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.

Fiscal Federalism as Risk-Sharing: The Insurance Role of Redistributive Taxation

Abstract: In addition to funding government and redistributing income, a redistributive tax-and-transfer system, and a progressive income tax in particular, provides insurance against the risk of uncertain future income. By providing for high taxes for high incomes, and low taxes, exemptions, and transfers for low incomes, a progressive income tax lowers the volatility of potential after-tax income relative to a lump-sum tax. This insurance function is distinct from the redistributive function of the system, since it provides a direct risk-mitigation benefit to the taxpayer himself, rather than simply redistributing income from one taxpayer to another.This article analyzes the question of at what level of government to assign the income tax role in a federal system, given both its redistributive and insurance functions. The standard view in the literature is that redistribution is best done centrally, and thus that an income tax is best used by the federal government, rather than by state governments. Yet recent work suggests that states can effectively have some role in redistribution. Income insurance, however, can be more effectively done by the federal government, because of its larger risk pool and better ability to handle revenue volatility.This article argues that states will, and likely should, use progressive income taxes as a tool of greater redistribution. At the same time, the insurance function of a progressive income tax can still be nationalized through policies that resemble re-insurance. In particular, this article looks at the idea of a multi-state rainy-day fund as a form of pooled state revenue insurance, as well as federal policies that may achieve some of the same benefits.

Who Cares About Patents? Cross-Industry Differences in the Marginal Value of Patent Term

Abstract: How much do market participants in different industries value a marginal change in patent term (i.e., duration of patent protection)? We explore this research question by measuring the behavioral response of patentees to a rare natural experiment: a change in patent term rules, due to passage of the TRIPS agreement. We find significant heterogeneity in patentee behavior across industries, some of which follows conventional wisdom (patent term is important in pharmaceuticals) and some of which does not (it also appears to matter for some software). Our measure is highly correlated with patent renewal rates across industries, suggesting the marginal value of patent term increases with higher expected profits toward the end of term.

Investment arbitration in Brazil: revisiting Brazil’s traditional reluctance towards ICSID, BITs, and investor-state arbitration

Abstract: As investment arbitration has grown rapidly throughout Latin America as a favoured vehicle to resolve disputes between foreign investors and host states, in a neutral forum and with a minimum of diplomatic disruption, Brazil has remained aloof. Despite the importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Brazil and the increasing number of Brazilian companies themselves investing abroad, Brazil remains the only country in South America not to have ratified the ICSID Convention, or otherwise agreed to a framework for direct arbitration of investor disputes. This article explores the roots of Brazil’s traditional reluctance to consent to investor-state arbitration in light of global developments in the field and the increasing importance of FDI to economic growth, and suggests it is time for Brazil to revisit its approach, with appropriate safeguards to protect its sovereign right to regulate in the public interest.

Law as a fixture between the One Health interfaces of emerging diseases.

Abstract: A One Health approach calls for multisectoral and multi-institutional cooperation and partnership across the interfaces of human, animal and ecosystem health risks. Without strong governance, these interfaces risk detaching, leaving gaps in capacities to prevent, detect and respond to emerging and persisting public health threats. As a crucial component of governance, law can act as the fixture between interfaces. We examine some of the many forms and foci of law and propose that the process of law-making, implementation and evaluation can provide a benefit for strengthening law as a fixture between One Health interfaces. To demonstrate this, we discuss three current examples of international legal instruments for emerging infectious diseases: the International Health Regulations, the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework and the Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance.

Re-Imagining Justice

Abstract: What do we mean by legal justice, as opposed to distributive, or social, or political justice; what is the justice, that is, we hope law promotes? What is the justice that lawyers and judges, peculiarly, are professionally committed to pursue? What is the virtue around which, arguably, this profession, and the individuals within it, have defined their public lives?Justice – and more particularly legal justice – is a badly under-theorized topic in jurisprudence; perhaps surprisingly, there is little written on it. The paucity of writing of course has a history. It can be traced to the turn of the last century – formative years of legal pedagogy and legal curriculum – when legal formalists and legal realists, who disagreed on virtually everything else regarding law, oddly enough agreed on the need to sever law from moral philosophy and more generally from high culture. Formalists, so as to render law autonomous, deductively pure, "scientific," and resting on its own bottom, so to speak, and realists, so as to tie law to the prestige, aspirations, and methods of the then nascent but ascending social sciences. Both realists and formalists, albeit for different reasons, sought to disassociate law from the demands of religion, morals, or culture, generally from the Toquevillian aristocratic norms within which law had been nested in the pre-Classical era. Justice, the great formalist Christopher Langdell thought, was not a fit subject of thought for a rigorous and professional and scientific law school curriculum. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the father of legal realism, quite famously, was even harsher. "I hate justice," Holmes wrote. "I know that if a man begins to talk about that, for one reason or another he is shirking thinking in legal terms." At least in the legal academy, we have indeed taken the Holmesian admonition to heart. Fearful of appearing sentimental, childish, or, worst of all, ignorant of the law, twentieth century lawyers and legal scholars, with only a few exceptions, have forsook the work of elucidating the concept of legal justice.Holmes and Langdellian skepticism notwithstanding, one can quite easily discern a conventional, and largely uncriticized, turn-of-the-century understanding of legal justice, inside the academy and the profession. It finds oratorical expression in law day and graduation day speeches, in the major unspoken premises of countless conventional legal arguments, and in some, although again not much, jurisprudential scholarship. That conception – call it the dominant or conventional conception-I will argue below, is seriously flawed. More specifically, I want to suggest that it is seriously flawed in a way that directly and negatively affects feminist and progressive efforts at achieving political reform. Feminists and progressives need to take up the task of criticizing our conventional understanding of legal justice. More importantly, we need to take up the task of crafting alternatives.