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.

Home is where the safer ground is: the need to promote affordable housing laws and policies in receiving communities

Abstract: Increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events are pushing communities to confront difficult decisions in order to protect people and infrastructure sitting in harm’s way. One decision is around managed retreat or the voluntary movement and transition of individuals and communities away from coastal and other climate-vulnerable areas. “Receiving communities” and other low-risk areas where people may choose to relocate must adopt a multi-pronged strategy that addresses the full breadth of services and resources that relocating residents will need in order to adapt to their new communities, such as in areas of health, education, and workforce development. A critical consideration for receiving communities is the provision of adequate and affordable housing for new residents, many of whom have been driven to relocate due to housing insecurity caused by climate change impacts. Climate change can contribute to housing insecurity in multiple ways, such as when insurance rates increase for low-income homeowners living in flood-prone areas, or when disasters destroy existing affordable housing stock. These impacts can trigger the displacement of individual households or entire communities, requiring local governments to plan ahead for community-centered housing solutions. This article (1) explores the affordable housing crisis in the USA and the compounding impacts of climate change; (2) analyzes the concept of receiving communities and the unique considerations for preparing and investing in affordable housing; and (3) recommends how local governments can use new and existing planning, funding, and legal tools to ensure an effective and inclusive housing strategy for receiving communities.

Contracting for Cooperation in Recovery

Abstract: There is a longstanding debate about whether courts should enforce contract terms purporting to limit the parties' liability for fraud. Less often noticed is that many contracts are designed to incorporate fraud liability, by requiring one party to make representations about her performance that, if false, can satisfy the elements of deceit. Such contractual representations are best understood as members of a broader, hitherto underappreciated category of contract terms: duties designed to increase the other party's chances of recovering for breach. Examples include the duty to keep records, to share information about performance, to permit audits, or not to hide breach. This Article shows that difficulties in proving proximate harm entail that legal liability for the breach of such terms makes a practical difference only when it includes penalties, punitive damages or other extra-compensatory measures. Parties now contract for liability in fraud, where punitive damages are available, because they cannot get these remedies in contract. The Article also argues that most of the costs of extra-compensatory remedies (such as deterring efficient breach) don't apply when they are attached to duties to cooperate in recovery, and that, in many cases, adopting such duties is a better solution to under-enforcement than adopting a damages multiplier. The practical upshot is a strong argument against rulings, most recently via a broad reading of the economic loss doctrine, that there can be no liability in fraud for lies that are also breaches. Rather than serving the oft-stated goal of protecting the parties' contractually chosen allocation of risk, these rules defeat party choice. Even better, however, would be exceptions to the rules against penalties and punitive damages when those remedies are attached to the breach a duty to cooperate in recovery.

Originalism at Home and Abroad

Abstract: Originalism is typically thought to be a uniquely American preoccupation This Article challenges the conventional view that originalism enjoys little support outside the United States by showing that the story of originalism — both at home and abroad — is more nuanced than has been appreciated I examine how originalism has developed in two unexplored contexts — Malaysia and Singapore — to show that originalism not only thrives outside the United States but that it takes on distinct variations reflecting the cultural, historical, and political conditions of individual nations The Article argues that whether originalism thrives, and the form that it takes, is context driven and culturally contingent The account that this Article provides of how originalism is practiced in the world beyond the United States tests familiar assumptions in the mainstream debates over originalism First, it shows that existing accounts of the origins of originalism are incomplete and questions the claim that originalism inevitably follows from judicial interpretation of a written constitution Second, the experiences of countries elsewhere demonstrate that originalism is not necessarily — or even typically — associated with constraining judges Originalists frequently claim that originalism is uniquely capable of limiting judicial discretion Yet judges in various contexts employ originalism in support of expansive constitutional interpretation and to empower courts against the political branches Third, this analysis sheds light on why certain nations — the United States included — are attracted to particular originalist approaches, such as original intent or original meaning

When Lawyers Advise Presidents in Wartime: Kosovo and the Law of Armed Conflict

Abstract: The events of September 11 changed how we perceive national security as a society, a government, and as individuals. This is as true of national security specialists, who have been aware that America has been at war with terrorism sine at least the 1990s, as it is for those whose sense of geographic security was shattered in New York and Washington. There is talk of “new war” and “new rules,” and concern that we not apply twentieth-century lessons to a twenty-first-century war. Over time, September 11 and its aftermath will test our interpretation and application of domestic law. It may also test the traditional framework under international law for resorting to and applying force. But much will, and should, stay the same for lawyers. As a result, the objective of this paper is to give some personal insight into the application of the law of armed conflict to the 1999 Nato Kosovo air campaign from the perspective of a lawyer serving the president as commander in chief. National-level legal review is critical to military operations, not just in determining whether the commander in chief has domestic and international legal authority to resort to force, but also in shaping the manner in which the United States employs force. Lawyers also have an important role to play in sustaining “good-government” process, offering a degree of detachment and long-term perspective.

WTO Non-Violation Complaints: A Misunderstood Remedy in the WTO Dispute Settlement System

Abstract: This article addresses the impact of politics and diplomacy upon the enforcement of international legal obligations through the example of non-violation complaints in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Although this remedy inherited from the past has always been criticized, both the scope and the effects of non-violation complaints upon the WTO dispute settlement system have been disregarded and misunderstood. Only a few WTO members have insisted on using this remedy to the detriment of the immense majority of WTO members for which non-violation complaints still represent an unaffordable luxury. Therefore, this article retraces the negotiation history of this remedy and its entire jurisprudence in order to demonstrate that the WTO dispute settlement system can neither undermine the results of negotiations reflecting the power struggle amongst sovereign nation-states, nor remedy their failure to negotiate by creating new legal obligations. As a result, the security and predictability of the WTO dispute settlement system is at stake, for WTO panels and the Appellate Body have been reluctant and unable to define the ambiguous legal concept of non-violation.