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.

Seeking Sunlight in Santa Fe's Shadow: The SEC's Strategic Pursuit of Managerial Accountability

Abstract: Recent research in corporate governance points to the importance of transparency as a device for controlling agency costs, among other functions. That speaks to a long-standing issue in American securities regulation: whether there is (or should be) a conceptual separation between federal securities law and state corporation law on matters of managerial accountability, or whether the disclosure orientation of the federal law should be expansive enough to pursue accountability without undue concern with jurisdictional divisions. This paper explores the ways that the SEC confronts the apparent constraints on its ability to act aggressively in this area. It first revisits the law, showing that many of the restrictive holdings dealing with fiduciary responsibility under the securities law are really about the affirmative duty to disclose rather than any overarching federalism principle. Because the SEC has so much unused authority over duty to speak, this indicates that the doctrinal constraint is less than the rhetoric of some of the case law suggests. The paper then turns to other, more powerful, constraints: resources, remedies and human nature's resistance to the kinds of legal incentives often employed by the SEC. It ends with a look at the SEC's use of rhetoric and symbols in the face of the constraints on its ability to act in this sphere.

Unsatisfying Wars: Degrees of Risk and the Jus Ex Bello

Abstract: Self-defensive war uses violence to transfer risks from one’s own people to others. We argue that central questions in just war theory may fruitfully be analyzed as issues about the morality of risk transfer. That includes the jus ex bello question of when states are required to accept a ceasefire in an otherwise-just war. In particular, a “war on terror” that ups the risks to outsiders cannot continue until the risk of terrorism has been reduced to zero or near zero. Some degree of security risk is inevitable when coexisting with others in the international community, just as citizens within a state must accept some ineradicable degree of crime as a fact of community life.We define a conception of morally legitimate bearable risk by contrasting it with two alternatives, and argue that states must stop fighting when they have achieved that level. We call this requirement the Principle of Just Management of Military Risk. We also argue that states should avoid exaggerated emphasis on security risks over equivalent risks from other sources — the Principle of Minimum Consistency Toward Risks. This latter principle is not a moral requirement. Rather, it is a heuristic intended to correct against well-known fallacies of risk perception that may lead states to overemphasize security risks and wrongly export the costs of their security onto others. In conclusion, we suggest that states must invest in non-violent defensive means as a precondition for legitimately using force externally.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention: Commentary and Guide to Practice

Abstract: The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is the first comprehensive review of the contributions of this important institution to understanding arbitrary detention today. The Working Group is a body of five independent human rights experts that considers individual complaints of arbitrary detention, adopting legal opinions as to whether a detention is compatible with states' obligations under international law. Since its establishment in 1991, it has adopted more than 1,200 case opinions and conducted more than fifty country missions. But much more than a jurisprudential review, these cases are presented in the book in the style of a treatise, where the widest array of issues on arbitrary detention are placed in the context of the requirements of multilateral treaties and other relevant international standards. Written for both practitioners and serious scholars alike, this book includes five case studies and a foreword by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu.

Better Health, But Less Justice: Widening Health Disparities after National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius

Abstract: At the time it was enacted in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was widely applauded by health activists, as it meant that the United States would at last join the overwhelming majority of industrialized countries in providing its population with guaranteed access to affordable health care. Roughly half of the increase in access to health insurance was to come from the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to all U.S. citizens and legal residents with income below 138% of the Federal Poverty Level. However, the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (NFIB) essentially converted the Medicaid expansion into an option for states, and many (fourteen at the time this article went to press, including states with enormously high rates of uninsured residents, such as Texas) have chosen not to participate. Since NFIB, the Congressional Budget Office has reduced its initial estimate of the number of individuals who were to gain coverage under the ACA, from thirty-two to twenty-nine million. But the accuracy of these estimates is subject to question; given the number of states that are opting out, the number could well be far higher. In a turn of events entirely unanticipated when the ACA was enacted, the legacy of the ACA may be that it contributes to widening health disparities rather than the reduction that had been expected by its supporters.This result is an injustice that cries out for reform. A first step in that direction is ensuring that states are in possession of — and made to acknowledge — accurate information regarding the economic costs of the Medicaid expansion, which are far less than the potentially bankrupting amount that has been portrayed in some corners. A second step is to emphasize the importance of the incorporation of public health in health policy analysis and design; in addition to benefiting individual health, universal access to health services improves public health. Finally, and most critically, strong voices must demand that health policy be implemented such that it achieves justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us. Without action to rectify the ACA’s unintended consequences, the United States seems likely to consign its poorest and most vulnerable residents to a continued tenuous health status, in which the only options for care are emergency rooms and those institutions that are willing to provide free or nearly free health services.