Global Health Research Center of Central Asia
Columbia Law School Scholarship ArchiveNot a member yet
5770 research outputs found
Sort by
The Future Law of Armed Conflict
No full textWarfare is changing - and rapidly. New technologies, new geopolitical alignments, new interests and vulnerabilities, and other developments are changing how, why, and by whom conflict will be waged. Just as militaries must plan ahead for an environment in which threats, alliances, capabilities, and even the domains in which they fight will differ from today, they must plan for international legal constraints that may differ, too.
This volume considers how law and institutions for creating, interpreting, and enforcing it might look two decades ahead - as well as what opportunities may exist to influence it in that time. Such assessment is important as the U.S. and other governments plan for future warfare. It is also important as they formulate strategies for influencing the development of law to better serve security, humanitarian, and other interests. This volume examines not just specific questions, such as how might a particular technology require adaptive interpretation of existing law, but also grand ones, such as whether law is capable at all of keeping up with these changes.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1335/thumbnail.jp
Legislature Expands State’s Jurisdiction Over Freshwater Wetlands
Get PDFRegulation of wetlands is one of the most significant ways that the government controls land use. While federal jurisdiction over wetlands is buffeted by the political and judicial winds, the New York Legislature has just expanded considerably the authority of the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to protect these areas and inhibit development there.
Lands, commonly labelled as bogs, swamps or marshes, which are inundated with water frequently enough to develop particular soils, hydraulic regimes or vegetative communities are generally classified as “wetlands” under certain environmental laws. The Tidal Wetlands Act and Freshwater Wetlands Act, added to the New York Environmental Conservation Law (ECL) in 1973 and 1975 respectively as ECL Articles 24 and 25, established it to be the public policy of the state to preserve wetlands by limiting their use and development. The basic regulatory scheme in both laws is to minimize development in regulated wetlands and adjacent areas and to compensate for unavoidable losses. Until now the Freshwater Wetlands Act only granted DEC authority to regulate wetlands of a certain size or importance. However, the 2022 budget legislation expanded DEC’s role by changing the definition of areas that constitute a regulated freshwater wetland. In this article we review this change and outline how it will be implemented
\u3cem\u3eWest Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency\u3c/em\u3e: The Agency\u27s Climate Authority
Get PDFOn February 28, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the landmark West Virginia v. EPA case, involving the scope of powers delegated to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through the Clean Air Act. The Court’s decision will affect administrative law, and could have major consequences for environmental law, particularly the Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and take action on climate change. On March 1, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a panel of leading experts to discuss the case, the arguments, and what form the decision may take. Below, we present a transcript of that discussion, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations
Crime and the Corporation: Making the Punishment Fit the Corporation
Get PDFThe debate over corporate criminal liability has long involved a fight between proponents who argue that corporate liability is necessary for effective deterrence and opponents who claim that it “punishes the innocent.” This Article agrees and disagrees with both sides. Corporate criminal liability could play a critical role in establishing an effective deterrent to organizational misconduct, but today it largely fails. Currently, we have a system that combines Deferred Prosecution Agreements, Non-Prosecution Agreements, and extraordinarily generous sentencing credits for compliance plans that have failed, and the result is a system that is more carrots than sticks. The evidence seems clear that corporate fines seldom affect the company’s stock price (even when they are record penalties), that companies rarely self-report their misconduct (despite legal incentives to do so), and that courts impose penalties that can be easily absorbed as a cost of doing business.
This analysis leads many to favor a system that focuses only on corporate executives and dispenses with the corporation as a target of the criminal law. Unfortunately, that approach has even higher costs. Although executives are deterrable, high-ranking corporate executives are much harder to identify and prosecute for a variety of reasons. In this light, the critical role of corporate criminal liability is that it gives the corporation a stronger incentive to self-report, monitor its employees, and turn in those responsible. But this requires that we extend leniency only for objective conduct that generates deterrence. A principal goal of this Article is to provide a roadmap for how we can make the punishment fit the corporation. Leniency can be used as a tool but should not be extended gratuitously.
To curb corporate misconduct, society has long faced a choice between either vicarious liability for executives (which is contrary to our legal tradition and would shock civil libertarians) and vicarious liability for shareholders (which has existed for over a century but is always bounded by the ceiling of limited liability). Either choice has its costs, and this Article suggests some possible alternatives
Floors and Ceilings in International Copyright Treaties: \u3cem\u3eBerne/TRIPS/WCT Minima and Maxima\u3c/em\u3e
Get PDFThis paper addresses “floors” – minimum substantive international protections, and “ceilings” – maximum substantive international protections, set out in the Berne Convention and subsequent multilateral copyright accords. While much scholarship has addressed Berne minima, the “maxima” have generally received less attention. This Comment first describes the general structure of the Berne Convention, TRIPS and WCT regarding these contours, and then analyzes their application to the recent “press publishers’ right” promulgated in the 2019 EU Digital Single Market Directive. Within the universe of multilateral copyright obligations, the Berne maxima (prohibition of protection for facts and news of the day), buttressed by the TRIPS and WCT exclusion of protection for ideas, methods and processes, should promote the free cross-border availability of facts and ideas, as well as of exercise of the Berne Convention mandatory exception for the making of “quotations” from publicly-disclosed works. Individual Berne countries of origin may protect excluded subject matter or preclude mandatory exceptions in their own works of authorship, but not in foreign Berne works. Nonetheless, Member States might be able to elude Conventional maxima by resort to copyright-adjacent sui generis rights, such as the Digital Single Market Directive’s new press publisher’s right. This Comment considers the extent to which Conventional maxima may nonetheless have a preclusive effect on such maneuvers
Child Welfare Law and Practice: Representing Children, Parents, and Agencies in Child Neglect, Abuse, and Dependency Cases
No full textChild welfare law is complex and ever-changing, and the practice of representing children, parents, and agencies in dependency cases requires extensive knowledge and skill in both legal and non-legal subjects. The need for up-to-date specialized resources is more crucial now than ever before. Child Welfare Law and Practice: Representing Children, Parents, and Agencies in Neglect, Abuse, and Dependency Cases, 4th Edition — more commonly known as “the Red Book” — serves as a reference guide, a study source, and an essential tool for all child welfare practitioners, especially lawyers.
Red Book 4 was edited by Josh Gupta-Kagan, LaShanda Taylor Adams, Melissa Dorris Carter, Kristen Pisani-Jacques, and Vivek S. Sankaran. New contributors, fresh content, and a revised book structure differentiate this latest edition, which includes new chapters on LGBTQ+ youth, racial justice, representing parents and children with disabilities, multidisciplinary advocacy, preventive legal representation, crossover youth, child trafficking, and more.
Designed initially as a study guide for attorneys preparing to take NACC\u27s Child Welfare Law Specialist certification exam, the Red Book serves as a day-to-day guide for child welfare advocates across the country, offering in-depth analysis and instruction on wide variety of topics in the field of child welfare law.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1347/thumbnail.jp
Authors’ Remuneration: Reforms To Wish For
No full textIn Intellectual Property Law, authors\u27 works remuneration has represented a significative problem, insofar as, being authors the weaker party of the transaction with intermediaries, the imbalance of bargaining power may allow the grantee to reap disproportionately greater rewards than the authors receive from the works\u27 exploitation. The 2019 European Union Digital Single Market Directive employs several these techniques in order to protect authors against such negative imbalances, but it also contains several inefficiencies. Some attempt of reforms proposal should be made for addressing such negative imbalances and hence enhancing authors\u27 protection in such a matter (e.g., Articles 18-21 of the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive). However, it is not always clear when a grant presents an issue of substantive copyright law, as opposed to one of contract law. The former leads to the application of multiple territorial copyright laws, and the latter to the law chosen by the parties to the contract. In a multi-territorial grant of rights, there is no fixed answer to that question: characterization of the issue as one of contract or of copyright is a matter for the law of the forum. The ability of an exploiter to elude national author-protective laws thus may turn on the exploiter\u27s inclusion in the contract of a forum selection clause designating a forum that will classify the scope of the grant and/or the means of the transfer of rights as matters of contract law. In order to address this issue, one prospect solution could be to envisage local mandatory rules to intervene, while another solution may be represented in the International Law Association\u27s Guidelines on Intellectual Property and Private International Law
CRT2 S1 Ep1: The Scarlet Letter of Incarceration: Barriers to Women’s Re-Entry
Get PDFWomen are the fastest growing prison population worldwide and there are over 1.9 million individuals leaving women’s prisons and jails every year in the United States. This process of going back into the community — of reuniting with family, finding housing, securing a job — is known as “re-entry.”
In this episode of Columbia Race Talks we ask: what does the reentry experience actually look like? We hear from three formerly incarcerated women, who share their stories: Harmony Hope, DeAnna Hoskins, and Vivian Nixon.
All three women have personally experienced coming home, rebuilding, and ultimately thriving professionally. Today, they are leaders in the re-entry field, but behind their success are quiet stories of pain and perseverance and stories of life after incarceration that often go untold.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/crt2/1001/thumbnail.jp
CRT2 S1 Ep6: Intersectionality and Violence Against Women
Get PDFThis episode of CRT2 spotlights the struggles and fights of marginalized women of color against the backdrop of political and social movements which have taken place in the U.S. and across the globe. The episode spotlights three different struggles that marginalized women of color have experienced and continue to experience.
First, we discuss recent actions taken by women in Mexico to push for protection against all kinds of violence. These actions were sparked by both the January 2020 murder of Isabel Cabanillas, a 26 year-old designer, artist and women’s rights activist in Ciudad Juarez, and President Andres Lopez Obrador’s defense of Félix Salgado Macedonio who had been accused by several women of rape and sexual assault in early 2021. In response, thousands of Mexican women took to the streets in protest, and over 2,500 women signed a letter demanding President Lopez Obrador to create a national plan of protection for Mexican women against violence.
Next, we discuss the long saga of R. Kelly’s sexual assault allegations from Black girls and women, and the radical actions Black women have taken to seek justice when the traditional legal system has failed to provide it. Lastly, this episode discusses the #SayHerName movement which was formed to address the lack of attention given to Black women victims of police violence. We touch on how this lack of attention is partly the result of the “adultification” of Black women that causes them to not be seen as victims when they are harmed.
We analyze these three stories using the Critical Race Theory concept of “intersectionality,” which was developed by Columbia and UCLA Law Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989. The purpose of intersectionality is to capture and describe how race, class, gender and other individual characteristics “intersect” to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. The harms marginalized women of color experience are most poignantly analyzed with an intersectional lens that considers all of the intersecting identities that make them vulnerable to forms of oppression.
Trigger Warning – This episode and its description contain discussions of gender-based violence, including murder, rape, sexual assault and trauma.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/crt2/1007/thumbnail.jp
CRT2 S1 Ep8: The Backlash to CRT in France: Special Feature
Get PDFWhat has the response to Critical Race Theory (CRT) been in France? What are the commonalities between France and the U.S. with respect to the reception and backlash to CRT? How do the ideas of victimhood and dispossession fit into the larger narrative of white supremacy and the vilification of the essentialization of marginalized groups in France? Join us as we discuss all of the above with Professor Sylvie Laurent in this extra feature.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/crt2/1010/thumbnail.jp