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Legal Scholars & Theologians Partner on an Ambitious Vision for Religious Liberty
Get PDFOct. 6, 2020—To safeguard the right to religious freedom, the next presidential administration must end the hyper-surveillance of Muslims, welcome religious refugees, protect land sacred to Native communities, restore church-state separation, and withdraw policies that favor particular religious beliefs, argues a new report co-authored by the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia University (LRRP) and Auburn Seminary
Executive Underreach, in Pandemics and Otherwise
Get PDFLegal scholars are familiar with the problem of executive overreach, especially in emergencies. But sometimes, instead of being too audacious or extreme, a national executive\u27s attempts to address a true threat prove far too limited and insubstantial. In this Essay, we seek to define and clarify the phenomenon of executive underreach, with special reference to the COVID-19 crisis; to outline ways in which such underreach may compromise constitutional governance and the international legal order; and to suggest a partial remedy
Preparing Legal Frameworks for Environmental Disasters: Practical Considerations for Host States
Get PDFProjects in the extractives sector carry risks of lasting, and sometimes irreversible, damage to the environment. Nonetheless, these projects are important for accelerating the economic development of host countries. Governments seeking to mitigate the adverse effects of foreign investment often face pushback from investors that are unwilling to change their practices in order to avert environmental disaster. This report sets forth certain steps that host-governments can take during the pre-investment, operation, and enforcement phases of extractives projects to provide financial and other protection in the context of environmental disasters associated with private sector investments.
Upon comparative review of five Case Study Countries (Canada, Chile, the UAE, Indonesia, and Uganda), the authors of this report found that the most important factor impacting a host government’s ability to hold developers accountable for environmental harm is a gap between applicable environmental legislation and the enforcement of this legislation. The report then provides several recommendations for addressing this discrepancy, with an emphasis on the role of planning and robust legal and regulatory frameworks, as well as an analysis of a variety of safeguards (including, but not limited to, impact assessments, stakeholder engagement, and financial penalties) to be deployed at each of the three phases of a project. It also discusses the role of financial institutions in promoting best practices and mitigating risks and minimizing the fallout from investment-related environmental disasters
Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit: A Short Essay for Michael Klausner
Get PDFThe articles that comprise this issue of the Journal of Corporation Law were first presented at a conference held at the Wharton School and co-sponsored by Wharton together with Columbia and Stanford Law Schools. The event was organized by my friend Peter Conti-Brown, to whom I am grateful for both the thought and the effort. Standing alone, the thought that the conference was warranted would have been extremely generous. However, anyone who has organized a conference knows that the idea for such events can be exciting, but what follows is an amount of work that had it been anticipated would cause them never to take place. For academics, irrational discount rates collectively fuel a lot of progress.
Peter also had the insightful thought for the conference’s subject matter: to ask a younger generation of talented scholars to address some of my work and assess where it has had an impact, where it still has relevance, where I got it wrong in the first place, and how subsequent scholarship and changes in the areas of law and the related markets the articles addressed have advanced beyond my then near-sighted vision. Thinking about the event as it approached, I was both enormously flattered and then more than a little embarrassed. There are people who like being the center of attention; I’m not one of them.
Two more introductory comments are necessary. The first is to thank the contributors to this issue for having taken the time to write perceptive assessments and extensions of work that I am delighted people still read. Academics have only one asset: our time. The authors have made a gift of theirs for which I am deeply grateful.
The second is to say with pride that much of the work this issue’s articles build on is not just mine. It is also Reinier Kraakman’s, Bernie Black’s, Chuck Sabel’s, and Bob Scott’s, and the list grows much longer if I go beyond just the articles in this issue. A central joy of being an academic, invoking Robert Putnam’s evocative phrase, is exactly the opposite of “bowling alone.” It is to be part of an engaged and gracious community. For almost 40 years, I have consistently written with friends and gotten paid for it. If there is a better definition of winning the lottery, I can’t think of it
Seeing Transparency More Clearly
Get PDFIn recent years, transparency has been proposed as the solution to, and the cause of, a remarkable range of public problems. The proliferation of seemingly contradictory claims about transparency becomes less puzzling, this essay argues, when one appreciates that transparency is not, in itself, a coherent normative ideal. Nor does it have a straightforward instrumental relationship to any primary goals of governance. To gain greater purchase on how transparency policies operate, scholars must therefore move beyond abstract assumptions and drill down into the specific legal, institutional, historical, political, and cultural contexts in which these policies are crafted and implemented. The field of transparency studies, in other words, is due for a sociological turn
The Shrinking Constitution of Settlement
Get PDFProfessor Sanford Levinson has famously distinguished between the Constitution of Settlement and the Constitution of Conversation. The former comprises those aspects of the Constitution that are clear, well established, and resistant to creative interpretation. The latter comprises those aspects that are subject to ongoing litigation and debate. Although Americans tend to fixate on the Constitution of Conversation, Levinson argues that much of what ails our republic is attributable, at least in part, to the grossly undemocratic and decidedly nonadaptive Constitution of Settlement.
This Article, prepared for a symposium on Levinson\u27s coauthored book Democracy and Dysfunction, explains that the Constitution of Settlement is, in fact, becoming unsettled as growing levels of political frustration and polarization have roused a growing number of actors to seek to challenge or circumvent various pieces of it. Fundamental reform is now on the table. The Constitution of Conversation, meanwhile, is becoming ever less conversational. As these developments reflect, the distinction between Levinson\u27s two constitutions is significantly more complicated – and fluid – than his binary implies. Ironically, Levinson is not just a leading critic of the Constitution of Settlement but also an active participant in its maintenance
When Presidential Campaigns End, What Happens to the Leftover Money?
Get PDFAndrew Yang and Michael Bennet have ended their campaigns for president.
What happens to the money they have raised, but not yet spent?
I teach and write about campaign finance law. There is one clear rule about that money: Candidates can’t use it for personal expenses, like mortgage payments, groceries, clothing purchases or vacations. But there are a lot of other options, both within politics and outside of it
The COMET Framework: Greenhouse Gas Data Transparency to Enable the Success of EU Climate Policy
Get PDFTo further and fully understand how to plan for the decarbonization of mining value chains, we need better data on carbon and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, neither consumers, corporates, or financial institutions know the embodied emissions in the products they produce or sell. While methods like life-cycle analysis and environmental product declarations exist, none use a verifiable, comparable, or widely adopted emissions reporting framework capable of sending supply chain signals.
To truly reform material supply chains, new solutions for markets, capital, and policy are required. COMET (the Coalition on Materials Emissions Transparency)—an alliance launched at Davos in January 2020 by CCSI, RockyMountain Institute, MIT’s Sustainable Supply Chains initiative, and the Colorado School of Mines—is creating a harmonized GHG calculation framework applicable to all mineral and industrial supply chains. To learn more about COMET, read the two-page policy brief The COMET Framework: Greenhouse Gas Data Transparency to Enable the Success of EU Climate Policy and the three two-pagers on how COMET is working with financiers, producers, and buyers to create a harmonized GHG calculation framework
Presidential Use of Force in East Asia: American Constitutional Law and the U.S.-Japan Alliance
Get PDFThe U.S. Constitution’s allocation of military authority has adapted over time to major shifts in American power and grand strategy. This paper explains, with a focus on U.S. military actions in East Asia and possible scenarios of special joint concern to the United States and Japan, that the president in practice wields tremendous power and discretion in using military force. Although formal, legal checks on the president’s use of force rarely come into play, Congress nevertheless retains some political power to influence presidential decision-making. The president’s powers are also constrained by interagency processes within the executive branch, and alliance relations often feed into those processes
BU S1E06
No full textLine art image of Petros C. Mavroidis, Edwin B. Parker Professor of Foreign and Comparative Law at Columbia Law School.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented_podcast/1017/thumbnail.jp