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.

Personal Transformation and Advance Directives: An Experimental Bioethics Approach

Abstract: Walsh (2020) notes that dementia can inspire both personally and cognitively transformative experiences (Paul 2014), resulting in major changes to one’s beliefs, values, preferences, and overall de...

Rights Over Borders: Transnational Constitutionalism and Guantanamo Bay

Abstract: This essay argues that the most profound implications of the Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v. Bush may lie not in what it says about the place of law in the war on terror, but in what it reflects about the Supreme Court's altered conceptions of sovereignty, territoriality, and rights in the globalized world. Boumediene was groundbreaking in at least three respects. For the first time in its history, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a law enacted by Congress and signed by the president on an issue of military policy in a time of armed conflict. Also for the first time, the Court extended constitutional protections to noncitizens outside U.S. territory during wartime. And for only the third time in its history, the Court declared unconstitutional a law restricting federal court jurisdiction. The Court has traditionally sought to avoid such confrontations through the application of statutory interpretation, bending over backward to interpret statutes to preserve judicial review where it might be unconstitutional to deny such review. But the real significance of the decision may lie in what it portends for modern-day conceptions of sovereignty, territoriality, and rights. The Bush administration relied on old-fashioned conceptions of sovereignty and rights in arguing that habeas corpus jurisdiction did not extend to Guantanamo, and that federal courts should have no constitutionally recognized role there. The Court's decision, by contrast, reflects new understandings of these traditional conceptions, understandings that pierce the veil of sovereignty, reject formalist fictions of territoriality where the state exercises authority beyond its borders, and insist on the need for judicial review to safeguard the human rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. And while Boumediene may appear unprecedented from a domestic standpoint, it fits quite comfortably within an important transnational trend of recent years, in which courts of last resort have played an increasingly aggressive role in reviewing (and invalidating) security measures that trench on individual rights.

Can Labor Law Reform Encourage Robust Economic Democracy

Abstract: Our labor law guarantees only a "thin" form of workplace and economic democracy, one focused on encouraging collective bargaining over fundamental terms of employment, but limiting workers' rights of concerted action and expression in many ways. Progressive unions and their allies have historically sought a "thicker" form of workplace and economic democracy, one in which workers have a voice at all levels of the political economy. Advancing that vision today requires ambitious reforms: to ensure that our labor law protects all vulnerable workers; to guarantee workers real rights to protest and to strike; to make it far easier for workers to unionize; to expand bargaining structures; to give workers the power to co-determine rules at the workplace and firm levels; and to give workers a voice in economic policy.

The Fast and the Usurious: Putting the Brakes on Auto Lending Abuses

Abstract: The car loan market is rife with consumer abuses: inflated pricing, discriminatory lending, and a variety of deceptions and scams. These abuses all stem from the dealer-centric nature of the auto finance market that ties the vehicle purchase to the vehicle financing. The overwhelming majority of consumers finance their purchases through the car dealer, but consumers cannot learn dealer financing terms in advance. They learn the offered financing terms only after spending substantial time and energy negotiating a car price, a trade-in price, warranties, insurance, and vehicle add-ons. At this point, because most consumers lack alternative financing options, they face a take-it-or-leave-it choice that leaves them especially vulnerable to dealer abuses. Not only does the lack of alternative financing options deprive consumers of the protection of competition in auto loans, but competition in the dealer-based lending market also actually works against consumers. Dealers auction off loans to financial institutions based largely on which institution allows the dealer the greatest compensation in the form of a markup on the loan. These ultimate lenders compete for the dealers’ business, not the consumers’, which results in consumers paying supracompetitive rates because of the dealer markup. The discretionary nature of the markups also enables discriminatory lending, with minorities often charged more for car loans, as well as a number of outright frauds and scams that cannot occur with third-party financing. This Article proposes to fix these auto lending abuses by requiring a three-business-day waiting period before delivery of the vehicle for con- sumers who do not have a bona fide third-party financing offer, as well as a prominently disclosed, penalty-free prepayment right for the loan during this period, and a system of mandatory data collection on auto loans to enable regulatory oversight. A penalty default waiting period would incentivize consumers to shop for financing separately from the vehicle purchase transaction, which will create positive competitive forces lowering dealers’ supracompetitive markups of financing, reduce opportunities for discriminatory lending, and protect consumers from other deceptive practices.

Confronting Memory Loss

Abstract: The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment grants “the accused” in “all criminal prosecutions” a right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” A particular problem occurs when there is a gap in time between the testimony that is offered and the cross-examination of it, as where—pursuant to a hearsay exception or exemption—evidence of a current witness’s prior statement is offered and, for some intervening reason, her current memory is impaired. Does this fatally affect the opportunity to “confront” the witness? The U.S. Supreme Court has, to date, left unclear the extent to which a memory-impaired witness can afford a criminal defendant her right to confront. Would, for instance, it be of any value to permit a defendant the opportunity to cross-examine a witness claiming no recollection of having seen the crime or having identified the defendant as the perpetrator? Should the right to confront simply imply the ability to look one’s accuser in the eye at trial, or should it necessitate some degree of opportunity for substantive cross-examination? Two petitions for certiorari that the U.S. Supreme Court denied in December 2019—White v. Louisiana and Tapia v. New York—could have permitted the Court to clarify confrontation rights in memory loss cases. This Article identifies and discusses eight key issues arising under the Confrontation Clause in connection with memory impairment in witnesses. Although the Court chose not to put these issues to rest in the context of White or Tapia, we anticipate federal and state courts will be called upon to answer these issues in the coming years, and we suspect the Court will eventually need to answer them.