropolises, with ever-burgeoning populations and social needs. The demand for more transportation and development is competing against desires and abstract moral obligations to preserve cultural and artistic heritage, often in countries that are struggling financially. Building a city’s future will, inevitably it seems, destroy its past.
As cities expand and seek to accommodate their living populations while trying to accommodate the moral and legal obligation to preserve cultural heritage, the decision faced is often no longer “should we preserve this art” but “which ones should we preserve?” Often, the choice is difficult. Determining the proper metrics is even more difficult. The invariable need to grow and compete in the worldwide free market and an obligation to protect the past for the present and the future have come into legal contention in several countries, and this paper aims to explore national and international law regarding how artistic heritage is managed in an exponentially-modernizing world
The Tallinn Manual 2.0 on Nation-State Cyber Operations Affecting Critical Infrastructure
Get PDFProtecting critical infrastructure from cyber threats is difficult and complex. News headlines abound with reports that show how critical infrastructure—ranging from voting machines to steel mills—have become increasingly vulnerable to cyber operations from state and sophisticated nonstate actors. As critical infrastructure becomes increasingly entangled with the Internet and as new tactics, techniques, and procedures rapidly proliferate and evolve, governments and businesses alike must contend with a mutating threat environment that may put sensitive and highly important critical infrastructure assets in serious jeopardy. The vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure, which provide vital services and functions to societies, may pose a particularly tempting way for states to asymmetrically project power during an armed conflict or other crisis. Recent tensions between Russia and Ukraine have provided a useful test bed to consider how cyber-threat actors could couple cyber-based operations with movements of traditional military forces
Washington College of Law Louisiana Ave Photo
No full textThe first woman\u27s law class was held at the Mussey law office at 470 Louisiana Avenue from 1896-1898.https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/wcl_classphoto/1001/thumbnail.jp
Who Thinks Treaties are Like Contracts? Not John Marshall
Get PDFCourts in the United States are fond of analogizing treaties to contracts. The U.S. Supreme Court has done so on numerous occasions, as have nearly all federal circuit courts. Indeed, the treaty-as-contract trope has permeated U.S. legal discourse since at least the early 1800s when Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Foster v. Neilson that “[a] treaty is in its nature a contract between two nations, not a legislative act.
Trademarks in An Algorithmic World
Get PDFAccording to the sole normative foundation for trademark protection—“search costs” theory—trademarks transmit useful information to consumers, enabling an efficient marketplace. The marketplace, however, is in the midst of a fundamental change. Increasingly, retail is virtual, marketing is data-driven, and purchasing decisions are automated by AI. Predictive analytics are changing how consumers shop. Search costs theory no longer accurately describes the function of trademarks in this marketplace. Consumers now have numerous digital alternatives to trademarks that more efficiently provide them with increasingly accurate product information. Just as store shelves are disappearing from consumers’ retail experience, so are trademarks disappearing from their product search. Consumers may want to buy a product where the brand is the essential feature of the product such that the brand is the product, but they no longer need the assistance of a trademark to find the product.
By reflexively continuing to protect trademarks in the name of search costs theory, courts give only lip service to consumer interests without questioning whether trademarks are fulfilling any useful information function. In many cases, trademarks may actually misinform consumers by masking the identity of the producer or its distanced relationship with the trademark owner. Without having deliberately decided to do so, trademark law is now protecting “brands as property” without any supportive normative rationale. Removing the veil of search costs theory will enable courts to consider whether trademark protection is justified in particular cases
The Invisible Workforce: Domestic Workers and Labor Rights in Brazil
No full textThis dissertation examines the exclusion of domestic workers from labor rights in Brazil in both the past and present. Despite recent reforms, domestic workers continue to lack the same rights as other workers, and the prevalence of informal work presents challenges for labor law. This study employs a mixed-methods approach, including bibliographic and legislative history research mapping, analysis of the legislative process, and interviews. The organization of domestic workers has been crucial in advocating for expanded rights and played a critical role in the approval of the International Labor Organization’s Convention on Domestic Workers and Brazil’s Constitutional Amendment on Domestic Workers (Amendment No. 72/2013). The study shows that the Brazilian government and domestic workers used international influence and discussion to prioritize a national reform and postpone the ratification of the International Labor Organization’s Convention on Domestic Workers. Despite not being ratified in the country during the congressional debates regarding domestic workers’ labor rights, the convention was significant within Brazil and played a part in the approval of the constitutional amendment mentioned above. This dissertation sheds light on the undervaluing of care work and the gendered division of labor, as well as the social discrimination and racism that surrounds paid domestic work which drives younger individuals away from the occupation. While the recent legal reforms represent progress, there is still work to be done to ensure that domestic workers are accorded the same rights as other workers and that the burdens of care work are more equitably shared among different genders and entities
It Takes Two to Incorporate: The Role of Patent Co-Ownership in Inventor Choice of Business Form
Get PDFThe literature on the theory of the firm and the reasons why entrepreneurs choose one type of business organization over another is massive. However, few empirical studies have been conducted to test the importance of the various proposed determinants of choice of legal form of organization in real-world industries. This paper helps fill that gap through an econometric investigation of the differences in the characteristics of two groups of independent inventors engaged in the business of patent monetization: inventors operating as sole proprietors and those operating through business organizations, almost always LLCs or close corporations.
The results suggest that commonly proposed rationales for “incorporating,” including deferred taxation and limited liability, might play a role in inventors choosing to monetize and litigate their patent rights through a business organization rather than as individuals. However, I find that the key determinant of legal form of organization for inventors is the presence of coowners of the patents. Strikingly, 75% of independent inventors who have taken their monetization business to court through a business organization share their patent rights with other owners. The same is true of only 15% of independent inventors who litigate as natural persons. This is far and away the largest difference in the traits of these two inventor groups, and I argue it provides strong evidence for the transaction costs theory of the firm, whereby the costs of making business decisions and negotiating profit shares outside of a firm increase with the number of stakeholders. I thus conclude that independent inventors who share ownership of their patents frequently utilize business organizations in order to pre-commit to cooperation in conducting their licensing business
The Absurd Reach of a Colorblind Constitution
Get PDFAffirmative action has long spurred debates over whether the Equal Protection Clause and subsequent civil rights legislation were intended to permit policies aimed at disrupting racial hierarchies, dismantling systemic discrimination, and ensuring equal opportunity for Black people and other historically marginalized groups. The current lawsuits pending before the Supreme Court challenging affirmative action admissions programs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and Harvard College are no exception. Like prior lawsuits, the plaintiff in both cases—Students for Fair Admissions (“SFFA”)—and its amici seek to turn back the clock on racial diversity at selective universities by urging the Supreme Court to upend over forty years of precedent and outlaw affirmative action admissions altogether. Ratcheting up the constitutional threat even further, SFFA has argued, in part, that the Equal Protection Clause, and in turn Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibit any distinctions based on race because the provisions are “colorblind.”
SFFA’s theory of strict constitutional colorblindness did not receive much attention by the Justices at oral argument, perhaps because SFFA did not provide much briefing in support. Nevertheless, the extremity of SFFA’s colorblind regime warrants serious attention by legal advocates, universities, scholars, policymakers, and other stakeholders. While it is unlikely that a majority of Justices will endorse such a far-reaching constitutional interpretation in the Court’s forthcoming decision, SFFA and its amici have advanced arguments that could lay a dangerous foundation for future legal challenges. Proponents of racial progress and equity must be prepared to fend off such attacks, some of which have already been launched by SFFA’s amici and allies.
To this end, this Article vigorously contends with SFFA’s colorblind regime to expose its legal and practical infirmities. We begin by summarizing the doctrinal framework that currently governs affirmative action in higher education, describing the seminal cases and emphasizing the pending cases before the Supreme Court. We then turn to demonstrating how SFFA’s colorblind arguments are constitutionally defective and practically undesirable. First, we highlight how SFFA’s proposition that the Fourteenth Amendment is colorblind runs contrary to the Equal Protection Clause’s original purpose and legislative history. Such an interpretation perversely interferes with the Fourteenth Amendment’s anti-subjugation and equality-based goals, and it would gut the strict scrutiny framework that has reliably guided courts for decades. Next, we trace how SFFA and its amici have articulated a colorblind legal framework that—in its most extreme forms—entrenches today’s racial hierarchies by systematically privileging predominantly white experiences while devaluing the lived reality of many historically marginalized people of color. The net effect of the differing treatment raises serious concerns with equal protection violations. Finally, we map out how SFFA’s more drastic colorblind assertions—such as its request that admissions officers be banned from learning an applicant’s race— could run afoul of the First Amendment by unjustifiably censoring certain students’ application essays merely because they ascribe some meaning to their race or ethnicity. Through legal analysis and specific examples drawn from the UNC and Harvard case records, this Article underscores how the unfounded, extremist colorblind regime invoked by SFFA and its amici poses a severe threat to core constitutional principles and the proper functioning of our multi-racial democracy
Deathly Delegation: Analyzing Mississippi\u27s Execution Statute Under the Nondelegation Doctrine
Get PDFThe nondelegation doctrine is a separation of powers principle that limits the legislative branch from delegating its legislative authority to another branch of government. Although this doctrine is more widely known for its federal use, preventing Congress from relinquishing too much of its law-making authority to administrative agencies, most states have adopted similar nondelegation principles. Mississippi’s nondelegation doctrine requires that the legislature enact laws that prescribe the basic policy decision, provide adequate boundaries for agency guidance, and do not vest an agency with arbitrary discretion.
On July 1, 2022, Mississippi enacted a new execution statute, permitting the Department of Corrections to select (1) an inmate’s method of execution and, in the case of a lethal injection execution, (2) the types and dosages of substances. This Comment explores how Mississippi has analyzed the constitutionality of state laws under nondelegation principles and how other state courts have ruled on the constitutionality of the state execution statute under their nondelegation standards. This Comment argues that Mississippi’s execution statute violates the state constitution as an improper delegation of legislative authority. This Comment further argues that, even if the Mississippi law permits a broad delegation of authority, delegation in the context of the death penalty should be treated differently because “death is different.
The International Criminal Court’s Arbitrary Exercise of Its Duties Under the Rome Statute to the Benefit of Western Global Supremacy
Get PDFThe International Criminal Court (ICC) is a constituent institution of the United Nations (UN) that investigates and prosecutes perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. Established in 1998 by the Rome Statute, the ICC may open an investigation through referrals by state parties to the Statute; referrals by the UN Security Council; or the prosecutor’s own initiative. Additionally, non-party states may extend qualified jurisdiction to the ICC to prosecute cases within their territories, setting the scope of investigations and prosecutions as well as the dates they shall encompass.
The Rome Statute assigns various other duties to the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP). Article 53(1) generally mandates the OTP to conduct an investigation upon a reasonable basis to believe that a crime is, or has been, committed within the ICC’s jurisdiction. However, this jurisdiction may be proscribed by the Principle of Complementarity, where a state has undertaken its own domestic investigatory and prosecutorial endeavors rendering ICC action redundant. Moreover, Article 42(1) mandates that the Prosecutor serve independently of “instructions from any external source.