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.

Adoption and Foster Care

Abstract: The system of state-regulated adoption and foster care raises important questions about the proper role of governmental intervention in the typically private family realm. Issues of gender, sexual orientation, and race influence the way the law recognizes American families, particularly the respective rights of parents and children through adoption and foster care. This article provides an overview of the current law governing adoption and foster care, with a particular emphasis on how gender and sexual orientation impact this system. Section II introduces the doctrinal underpinnings of contemporary adoption and foster care laws, following the overall development of both family law areas. Section III discusses the rights of biological parents in adoption and foster care proceedings. This section also highlights the impact of gender on parental rights in adoption proceedings through a discussion of courts' “biology plus” approach and the development of safe haven laws. The section concludes with a discussion of the rights of biological parents in the foster care system. Section IV addresses the impact of sexual orientation on adoption and foster care placement. Section V explores the systematic impact of adoption and foster care laws on children involved in the processes, including the challenges faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youth in the systems. Section VI discusses developments in adoptions involving individuals with relative ties to the child, including kinship care and second parent adoptions. Section VII examines the role of race in adoptions and the foster care system.

Executing the Treaty Power

Abstract: The canonical Missouri v. Holland holds that Congress has power to enact legislation to implement a treaty, even if it would lack the power to enact the same legislation absent the treaty. It holds, in other words, that the legislative power may be increased by treaty. This proposition is of enormous theoretical importance, because it is in deep tension with the fundamental constitutional principle of enumerated legislative powers. It is also of great and increasing practical importance, because it lies at the intersection of the two most dramatic trends in American law: the explosion of the United States' commitments under international law on matters of distinctly local concern, and the new willingness of the Supreme Court to police the limits of the enumerated powers of Congress. These two trends, in combination, are creating an increasing gap between what Congress is called upon to do by treaty and what it otherwise has enumerated power to do. It is this widening gap that implicates Missouri v. Holland.This Article endeavors to prove that Missouri v. Holland is wrongly decided. It shows, first, that Justice Holmes misunderstood the relationship between the Treaty Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Second, it demonstrates that the standard historical defense of Missouri v. Holland is based on a false premise. It concludes, based on constitutional text, history, and structure, as well as an examination of public choice and practical consequences, that Missouri v. Holland is wrong - treaties cannot increase the legislative power of Congress. Whether or not this Article definitively resolves this issue, however, it should, at a minimum, serve to launch a new debate in the constitutional law of foreign affairs: what is the scope of Congress's power to legislate pursuant to treaty?

Origins of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

Abstract: The World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control originated in 1993 with a decision by Ruth Roemer and Allyn Taylor to apply to tobacco control Taylor's idea that the WHO should utilize its constitutional authority to develop international conventions to advance global health. In 1995, Taylor and Ruth Roemer proposed various options to WHO, recommending the framework convention-protocol approach conceptualized by Taylor. Despite initial resistance by some WHO officials, this approach gained wide acceptance. In 1996, the World Health Assembly voted to proceed with its development. Negotiations by WHO member states led the World Health Assembly in May 2003 to adopt by consensus the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control - the first international treaty adopted under WHO auspices. The treaty formally entered into force for state parties on February 27, 2005.

Meaning, Purpose, and Cause in the Law of Deception

Abstract: Laws designed to affect the flow of information take many forms: rules against misrepresentation, disclosure requirements, secrecy requirements, rules governing the formatting or packaging of information, and interpretive rules designed to give people new reasons to share information. Together these and similar rules constitute the law of deception: laws that aim to prevent or cure deception. One encounters similar problems of design, function and justification throughout the law of deception. Yet very little has been written about the category as a whole. This article begins to sketch a general theory. It identifies three regulatory approaches. Interpretive laws, such as common law fraud, prohibit the making of untrue statements. These laws work by giving legal effect to commonly understood extralegal norms of interpretation and truth telling, in order to achieve specifically legal ends. Purpose-based laws, such as the tort of concealment, target acts done with a bad intent. Rather than employing an objective standard of behavior, they define the object of regulation by an actor's wrongful state of mind. Finally, causal-predictive laws employ everyday folk-psychology, empirical studies or cognitive theory to predict the informational effects of narrowly described behaviors. Much consumer protection law is of the causal-predictive sort. These regulatory approaches reach different types of informationally significant behavior, are suited to different regulatory ends, and require different institutional competencies. After describing the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, the article applies the theory to the Lanham Act's false advertising provisions. In deciding Lanham Act cases, courts have arrived at a complex set of rules that include all three approaches. A critical analysis of those rules illustrates the theory's ability both to explain the law of deception and to recommend improvements in it.

Asylum in a Different Voice: Judging Immigration Claims and Gender

Abstract: An extensive statistical study of disparities in asylum adjudication throughout the United States reveals gross disparities in rates of asylum grants by region of country, experience of adjudicators, prior employment, and other factors. One of the most robust findings was one of gender disparities in adjudication rates. If the adjudicator of claims for asylum was female there was a 44% greater likelihood that asylum would be granted. This chapter in the book reporting these findings reflects on this significant finding of gender differences in judging and discusses, in light of the author's prior work on gender differences in lawyering, whether these findings are confined to immigration cases, other "gender salient" case types, or have more generalizable significance. The article also reviews the prior literature on the presence or absence of gender differences in judging behavior.