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Class of 1920
No full textClass of 1920, third floor, left wallhttps://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/photo_1920/1000/thumbnail.jp
Unsettling Human Rights Clinical Pedagogy and Practice in Settler Colonial Contexts
Get PDFIn settler colonial contexts, law and educational institutions operate as structures of oppression, extraction, erasure, disempowerment, and continuing violence against colonized peoples. Consequently, clinical legal advocacy often can reinforce coloniality—the logic that perpetuates structural violence against individuals and groups resisting colonization and struggling for survival as peoples. Critical legal theory, including Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), has long exposed colonial laws and practices that entrench discriminatory, racialized power structures and prevent transformative international human rights advocacy. Understanding and responding to these critiques can assist in decolonizing international human rights clinical law teaching and practice but is insufficient in safeguarding against human rights clinical pedagogy and practice that contributes to settler colonial violence.
This Article proposes not only decolonizing human rights clinical advocacy but also incorporating Indigenous values in human rights clinical practice and pedagogy in settler colonial contexts. In particular, the authors offer a method of human rights law teaching and advocacy that moves beyond client-centered or community-based lawyering that acknowledges oppressive power dynamics toward a collaborative model of co-creative strategic legal advocacy. At the same time, incorporating Indigenous values in human rights clinical pedagogy and practice transforms human rights practice to counter Eurocentric epistemologies by decentering human beings themselves toward a practice that rejects anthropocentrism and strives for balance with all living things. This method—rooted in epistemic pluralism and in adopting Indigenous worldview concepts of kinship, relationship, and reciprocity—requires a relinquishment of control over the process and a shift away from the dominant worldviews of knowledge production, power, and coloniality.
Incorporating Indigenous values in human rights practice means acknowledging and redressing past and present collective harms, reorienting clinical pedagogy and practice to adopt new methods based on Indigenous epistemologies of familial relationship and reciprocity with one another, and all living relatives, deep listening, authentic trustbuilding, practicing gratitude and transforming allyship to kinship. With this methodology comes a process of unlearning and relearning (through different modes of learning) and of giving and receiving in a collective, reciprocal struggle in which all are invested and equal co-collaborators toward not only stopping or preventing human rights violations, but also in building community to transform the legal, educational, and other structures at the root of settler colonial violence
Brief of Amici Curiae Administrative and Federal Regulatory Law Professors in Support of Respondents
Get PDFAmici write to address the first question presented: whether Chevron should be overruled. Properly understood, it should not. Chevron has been much discussed but not always understood. On the one hand, courts have sometimes misapplied the doctrine or failed to understand its legal foundations. On the other, courts and commentators alike have criticized Chevron, often as a result of such aggressive applications. This case provides an opportunity for the Court to clarify what Chevron does and does not entail, while reaffirming the essential role that judicial recognition of constitutionally delegated policymaking authority plays in federal statutory programs. Many of the criticisms leveled at Chevron are based on the premise that it empowers agencies to usurp the authority of the courts to interpret statutes. So framed-and some courts have indeed seemed to understand it this way-Chevron looks like a supercanon of construction, one that requires courts to reflexively defer to what an agency claims a statute means whenever there is some statutory ambiguity. But the premise is wrong. Chevron is not a doctrine for resolving statutory ambiguities as such, but rather for identifying and policing the boundaries of Congressional delegations. It provides a rubric to recognize when (and to what extent) Congress has granted an agency authority to decide a matter left unresolved by the statute, usually because the way in *4 which the statute applies to concrete situations requires elaboration through agency experience or some aspect of the statute requires “the formulation of subsidiary administrative policy within the prescribed statutory framework.” Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414, 425 (1944). Chevron thus requires far more than mere ambiguity-it requires statutory indeterminacy, a gap “left ... unresolved” even after a court has applied all its “traditional tools of statutory construction.” Epic Sys. Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612, 1630 (2018). In other words, Chevron addresses, not instances where statutory text might be judicially construed to have this meaning or that, but where, using these “traditional tools,” the court cannot confidently arrive at a judicial construction at all, either because competing interpretations are equally plausible or because identifying a governing interpretation requires policy assessments that courts ought not to make. When Congress leaves such a gap-while constitutionally delegating to the agency the primary responsibility to implement the statute-Congress signals its intent to “entrust[] to the [agency], rather than to the courts, the primary responsibility for interpreting the statutory term” within the limits of the authorizing statute. See Batterton v. Francis, 432 U.S. 416, 425 (1977). By Congress\u27s command, the agency should exercise its discretion to fill that gap, and the courts independently determine and police the boundaries of the agency\u27s delegated authority and ensure it has exercised it reasonably. See Peter L. Strauss, *5 “Deference” Is Too Confusing - Let\u27s Call Them “Chevron Space” and “Skidmore Weight”, 112 Colum. L. Rev. 1143, 1145 (2012). So understood, Chevron need not and should not be overruled. Since early in the history of the Republic, Congress has seen fit to entrust executive agencies to “fill up the details” of the more “general provisions” that it enacts. See Wayman v. Southard, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 1, 20 (1825). Chevron, properly understood, merely assists in identifying the boundaries of statutory delegations; it does not pose the problems Petitioner identifies with the more extravagant conceptions of the doctrine (however justified those concerns may be). Nor does it violate the Administrative Procedure Act-on contrary, Chevron mirrors that statute by requiring courts to independently determine the scope of agency authority and then review actions within that scope for reasonableness. Finally, Chevron promotes, rather than threatens, the separation of powers by giving effect to duly enacted laws. Requiring that Congress do its job is one thing. It is quite another to refuse Congress\u27s choice to delegate certain issues-issues it could not reasonably attend to itself-to the Executive. Chevron respects those choices and should be reaffirmed
The Values-Based Trade Agenda
Get PDFWith the increasing trade tensions between the United States and China, pressures created by Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic, most trade scholars have focused on rising protectionism exhibited through defensive strategies such as tariffs and export controls. However, this focus ignores the fundamental shift in international trade goals of the United States and the European Union towards a values-based trade agenda.
Instead of merely focusing on free trade based on efficiency and market access, trade regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have independently pursued measures designed to address environmental sustainability and social equity. These policies resonate with their domestic constituencies and allows them to promote their values along global supply chains. These values-based agendas, however, are likely to create new trade conflicts rather than partnerships. This is due in part to the fact that the transatlantic trade relationship remains embedded in international regulatory frameworks predominantly focused on efficiency gains and cutting red tape to ease the flow of products and services.
Through two comparative case studies on cosmetics and medical devices, we highlight how the promotion of competitive liberalization in transatlantic trade has not generated the promised harmonization result. Instead, it has created social and environmental inequities. The case studies point out that to incorporate social and environmental equity adjustments for vulnerable and marginalized communities, trade regulators, negotiators, and lawyers alike ought to assess the ex-ante distributive effects in regulatory cooperation and the ex-post enforcement tools of regulation of their valuesbased trade agenda
Principle Originalism--The Third Way: A Jurisprudential Response to Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u27s Health Organization
Get PDFAll judges attempt to decide cases for reasons other than politics or their own personal opinions. But finding a consistent judicial methodology is fraught with peril. Against what it sees as the hyper-textualism of strict constructionism and the unfettered discretion of living constitutionalism, originalism posits itself as the only viable way to achieve an objectively neutral interpretation of the law. This is certainly the stance taken by the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which claims that the Constitution is silent on abortion and that therefore no corresponding right to abortion exists. But there can be different forms of originalism. This article introduces principle originalism as an equally objective and superior theory of judicial interpretation to the meaning of originalism advanced by the Dobbs majority. Drawing from the jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin, principle originalism remains grounded in the Constitution as construed at the time of the Founding, but it interprets that semantic context at a higher level than meaning originalism and then uses legal precedent as a way to explain and justify the gradual evolution of the law. After exploring alternatives to meaning originalism advanced in two prominent cases interpreting Title VII, this article will delineate how principle originalism functions as a theory of jurisprudence. Applying this methodology to Obergefell v. Hodges and the dissent in Dobbs demonstrates principle originalism to be a better alternative to meaning originalism than strict constructionism or living constitutionalism
A Focus on Student Retention: Creating Generative Communities that Nurture Sense of Belonging
No full text[panelist] Numerous studies have shown that a student’s sense of belonging is driven by meaningful interactions with peers, staff, and faculty. How can faculty and staff be even more focused on this important goal while also maintaining their own wellness and making progress towards their career goals? This lunchtime plenary will feature faculty from across AU schools and colleges discussing ways they’ve intentionally created generative spaces for such interactions and relationship-building opportunities that are sustaining for all involved
Regulating the Use of Military Human Enhancements that Can Cause Side Effects Under the Law of Armed Conflict: Towards a Method-Based Approach
Get PDFThe development of human enhancement (HE) technology has rendered its military potential increasingly noticed by major military powers. It can be expected that “enhanced warfighters” or “super soldiers” will be used on the battleground in the foreseeable future, which can give rise to many legal issues
2000 G. Street 1926-1964
No full textBecause WCL\u27s rapid expansion in the 20s, the school moved out of the K street building and purchased a building at 2000 G street. The G street location remained as WCL\u27s home until 1964, when it moved into the Myer\u27s building on American University\u27s main campus.https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/wcl_classphoto/1004/thumbnail.jp
The Dialogic Function of I.C.J. Provisional Measures Decisions in the U.N. Political Organs: Assessing the Evidence
Get PDFThe aim of this article is to consider the degree to which provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) have influenced United Nations (U.N.) diplomacy and the exercise of functions by its political organs in the areas of international peace, security, and human rights. This article evaluates this influence by examining decisions in which the I.C.J. indicated provisional measures, denoting the remedy available to the Court, on an interim basis, to restrain or instruct the parties to take certain measures to preserve either or both parties’ rights pending the outcome of the case. In doing so, this article builds on scholarly literature about the function of I.C.J. provisional measures as part of a broader litigation strategy to influence negotiations and political settlements. Although the formal purpose of provisional measures is to preserve existing legal rights pending an outcome on the merits of a dispute, scholars have also noted parties’ use of provisional measures to advance a broader strategic purpose beyond the confines of the interim remedy proceedings
Pedal into the Future
Get PDFCongress severely weakened the Electric Bicycle Incentive Kickstart for the Environment Act (E-Bike Act) when the bill was absorbed into the Build Back Better Bill. Electricity is the future, yet Congress has defanged a bill that could create significant progress in making bicycling a more accessible option for commuters