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.

Can a 'Dumb Ass Woman' Achieve Equality in the Workplace? Running the Gauntlet of Hostile Environment Harassing Speech

Abstract: Sandra Bundy may have guessed that her new job with the District of Columbia Department of Corrections would be a challenge. What she may not have expected was that she would have to meet the challenge under very different conditions than those faced by her male coworkers. Ms. Bundy's work was continually interrupted by one of her supervisors, who kept calling her into his office and forcing her to listen to his theories about how women ride horses to obtain sexual gratification. He repeatedly asked Ms. Bundy to come home with him in order to view his collection of pictures and books on this topic. Another supervisor repeatedly propositioned her, asking her to come with him to a motel or on a trip to the Bahamas.None of Ms. Bundy's male counterparts, in contrast, had to listen to their boss's sexual fantasies and proposals. When Ms. Bundy tried to remove this gender-based obstacle to her job performance by reporting it to a third supervisor and pleading for help, he only exacerbated the problem, telling her that "any man in his right mind would want to rape you," and asking her to have sex with him.Ms. Bundy successfully sued the Department of Corrections for sexual harassment in violation of Title VII, the federal statute outlawing workplace discrimination.The implicit holding of the Bundy case ― that speech alone can create a discriminatory hostile work environment ― went unquestioned for many years. Recently, however, defense attorneys have challenged the constitutionality of this principle, arguing that a prohibition on discriminatory workplace expression violates harassers' First Amendment rights.

Rule Consequentialism and the Problem of Partial Acceptance

Abstract: Most plausible moral theories must address problems of partial acceptance or partial compliance The aim of this paper is to examine some proposed ways of dealing with partial acceptance problems as well as to introduce a new Rule Utilitarian suggestion Here I survey three forms of Rule Utilitarianism, each of which represents a distinct approach to solving partial acceptance issues I examine Fixed Rate, Variable Rate, and Optimum Rate Rule Utilitarianism, and argue that a new approach, Maximizing Expectation Rate Rule Utilitarianism, better solves partial acceptance problems

Asymmetric Stakes in Antitrust Litigation

Abstract: Private antitrust litigation often involves a dominant firm being accused of exclusionary conduct by a smaller rival. In such cases, the defendant generally has a much larger financial stake in the outcome. We explore the implications of this asymmetry in a model of litigation with endogenous effort. Asymmetric stakes lead antitrust defendants to invest systematically more resources into litigation, causing a downward bias in the plaintiff's success probability---a distortion that carries over to ex ante settlements. Enhanced damages cannot prevent this systematic bias. We show that, in most private litigation contexts, asymmetric stakes do not create any distortion, because the prospect of ex post (post-judgment) settlement makes the litigants behave as if the stakes are symmetric. But this does not occur in antitrust, because it proscribes certain ex post settlements. We consider how courts might mitigate the distortion by altering the plaintiff's evidentiary burden.

Foot-and-mouth disease and Argentina’s beef exports : the WTO’s US – Animals dispute

Abstract: This paper provides a legal–economic assessment of the WTO Panel Report in US–Animals, one of a growing list of WTO disputes arising due to problematic conditions under which an importing country closes and reopens its market after an infectious disease outbreak in an exporting country The United States banned imports of beef from Argentina following a 2000 Argentine outbreak of highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), a disease not found in the United States since 1929 The United States refused to relax its import ban, and Argentina filed a WTO dispute in 2012, more than six years after its last FMD outbreak Our analysis starts with Argentina's claim that the gap between its first requests, in 2002, to restore its trading rights and no action by the United States as of 2012 constituted ‘undue delay’ We rely on simple insights from economic research on asymmetric information problems – moral hazard and adverse selection – to describe the difficulties facing the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the WTO's Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement in dealing with problems like FMD Such an environment creates disincentives for socially efficient behavior that were clearly realized in this episode The exporting country has an incentive to hide information on outbreaks and report being disease-free too quickly, and the importing country has no incentive to quickly undertake the costly effort of conducting the necessary inspections to restore the exporter's market access Finally, we address the Panel Report's treatment of alleged discrimination both across different FMD-impacted countries and across FMD-impacted and non-impacted geographic zones within Argentina, and we touch on the Report's shift in approach regarding the obligation of the United States to take into account the special needs of developing countries such as Argentina

Is the United States Prepared for a Major Zika Virus Outbreak

Abstract: This Viewpoint discusses how prepared the United States is to handle a Zika virus outbreak and highlights areas of concern in the current health system.