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 & Public health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

Overview and Operation of U.S. Financial Sanctions, Including the Example of Iran

Abstract: Financial sanctions are increasingly being used in the mix of international economic sanctions being employed by the United Nations, regional entities, and individual countries, including the United States. These financial sanctions have become more focused and effective as the tools and techniques have improved significantly for tracing and identifying the financial transactions of terrorists, weapons proliferators, human rights violators, drug cartels, and others. These sanctions can not only freeze financial assets and prohibit or limit financial transactions, but they also impede trade by making it difficult to pay for the export or import of goods and services. In spite of this growing impact of financial sanctions, these sanctions are not well understood outside of a small group of experts. This article provides an introduction to the mechanics and operation of U.S. financial sanctions, and it illustrates their use against Iran.

Introduction: Legislating and Litigating Health Care Rights Around the World

Abstract: The collection of essays in this issue illustrates the breadth of knowledge to be gained from examining approaches to legislating and litigating health care rights and experiences across several national jurisdictions. The emphasis is on rights to publicly-funded health care and the struggle to determine a just allocation of public resources in countries as diverse as New Zealand, Israel, Canada, South Africa, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The issue of rationing health care in publicly-funded systems receives is examined. There are also insights for health care systems with more private funding, such as the United States system, where both private and public payers are increasingly looking to ways to legitimately ration or prioritize access to health care even if it is only for the purpose of expanding profit margins. The respective roles of government and the courts play out differently in different contexts. However, the potential of the courts to improve fairness within a system and to reduce inequalities through interpretation of existing legislation manifestly exists in all of these jurisdictions. Their will to do so may depend upon the extent to which they can be persuaded of the legitimacy of their role in this regard. Thus, the examples of courts taking on this role in other jurisdictions may prove more than just of academic interest.

Adverse Childhood Experiences in the New Mexico Juvenile Justice Population

Abstract: Faculty from the University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Law and the UNM School of Medicine, and New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) initiated a joint project to look at the prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) nationally and in New Mexico. The study was intended to better establish the association between early childhood trauma and delinquency, as well as to explore the role that law and medicine can play in ensuring better health and juvenile justice outcomes for children who have experienced ACEs.

Pay It Forward? Law and the Problem of Restricted-Spending Philanthropy

Abstract: American foundations and other philanthropic giving entities hold about $1 trillion in investment assets, and that figure continues to grow every year. Even as urgent contemporary needs go unmet, philanthropic organizations spend only a tiny fraction of their wealth each year, mostly due to restrictive terms in contracts between donors and firms limiting the rate at which donations can be distributed. Law has played a critical role in underwriting and encouraging this build-up of philanthropic wealth. For instance, contributors can typically take a full tax deduction for the value of their contribution today, no matter when the foundation spends their money, and pay no tax on the investment earnings the organization reaps in the meantime. What, if anything, justifies public support for “restricted spending” charity? This Article offers the first comprehensive assessment of that question, and supplies original empirical evidence on several key aspects of it. I argue that restricted spending sacrifices crucial information, introduces unnecessary agency costs, and on average transfers funds to times when they are less useful. While there is a place for large and long-lived philanthropic organizations in American society, that role does not require public support for restricted spending. As long as foundations can demonstrate their value to new donors, they will continue to thrive. I therefore set out a series of policy recommendations aimed at better reconciling nonprofit law and the principles that justify it. I support my claims with new evidence drawn from a data set of over 200,000 firm-year observations of private foundations. For example, I find that foundations earn about twice as much money per year as in earlier studies funded by foundation-industry lobbyists, and that they are growing three times faster than those earlier studies suggest. This finding implies that law could require a much higher annual “payout” from foundations. I also find that new laws introduced in about a dozen states since 2006 have significantly slowed foundation spending in the enacting states. And I offer simulations of several policy proposals for making foundations more effective at fighting recessions.

The New Politics of Transatlantic Credit Rating Agency Regulation

Abstract: In the years immediately leading up to the global financial crisis, and shortly thereafter, scholars envisaged a possible “convergence” of rules relating to the cross-border regulation of credit rating agencies (CRAs). This paper argues, however, that any full harmonization of approaches will be difficult due to varying political and economic realities motivating CRA regulation on both sides of the Atlantic. To demonstrate, this Article traces the regulation of CRAs from the early 1900s in the United States through today’s European debt crisis. It shows that Europe’s incentives to regulate CRAs have grown as its economy has shifted from bank to capital market finance, as globalization internationalized the consequences of what was weak CRA governance in the United States, and as CRA ratings of sovereign debt have come to more directly impact EU officials’ ability to manage responses to the Eurozone crisis. In the wake of these developments, European regulators are poised to adopt measures that may move beyond not only U.S. approaches, but also the consensus expressed in G-20 declarations and the IOSCO Code of Conduct.