Georgetown University Law Center

About: Georgetown University Law Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Global health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

Regulation of Dispute Resolution in the United States of America: From the Formal to the Informal to the ‘Semi-formal’

Abstract: The story of ADR in the US is one of ‘co-optation’ of what was to be a serious challenge to formalistic and legalistic approaches to legal and social problem solving and is now highly institutionalized by its more formal use in courts. At the same time, use of private forms of dispute resolution in mediation, arbitration and newly hybridised forms of dispute resolution among disputants who can choose (and afford) to leave the formal justice system (in both large commercial matters and private family matters) has resulted in claims of increased privatization of justice, with consequences for access to justice in different areas of legal dispute resolution. These consequences include difficulty of access to some forms of private dispute resolution for those who cannot afford them and claims that, with mass exits from the formal system by those who can afford to ‘litigate’ elsewhere, there is less interest in judicial service and reform. In addition, in recent years consumers and employees have been subjected to contractual commitments to mandatory arbitration, sustained by the US Supreme Court, which has all but eliminated choice about where to resolve certain kinds of disputes. All of these claims are highly contested by practitioners, judges and scholars of the American legal system.

Donor Reaction to Salient Disclosures of Nonprofit Executive Pay A Regression-Discontinuity Approach

Abstract: We evaluate the effect of highly salient disclosure of private college and university president compensation on subsequent donations. Using a differences-in-discontinuities approach to compare institutions that are highlighted in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual “top 10” list of most-highly compensated presidents against similar others, we find that appearing on a top 10 list is associated with reduced average donations of up to US$5.0 million in the first full fiscal year following disclosure, despite greater fund-raising by “top 10” schools. We also find some evidence that top 10 appearances are correlated with slower compensation growth and rising enrollment in subsequent years. We interpret these results as consistent with the hypothesis that donors care about compensation but are typically inattentive to pay levels. We discuss the implications of these findings for the regulation of nonprofits and for our broader understanding of the pay-setting process at for-profit as well as nonprofit or...

A Theory of Representative Shareholder Suits and its Application to Multi-Jurisdictional Litigation

Abstract: We develop a theory to explain the uses and abuses of representative shareholder litigation based on its two most important underlying characteristics: the multiple sources of the legal rights being redressed (creating dynamic opportunities for arbitrage) and the ability of multiple shareholders to seek to represent the collective group in such litigation (creating increased risk of litigation agency costs by those representatives and their attorneys). Placed against the backdrop of controlling managerial agency costs, our theory predicts that: (1) the relative strength of the different forms of shareholder litigation will shift over time; (2) these shifts can result in new avenues for the expression of shareholder litigation power; (3) new agents will emerge to act on shareholders’ behalf when these shifts occur (or old agents will put on new hats); and (4) a new set of principal-agent costs resulting from litigation will arise out of these new relationships, leading to recurrent questions about how these costs should best be controlled in particular contexts. Applying our theory to recent academic and practitioner claims of abusive multi-jurisdictional forum shopping in representative corporate litigation, we conclude that these claims are both overstated and misdirected. Instead, we find a significant amount of what we call “fee distribution litigation.” In these cases, multi-jurisdictional suits are filed by plaintiffs’ law firms largely to obtain a slice of the total pool of plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees that are paid in a global settlement in one of these cases. We show that fee distribution litigation is quite different than traditional forum shopping and requires a different policy response. We then consider various approaches and conclude that, while no one of them is perfect, judicial comity is the best and least costly option.

Sovereignty, Integration and Tax Avoidance in the European Union: Striking the Proper Balance

Abstract: As the need to raise revenue becomes more pressing and public opposition to tax avoidance increases, the European Court of Justice has made it more difficult for the twenty-seven Member States of the European Union to prevent tax avoidance and shape fiscal policy. This article introduces the new anti-avoidance doctrine of the European Court of Justice and analyzes it from the perspective of taxpayers, Member States and the European Union legal order as a whole. This doctrine is problematic becasue it has created a legislative vacuum in Europe. No European Union institution has the authority to regulate direct taxation without the unanimous support of all twenty-seven Member States. As the European Court of Justice strikes down Member State efforts to prevent tax avoidance, no institution can step in to replace these Member State provisions. Member States are thus losing sovereignty over policy tax avoidance, but no legislative move toward an integrated approach is possible without the support of Member States. This article proposes several solutions to the problems posed by the doctrine.

The changing face of death: computers, consciousness, and Nancy Cruzan.

Abstract: The law of death and dying is exquisitely sensitive to our notion of what it means to be human. When the crucial aspects of "personhood" are irretrievably lost, we feel that an individual has died. But what are those crucial aspects? Changes in the legal definition of death over time suggest that our sense of what is unique to the human experience alters as science progresses. This essay maintains that the next few decades may bring a dramatic change in our sense of human uniqueness and a corresponding change in the definition of death. The engine of change will be developments in artificial intelligence, the field of study devoted to building thinking computers. It is not the rational power of those computers that will shake us but rather the prospect that they might become self-aware. As I argue below, the current heated debate over whether such a thing is possible demonstrates the centrality of self-awareness to our sense of human uniqueness. Part II of the essay traces the human desire to see ourselves as special, and relates that desire to the development of our current legal concept of death. Not only has brain death replaced heart-lung failure as the criterion for death over the past few decades, but the notion of higher brain deaththe death of those regions of the brain where consciousness resides-has gained force. Although not recognized in statutes, higher brain death is the approach our society usually takes in deciding when treatment should be terminated. As Part III explains, the United States Supreme Court's recent Cruzan decision2 does not contradict this approach. Indeed, Justice O'Connor's concurrence in Cruzan3 may strengthen even further the movement toward self-awareness as the critical issue in the determination of death.