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.

A conditional intent to perform

Abstract: The doctrine of promissory fraud holds that a contractual promise implicitly represents an intent to perform. A promisor's conditional intent to perform poses a problem for that doctrine. It is clear that some undisclosed conditions on the promisor's intent should result in liability for promissory fraud. Yet no promisor intends to perform come what may, so there is a sense in which all promisors conditionally intend to perform.Building on Michael Bratman's planning theory of intentions, this article provides a theoretical account of the distinction between “foreground” and “background” conditions on intentions in general and then explains why foreground conditions on a promisor's intent to perform are likely to result in material promissory misrepresentation, while background conditions are not. The difference between foreground and background conditions lies in whether the agent accepts the satisfaction of the condition for the purposes of her practical reasoning. A promisor's nonacceptance of a condition on her intent to perform is material because it is likely to affect her preperformance deliberations and investment in the transaction, as well as her willingness to seek agreement with the promisee on how to fill contractual gaps.

(Non)Enforcement and the Rule of Law, Can Bučar Provide Some Clues?

Abstract: Nonenforcement of legal rules is increasingly becoming a political strategy of (de)regulation and reform implementation. European legal tradition sees nonenforcement as a fact outside of its scope, a sort of political anomaly. However, American tradition lacks substantive theoretical framework for analyzing nonenforcement; therefore, normative arguments are difficult to flow from it. As such, the article applies Bucar’s system theory in developing some recommendations how to deal with nonenforcement of laws legally and politically. Bucar’s system theory synthesizes both legal traditions and thus, enables a profound analysis of the topic as well as deduction of prescriptive measures.

The Politics of Federalism: Self-Interest or Safeguards? Evidence from Congressional Control of State Taxation

Abstract: We present for the first time in the literature a quantitative analysis of the efficacy of the "political safeguards of federalism." We also test the popular theory that congressional control of state authority to tax maximizes national welfare. Both analyses rely on a hand-collected data set of every federal statute to date affecting state power to tax. Overall, our data suggest that federal decisions to curtail state autonomy are strongly influenced by congressional self-interest. Conditional on enactment, statutes affecting state taxing power are more likely to reduce state authority when a concentrated special interest group stands to benefit, and also when the reduction would reduce competition between states and Congress. While this outcome certainly does not resolve the debate over judicial enforcement of federalism, it should significantly advance that debate. At a minimum, we show that state power to influence Congress is not absolute, and state influence in fact fails under conditions similar to those in which critics of the safeguards theory have predicted that state influence would fail. Additionally, we argue that our results cast significant doubt on recent calls to give control of state taxing authority solely to Congress.

China's Failed War on Terror: Fanning the Flames of Uighur Separatist Violence

Abstract: In terms of race, ethnicity, and religion, China is a surprisingly diverse nation. Although only 9 percent of China's population is comprised of ethnic minorities, over 60 percent of its vast landscape is pocketed and overlaid with diverse minority ethnic groups, together constituting 108.5 million people. China's diversity, of course, does not extend to politics, and its communist regime has demonstrated laser-like focus over the past several decades on assimilating China's minorities into the Han-dominated political, social, and religious mainstream, or, at the very least, extinguishing any independent impulses these groups might harbor. Although successful with some of China's smaller and less-distinct minorities, Beijing's efforts to assimilate minority populations have generated violent conflict among a handful of minority groups, most famously, of course, in Tibet. But Tibet is not alone in its resistance. In fact, the Uighurs — a group of over 18 million Muslims in China's arid and oft-forgotten northwest with close ethnic ties to Central Asia — have become one of China's primary targets in its crackdown on domestic separatist movements. While tensions between China's Uighur population and its central government have been high for well over a hundred years and have throughout that history erupted in violence (violence which, for a brief time, culminated in independence for the province), historically, those tensions have only rarely manifested themselves through terrorist violence. That can no longer be said. A little over ten years ago, China implemented its Strike Hard (da fa) campaign against any region with separatist sympathies, including Xinjiang, the Uighur homeland. The campaign's explicit goal is to "hit at enemy forces, purify society and educate the masses," and in the years since its initial implementation, the Chinese government periodically has renewed its Strike Hard campaign, deploying additional forces to the region and tightening restrictions on cultural expression and religious practice. In addition to the Strike Hard campaign's religious and political implications, China's industrialization policies, directed at integrating the region's ethnic minorities into the economy, have instead forced them to the periphery, engendering bitter anti-Han sentiment. Many Uighurs are convinced that China's ultimate goal is to overrun their homeland, outlaw their Muslim faith, and erase their cultural distinctiveness altogether.

If Boilerplate Could Talk

Abstract: Standard contract terms are “sticky”: they rarely change, even if change appears to be in the parties’ interest Multiple theories to explain stickiness do not reach consensus on its causes We investigate the role of stickiness in sovereign bond contracts, where it would be especially costly and therefore puzzling In our interviews with more than a hundred officials responsible for the bond contracts of 28 countries, they linked reluctance to change non-financial contract terms and the imperative of following a “market standard” for such terms When a term could be described as standard for the government’s debt stock or borrower cohort, its content often came across as secondary Sovereign debt managers seemed willing to forgo some of the benefits of contract terms for dealing with contingencies and revealing private information, to avoid negative signals and maintain the liquidity of primary and secondary debt markets Interviews with investors suggested a similar focus on standard form, and a limited engagement with contract content