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Let’s Have Soufflé Instead: Selective Reform of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement Regime
No full textA network of agreements comprising the investment treaty law regime cover international investments. It is a system rife with abuses made possible by loopholes and an inconsistent body of law. The system is in a legitimacy crisis and many seek to dismantle it entirely. Numerous alternatives and improvements have been proffered but few impactful steps have been taken to mitigate the problems within it. This comment advocates for an incremental approach that keeps the parts of the system that work while removing aspects that enable the most egregious abuses
Merging Inclusionary Zoning and Community Land Trusts to Increase Affordable Housing in Baltimore Without Displacing Neighborhoods
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The Decline of Free Speech on the Postmodern Campus: The Troubling Evolution of the Heckler\u27s Veto
Get PDFThe Twenty-First Century has presented new challenges to the traditional ways that free speech in America has been encouraged and protected. While the right to express one’s opinions has become increasingly problematic in society at large, it is particularly imperiled in the very places that pride themselves as being open marketplaces of ideas – on college and university campuses.Today we’re faced with numerous campus speech codes that substantially limit First-Amendment rights. They are ubiquitous and often cavalierly invoked. For civil libertarians the good news is that not one of the few such codes that have been tested in court has been found constitutional; the bad news is that few have been tested. Moreover, the current codes come with new catch-phrases like “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” and “cultural appropriation” – all calculated in one way or another to shelter students and others from the honest give-and-take of discussion and debate about topics that might be controversial.Those with opinions that might challenge campus orthodoxies are rarely invited, and often disinvited after having been scheduled, or shouted down or otherwise disrupted. When protestors embroil visiting speakers, or break in on meetings to take them over and list demands, or even resort to violence, administrators often choose to look the other way. Students have come to take it for granted they will face little or no discipline for such disorderly conduct.The so-called heckler’s veto, once rarely invoked, is now commonplace. In popular parlance, the term is used to describe situations where hecklers or demonstrators are able to silence a speaker with little or no intervention by the law. In many cases the police arrest the speaker (not the heckler) for disturbing the peace. Although a number of courts have backed them up, case law over the years regarding heckler’s vetoes has been mixed: some decisions say that the speaker’s actions cannot be pre-emptively stopped for fear that hecklers will interrupt, but others assert that in the face of impending violence, authorities can quell the hecklers by forcing the speaker to stop. The latter-day dilution of free speech has been generated at least in part by the rise of postmodernism. While encompassing a broad range of ideas, that phenomenon is generally defined by skepticism, irony, or distrust towards traditional narratives, ideologies, and Enlightenment rationality, including various perceptions of human nature, morality, social progress, objective reality, absolute truth, and the whole concept of reasoned discourse. Instead, postmodernism asserts that knowledge and truth are products of unique social, historical, or political interpretations. On the other hand, postmodernism itself is difficult to define because to do so would violate its proponents’ premise that there are no definite terms, boundaries, or absolute truths. Over the past few years scholars of note have come to espouse distinctly opposing views regarding the rights and responsibilities of colleges and universities toward their students regarding freedom of speech on campus.This article traces the evolution of the case law surrounding hecklers’ vetoes, examines the erosion of free speech over the past half-century (particularly analyzing the debates among scholars about the causes and effects of postmodernism), and suggests ways by which speech can be protected on the contemporary campus without offending traditional Constitutional principles
Who Should Conservatives Blame for Alex Jones’ Ban From Social Media? Themselves.
No full textThis short piece argues that conservatives have themselves to blame when Alex Jones got banned from social media. The conservative approach to Antitrust is in large part responsible for whatever power social media firms have and are able to exercise, and if they do in fact censor conservative speech for any reason except that it\u27s profitable to do so, it would imply they have market power of the kind that conservative antitrust long denied was often possible. Moreover, the very fact that many conservatives acknowledge that certain large social media companies have social or political power, or power over free speech, should make us all realize that these firms also have the type of economic power whose formation or exercise could violate the Antitrust laws. It should, for example, cause us to block such mergers as the one between AT & T and Time Warner
War by Committee: An Examination of Legislative War Powers
Get PDFThis paper will serve as an examination of the powers and limitations of the United States legislative branch of government in matters of war. In doing this, precedence will be given to specifically enumerated powers granted or withheld by the current Constitution of the United States. Founding documents, such as the Articles of Confederation and early state constitutions will also be examined and contrasted with the current legal regime in an attempt to better understand the true meaning behind the Constitution. International law, as it applies to American war powers, will also be examined when relevant
Why Trump Should Move US Embassy to Jerusalem
No full textIf President-elect Donald Trump is as much a man of his word as he says he is, he’ll move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem shortly after he takes office. There are good diplomatic and constitutional reasons for him to do so.Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995, which firmly asserted that “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel” and that our embassy should be established there “no later than May 31, 1999.” (The vote was 93-5 in the Senate and 374-37 in the House.) But the law was never implemented – because presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all came to view it as a congressional infringement on the executive branch’s constitutional authority over foreign policy, and consistently exercised a built-in presidential-waiver clause based on their perception of national security interests
Framers Wouldn\u27t Stand for Trump\u27s Anti-Muslim Immigration Ban
No full textNot only is President Donald Trump\u27s executive order suspending the Refugee Admissions Program and barring people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. bigoted and short-sighted, it violates the deepest principles of the framers of our Constitution.
The order brings back the long-rejected concept of a religious test\u22 for determining who receives the aid of our government, noting that when the refugee program resumes, it will prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual\u27s country of nationality. It also allows for individual case-by-case entry based in part on the same criteria before the program\u27s resumption. In other words, it will give priority to Christians fleeing Syria but not Muslims — something the president later confirmed in an interview