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.

Nonprofit Displacement and the Pursuit of Charity Through Public Benefit Corporations

Abstract: Nonprofits dominate the charitable sector. Until recently, this statement was tautological. Charity is increasingly being conducted through for-profit entities, raising concerns about the marketization of the charitable sector. This article examines for-profit charity conducted through the public benefit corporation, a new corporate form that allows its owners to blend mission and profit in a single entity. Proponents of public benefit corporations intended it as an alternative to a for-profit corporation and largely ignored its impact on the charitable sector. While public benefit corporations are ripe for conducting charity because they can pursue dual missions, they lack the transparency and accountability mechanisms of charitable organizations. This article chronicles the supply and demand for public benefit corporations that conduct charity (i.e., “charitable public benefit corporations”) and hypothesizes the micro and macro level harms caused by them. At the micro level, the harm is fraud or “greenwashing”, i.e., deceiving unwitting stockholders, customers, or other stakeholders into investing or spending their time and money in the negligent or fraudulent enterprise. At the macro level, the more pernicious harm is that “market-based charity” injects individualistic and autocratic business values and methods into charitable work. To mitigate these harms, this article proposes that charitable public benefit corporations be required to grant or sell shares to a group of stakeholders sufficient to give such stakeholder-stockholders standing to bring a derivative suit against the public benefit corporation should it fail to pursue its charitable public benefit. These stakeholder-stockholders are akin to impact investors, or investors who value charitable returns above, or concomitantly with, financial returns. The derivative suit offers the rare stick to guard against greenwashing. More importantly, stakeholder-stockholders can (i) guide the founders and boards of a charitable public benefit corporation in pursuing charity as an ordinary business decision, and (ii) import the participatory and democratic values of the charitable sector to public benefit corporations.

Women's Health and Abortion Rights: Whole Woman's Health v Hellerstedt.

Abstract: Nearly a quarter century ago, the Supreme Court asked pro-choice and right-to-life advocates “to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.”1 Nothing of the sort materialized. If anything, the social and political battles intensified, with states enacting 1074 abortion restrictions (Table).2 The Court has not considered various appeals in the face of an avalanche of legislation, but on June 27, 2016, it struck down 2 onerous restrictions on physicians and clinics offering abortion services.

Buck v. Bell : A Constitutional Tragedy from a Lost World

Abstract: Some constitutional tragedies are well known: Plessy v. Ferguson and Korematsu v. United States are taught to every first-year law student. Buck v. Bell is not. Decided in 1927 by the Taft Court, the case is known for its shocking remedy -- sterilization -- and Justice Holmes's dramatic rhetoric: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." A mere five paragraphs long, Buck v. Bell could represent the highest ratio of injustice per word ever signed on to by eight Supreme Court Justices, progressive and conservative alike.Buck v. Bell is not a tragedy as some others might define tragedy: it is not a well-known opinion, nor did it yield wide popular criticism; it sits as a quiet evil, a tragedy of indifference to the Constitution and its most basic principles. To include Buck as a tragic opinion is to recognize what Hannah Arendt once dubbed the "banality of evil." Even if grounded in eugenic assumptions widely held at the time, Buck v. Bell was an utterly lawless decision. Holmes treated Carrie Buck's constitutional claims with contempt. The opinion cites no constitutional text or principle emanating from the text. The only "law" in the opinion must be unearthed from a lost constitutional history embedded in a factual exegesis full of disdain for the Constitution and humanity itself. Few human tragedies can be greater "than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within." A lawless legitimation of such a principle -- one of natural aristocracy -- flies in the face of the very constitutional principles on which our nation was founded.

Sex, Reason, and a Taste for the Absurd

Abstract: Like much of Richard Posner's best work, Sex and Reason does many things, and for that reason will no doubt attract a large and diverse readership. This heavily footnoted, exhaustively researched, and imminently accessible book is a welcome introduction to the interdisciplinary study of sex. For the lay reader it presents an arresting set of speculations about human sexuality, drawn from the author's evident familiarity with a sizeable library of studies representing at least half a dozen scientific and social scientific disciplines, assembled in a readable and lively way. Of more interest, perhaps, to academicians and social scientists familiar with the literature, the book also proposes an ambitious, counter-intuitive, and sure to be controversial sociobiological argument about the essential nature of sexuality. This argument aims to account for both the universality of some sexual behaviors, on the one hand, and the extraordinary diversity of sexual customs, beliefs, and practices, on the other.Sex and Reason is an attempt by our most prominent rationalist to prove the absolute universality of economic reasoning in human choice and behavior by showing the rationality of our presumably most irrational choices and behaviors: those driven by our sexual urges. Thus, as the author states in his opening remarks, the large purpose of this book is to explain the rationality of our sexual behavior, and thereby limit, if not disprove the Aristotelian dictum, quoted in the book's opening epigram, that "[Sexual] pleasures are an impediment to rational deliberation, . . . it is impossible to think about anything while absorbed in them." The author's main target, in other words, is neither liberal nor conservative moralism, but rather the widespread intuition, shared by academicians, legislators, and the lay public alike, that whatever the value of economic reasoning in commercial and maybe even some noncommercial spheres of life, it certainly has no relevance - no explanatory power - in controlling behavior and choices so thoroughly irrational - so emotional, instinctive, biological - as our sexual inclinations and drives. On the contrary, Posner insists, although forces beyond our control heavily determine our sexual preferences, this hardly distinguishes them from other preferences that are similarly given rather than chosen. Accordingly, the determinism of our sexual preferences hardly disqualifies them from the benefit of dispassionate study and control by the trained economist's eye. I argue in this review that although Posner's descriptive claim about the rationality of our sexual behavior does indeed have an odd ring to it, it is Posner's normative claims - his rigid insistence on dispassion and neutrality in the study and regulation of sexual choice - that is ultimately the Achilles' heel of this book. It becomes quickly apparent on even a casual reading that Posner's insistence on moral neutrality goes well beyond his liberal sounding tolerance of deviant sexual preferences and practices. Rather, the moral neutrality Posner advocates requires a studied moral apathy toward a bewildering array of practices, customs, habits, and inclinations that cause inestimable amounts of human suffering and reveal the existence of manifest unjust subordination of large groups of persons - primarily, women. I suggest that moral neutrality is not the attitude we ought to take toward such behaviors, as either scientists or legislators.

Intellectual Property in Experience

Abstract: In today’s economy, consumers demand experiences. From Star Wars to Harry Potter, fans do not just want to watch or read about their favorite characters — they want to be them. They don the robes of Gryffindor, flick their wands, and drink the butterbeer. The owners of fantasy properties understand this, expanding their offerings from light sabers to the Galaxy’s Edge®, the new Disney Star Wars immersive theme park opening in 2019. Since Star Wars, Congress and the courts have abetted what is now a $262 billion-a-year industry in merchandising, fashioning “merchandising rights” appurtenant to copyrights and trademarks that give fantasy owners exclusive rights to supply our fantasy worlds with everything from goods to a good time. But are there any limits? Do merchandising rights extend to fan activity, from fantasy-themed birthday parties and summer camps to real world Quidditch leagues? This Article challenges the conventional account, arguing that as the economic value of fantasy merchandising increases in the emergent “experience economy,” intellectual property owners may prove less keen on tolerating uncompensated uses of their creations. In fact, from Amazon’s Kindle Worlds granting licenses for fan fiction, to crackdowns on sales of fan art sold on internet sites like Etsy, to algorithms taking down fan videos from YouTube, the holders of intellectual property in popular fantasies are seeking to create a world requiring licenses to make, do, and play. This Article turns to social and cultural theories of art as experience, learning by doing, tacit knowledge, and performance to demonstrate that fan activity, from discussion sites to live-action role-playing fosters learning, creativity, and sociability. Law must be attentive to the profound effects these laws have on human imagination and knowledge creation. I apply the insights of these theories to limit merchandising rights in imaginative play through fair use, the force in the legal galaxy intended to bring balance to intellectual property law.