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.

Retribution or Reconciliation? Attitudes Toward Rebel Collaborators in Iraq

Abstract: Rebel groups require the cooperation of many civilians who are commonly perceived as “collaborators” after conflict ends. The limited empirical work in this area focuses on fighters, ignoring the need for more nuanced understandings of proportional justice for civilian collaborators. Through a survey experiment in an Iraqi city that experienced governance by the Islamic State, we find that social identity—expected to trigger in- group favoritism—is a weak determinant of preferences for punishment and forgiveness compared to the type of collaboration itself. Our results also fail to provide support for the hypothesis that exposure to violence drives a desire for revenge. Instead, the perceived volition behind an act is important, although its effect varies depending on the type of collaboration. Our research offers uniquely fine-grained data and insights into the factors that shape perceptions of individual rebel culpability, with important policy implications for balancing accountability with the need for reconciliation.

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.

Sovereign Snake Oil

Abstract: Collective Action Clauses (CACs) are back at the forefront of financial crisis response, this time in Europe. In the absence of a sovereign bankruptcy regime, CACs help solve coordination problems in sovereign bonds by binding all bondholders to the terms of a debt restructuring approved by the majority. But unlike the last two campaigns to include CACs in foreign sovereign bonds in the 1990s and early 2000s, today’s initiative does not point to coordination problems. Most of the sovereign bonds at issue either already have CACs or include other features that make restructuring relatively straightforward. Much of the European debt problem stems from private sector debts, which can be restructured in bankruptcy. Moreover, standardized CACs on the model referenced in EU statements fit awkwardly in domestic law bonds, which account for the bulk of the EU sovereign debt problem. Why revive such an ill-fitting remedy? In this essay, we review the recent history of CAC initiatives to suggest that they serve as a convenient political diversion from the hard problems and painful solutions at the heart of a financial crisis. [This is a modified version of the editors' introduction to the LCP volume on the modern history of sovereign debt.]

“Do You Want to Tell Your Own Narrative?”: How One Teacher and Her Students Engage in Resistance by Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth

Abstract: This qualitative case study offers a window into one classroom in which one Latinx English language arts teacher and her newcomer high school students tapped into community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) as they engaged in literacy practices to resist oppression, denounce discrimination, and strive for social justice. We draw upon Yosso’s (2005) framework of community cultural wealth (CCW) to understand how teachers can encourage resistance among historically marginalized students within the current racist and xenophobic political climate; and we examine how students respond to the teacher’s invitation to engage and develop their resistant capital through their writing. Data analyzed for this study include student letters, teacher interviews, and fieldnotes from one lesson, which was situated in a year-long ethnographic study. We found that the teacher cultivated resistant capital by tapping into students’ lived experiences to scrutinize oppressive rhetoric and persist in the face of adversity. Students seized the opportunity to resist the dominant anti-immigrant narrative by leveraging their resistant capital through counter-stories, assertions of experiential knowledge, and appeals to a moral imperative. Our study contributes to scholarship on CCW by exploring how CCW is utilized in a previously under-examined context and has implications for educators by offering examples of classroom practices that cultivate CCW and transform deficit discourses that threaten to impede academic success, especially among Latinx students.