Due Process: Georgetown Law Library Blog

The Library will be holding two RA orientation training sessions.  In the orientation, RAs will learn about library services and policies and will gain an introduction to our databases and to best research practices.

The sessions will be:

• Thursday May 28, 2009 from 11 am to noon; and
• Thursday, June 4, 2009 from 4-5 pm.

Both sessions will be held in EB Williams Room 420.

Please RSVP to Thanh Nguyen (nguyent2@law.georgetown.edu) with which session you plan to attend.

The Library also encourages RAs to make individual appointments with Faculty Services to discuss resources and strategies relevant to their specific summer projects and assignments. Please email Thanh (nguyent2@law.georgetown.edu) if you would like to set up an appointment.

This entry was posted on May 12, 2009 at 2:23 PM and has received 25075 views. Print this entry.

The library will be holding a series of RA training sessions over the course of the summer. The classes will cover topics such as social science and statistics research, advanced Lexis and Westlaw techniques and international and foreign law research.

RAs may also schedule individual research consultations with Jen Davitt (jnl8@law.georgetown.edu) or with Thanh Nguyen (nguyent2@law.georgetown.edu).

In addition, we will be providing an orientation to the library's services and policies for all new RAs over lunch on May 22, 2008.

Sign up for classes and the orientation lunch here.

This entry was posted on May 16, 2008 at 12:47 AM and has received 45992 views. Print this entry.

The February 2008 issue of the Stanford Law Review contains the following articles by Georgetown Law Professors Sasha Volokh, Randy Barnett and Neal Katyal (writing with Richard Caplan):

• Randy E. Barnett, Kurt Lash's Majoritarian Difficulty: A Response to A Textual-Historical Theory of the Ninth Amendment, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 937 (2008).
  
  Kurt Lash believes that, in addition to individual natural rights, the Ninth Amendment protects collective or majoritarian rights as well. In this essay I explain why his majoritarian vision is contrary to the antimajoritarianism of the man who devised the Ninth Amendment, James Madison, and those who wrote the Constitution. Not coincidentally, it is contrary to the individualism of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, and to the public meaning of the Ninth Amendment as it was received during its ratification. It is also contrary to the individualist conception of popular sovereignty adopted in the text of the Constitution as interpreted by a four-to-one majority of the Supreme Court in its first major constitutional decision. And it is contrary to the individualist interpretation of the Ninth Amendment by the one source he cites who actually uses the word "collective": St. George Tucker. In sum, the collectivist interpretation of the phrase "others retained by the people" is anachronistic--a projection of contemporary majoritarianism onto a text that is and was most naturally read as referring to the natural rights retained by all individuals, and to these rights alone.

• Neal Katyal & Richard Caplan, The Suprisingly Stronger Case for the Legality of the NSA Surveillance Program: The FDR Precedent, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 1023 (2008).
  
  This Article explains why the legal case for the recently disclosed National Security Agency surveillance program turns out to be stronger than what the Administration has advanced. In defending its action, the Administration overlooked the details surrounding one of the most important periods of presidentially imposed surveillance in wartime - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wiretapping and his secret end-run around both the wiretapping prohibition enacted by Congress and decisions of the United States Supreme Court. As explored through primary source material, President Roosevelt acted against the interpretations of, among others, his Attorney General and the Supreme Court regarding a law passed by Congress, deciding, in secret, that wiretapping was essentially his prerogative. That Attorney General, Robert Jackson, later remarked that it was "[t]he only case that I recall in which [FDR] declined to abide by a decision of the Supreme Court."
  
  The FDR precedent provides some justification for what is known about President Bush's wiretapping program - more, it would seem, than what has been put forward by the Administration itself. By outlining some of the general conditions under which Executive Branch precedent may justify contemporary national security decisions, we develop a framework for Executive Branch stare decisis and ultimately conclude that the FDR precedent should not be followed today. We recognize, however, that our conclusion is debatable, and believe that the FDR precedent deserves widespread debate, instead of the inattention it has received thus far. We further explain why the past history and present experience with wiretapping reveals the relative frailty of both courts and Congress in national security disputes, and highlights the need to lace the concept of separation of powers into the Executive Branch.
  

• Alexander Volokh, Privatization and the Law and Economics of Political Advocacy, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 1197 (2008).
  
  A common argument against privatization is that private providers will self-interestedly lobby to increase the size of their market. In this Article, I evaluate this argument, using, as a case study, the argument against prison privatization based on the possibility that the private prison industry will distort the criminal law by advocating for incarceration.
  
  I conclude that there is at present no particular reason to credit this argument. Even without privatization, government agents already lobby for changes in substantive law - in the prison context, for example, public corrections officer unions are active advocates of pro-incarceration policy. Against this background, adding the extra voice of the private sector will not necessarily increase either the amount of industry-increasing advocacy or its effectiveness. In fact, privatization may well reduce the industry's political power: Because advocacy is a public good for the industry, as the number of independent actors increases, the largest actor's advocacy decreases (since it no longer captures the full benefit of its advocacy) and the smaller actors free-ride off the largest actor's contribution. Under some plausible assumptions, therefore, privatization may actually decrease advocacy, and under different plausible assumptions, the net effect of privatization on advocacy is ambiguous.
  
  The argument that privatization distorts policy by encouraging lobbying is thus unconvincing without a fuller explanation of the mechanics of advocacy.
  

This entry was posted on April 3, 2008 at 4:07 AM and has received 46952 views. Print this entry.

Join Jennifer Davitt in the EBW CLC on Friday, March 28 at 11:30 am to learn more about research in Administrative Law topics.

Sign up for this class and check out the other classes being offered throughout the Spring semester for Faculty Research Assistants here.

This entry was posted on March 24, 2008 at 8:19 AM and has received 47162 views. Print this entry.

Legal Ethics and Human Dignity, Professor David Luban's newest book, has recently been published by the Cambridge University Press.

From the Cambridge University Press description: "In this collection of his most significant papers from the past twenty-five years, he ranges over such topics as the moral psychology of organisational evil, the strengths and weaknesses of the adversary system, and jurisprudence from the lawyer's point of view. His discussion combines philosophical argument, legal analysis and many cases drawn from actual law practice, and he defends a theory of legal ethics that focuses on lawyers' role in enhancing human dignity and human rights. In addition to an analytical introduction, the volume includes two major previously unpublished papers, including a detailed critique of the US government lawyers who produced the notorious 'torture memos'. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers in both philosophy and law."

This entry was posted on March 24, 2008 at 3:24 AM and has received 46639 views. Print this entry.

The Surprisingly Stronger Case for the Legality of the NSA Surveillance Program: The FDR Precedent, an article written by Neal Katyal and Richard Caplan and soon to be published in an upcoming issue of the Stanford Law Review, has just been posted to SSRN and BePress.

Abstract:

This Article explains why the legal case for the recently disclosed National Security Agency surveillance program turns out to be stronger than what the Administration has advanced. In defending its action, the Administration overlooked the details surrounding one of the most important periods of presidentially imposed surveillance in wartime: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wiretapping and his secret end-run around both the wiretapping prohibition enacted by Congress and decisions of the United States Supreme Court. As explored through primary source material, President Roosevelt acted against the interpretations of, among others, his Attorney General and the Supreme Court regarding a law passed by Congress, deciding, in secret, that wiretapping was essentially his prerogative. That Attorney General, Robert Jackson, later remarked that it was "[t]he only case that I recall in which [FDR] declined to abide by a decision of the Supreme Court."

The FDR precedent provides some justification for what is known about President Bush's wiretapping program -- more, it would seem, than what has been put forward by the Administration itself. By outlining some of the general conditions under which Executive Branch precedent may justify contemporary national security decisions, we develop a framework for Executive Branch stare decisis and ultimately conclude that the FDR precedent should not be followed today. We recognize, however, that our conclusion is debatable, and believe that the FDR precedent deserves widespread debate, instead of the inattention it has received thus far. We further explain why the past history and present experience with wiretapping reveals the relative frailty of both courts and Congress in national security disputes, and highlights the need to lace the concept of "separation of powers" into the Executive Branch.

This entry was posted on March 4, 2008 at 8:21 AM and has received 47657 views. Print this entry.

Bleached Faith: The Tragic Cost When Religion is Forced Into the Public Square, Professor Steven Goldberg's newest book, has recently been published by the Stanford University Press.

Professor Goldberg "argues that victory is worse than defeat when people of faith seek to force religion into the public square. The Ten Commandments lose their meaning. Frosty the Snowman has to stand guard when the creche is displayed. And intelligent design reduces God to a second-rate engineer. People on both sides of church-state issues should consider that the gravest threat to real faith comes from those who would water down religion in order to win the dubious honor of forcing it into public buildings and classrooms. The values embodied in the Non-Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses are undermined when religion is distorted in these endless confrontations."

This entry was posted on February 29, 2008 at 4:40 PM and has received 47652 views. Print this entry.

Join Marylin Raisch, the International and Foreign Law Librarian, in the EBW CLC today to learn more about doing research in International, Foreign and Comparative Law.

Sign up for this class and check out the other classes being offered throughout the Spring semester for Faculty Research Assistants here.

This entry was posted on February 29, 2008 at 9:01 AM and has received 46923 views. Print this entry.

As a new feature of Due Process, we will be highlighting new publications by Georgetown Law faculty. To start things off, below are a few articles that have recently been published:

From the latest volume of the Georgetown Law Journal:

• Lawrence O. Gostin, Foreword: National and Global Health Law: A Scholarly Examination of the Most Pressing Health Hazards, 96 Geo. L.J. 317 (2008).

• Lawrence O. Gostin, Meeting Basic Survival Needs of the World's Least Healthy People: Toward a Framework Convention on Global Health, 96 Geo. L.J. 331 (2008).

• Lisa Heinzerling, Climate Change, Human Health, and the Post-Cautionary Principle, 96 Geo. L.J. 445 (2008).

• David C. Vladeck and David A. Kessler, A Critical Examination of the FDA's Effort to Preempt Failure-to-Warn Claims, 96 Geo. L.J. 461 (2008).

• Timothy M. Westmoreland, Can We Get There from Here? Universal Health Insurance and the Congressional Budget Process, 96 Geo. L.J. 523 (2008).

• Kathryn Zeiler and Michelle M. Mello, Empirical Health Law Scholarship: The State of the Field, 96 Geo. L.J. 649 (2008).

From the Harvard Law Review:

• Martin S. Lederman and David Jeremiah Barron, The Commander in Chief at the Lowest Ebb -- A Constitutional History, 121 Harv. L. Rev. 941 (2008).

• Martin S. Lederman and David Jeremiah Barron, The Commander in Chief at the Lowest Ebb -- Framing the Problem, Doctrine, and Original Understanding, 121 Harv. L. Rev. 689 (2008).

From the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics:

• Lawrence O. Gostin and Robert Archer, The Duty of States to Assist Other States in Need: Ethics, Human Rights, and International Law, 35 J. L. Med. and Ethics 526 (2007).

• Allyn Taylor, Addressing the Global Tragedy of Needless Pain: Rethinking the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 35 J. L. Med. and Ethics 556 (2007).

From the Texas Law Review:

• Rebecca Tushnet, Gone in Sixty Milliseconds: Trademark Law and Cognitive Science, 86 Tex. L. Rev. 507 (2008).

Forthcoming in the Saint Louis University Law Journal:

• Rebecca Tushnet, Sight, Sound and Meaning: Teaching Intellectual Property with Audiovisual Materials, 52 St. Louis U. L.J. (forthcoming 2007).

Remember that you can always see a complete listing of Georgetown Faculty Scholarship from 2000 - present via the Georgetown Faculty Scholarship Database.

This entry was posted on February 28, 2008 at 11:40 PM and has received 49566 views. Print this entry.

In the training, we will use actual faculty requests to illustrate advanced case law research techniques.  Various online and print options will be suggested for retrieving court documents.

Sign up for this class and check out the other classes being offered throughout the Spring semester for Faculty Research Assistants here.

This entry was posted on February 14, 2008 at 9:47 AM and has received 47274 views. Print this entry.