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.

Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain and Human Rights Claims Against Corporations Under the Alien Tort Statute

Abstract: Contrary to the claims of some observers, the Supreme Court's decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain does not sound the death knell for the use of the Alien Tort Statute to maintain human rights claims against private corporations in the U.S. courts. The decision clarifies the nature of claims under the Alien Tort Statue to some extent, and places some limits on the theories available in actions against private corporations, but for the most part such suits remain as viable after Sosa as they were before. That is not to say, however, that victims of corporate human rights violations in developing countries should hold out much hope that their lot will be bettered through Alien Tort Statute litigation in the United States. Even before Sosa, such suits had a chance of producing results favorable to foreign plaintiffs only with respect to a very narrow category of human rights violations. This paper first briefly describes the evolution of the Alien Tort Statute from the time it was reinvigorated in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala to the Supreme Court's decision in Sosa. It then discusses the implications of Sosa for human rights claims against private corporations and assesses the potential significance of federal human rights litigation as a mechanism for addressing the problems of those whose human rights are adversely affected by US corporations operating abroad.

The Varieties and Limits of Transparency in U.S. Food Law

Abstract: A central goal of the federal legal system for food is to ensure the integrity of representations made by sellers of food about their products. To achieve transparency, the law of food deploys three different kinds of regulatory strategies: prohibitions against fraud, compelled disclosures, and constraints on discretionary disclosures. Collectively, these constraints create an enormous legal structure governing representations about the food we eat. Nevertheless, the transparency achieved by law is only partial, and indeed sometimes serves only to conceal a lie. Resource limits at federal agencies charged with regulating food hollow out enforcement programs aimed at false or misleading representations. Regulatory fragmentation ensures that agencies with very different cultures and missions preside, confusingly, over the transparency of the food system. Lopsided participation by food producers before the agencies works distortions in rules on mandatory disclosures. In these ways, the existing legal system for food fails to deliver the transparency it seems to promise. Moreover, the existing legal system does not even try to achieve the level of food-related awareness that many in the contemporary food movement would desire, awareness that would entail knowledge about the environmental, animal welfare, and human labor consequences of our food supply. I propose three ideas for improving understanding of our food supply: allowance of citizen suits under federal food laws, frank acknowledgment by federal agencies that they cannot adequately enforce these laws, and a good deal more skepticism on the part of consumers toward the reliability and credibility of representations made to them about their food.

Chomsky and Moral Philosophy

Abstract: Every great philosopher has important things to say about moral philosophy. Chomsky is no exception. Chomsky’s remarks on this topic, however, are not systematic. Instead, they consist mainly of brief and occasional asides. Although often provocative, they tend to come across as digressions from his central focus on linguistics and related disciplines, such as epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. Perhaps as a result, moral philosophers have paid relatively little attention to Chomsky over the past sixty years.This neglect is unfortunate. Chomsky’s insights into the nature and origin of human morality are fundamental and penetrating. They address deep philosophical problems that have shaped the aims of moral philosophy for centuries. They also reinforce many of the lessons Chomsky has taught about the nature and origins of human language. Elaborating upon these themes, this chapter begins by recounting two of Chomsky’s most extensive discussions of moral philosophy, each of which draws attention to the fact that, like linguistic knowledge, moral knowledge is an example of Plato’s problem: a complex mental competence characterized by a profound poverty of the stimulus. The chapter then places these remarks in a broader context by providing a brief discussion of mentalist, modular, and nativist theories of moral cognition from Plato to the present. Finally, the chapter responds to one prominent criticism of Chomsky’s naturalistic approach to moral philosophy, that of the late philosopher, Bernard Williams. I argue that Williams’ “Wittgensteinian” skepticism about moral rules is no more convincing than a similar skepticism about grammatical rules in the context of linguistic theory.

Policy Limits, Payouts, and Blood Money: Medical Malpractice Settlements in the Shadow of Insurance

Abstract: In prior research, we found that policy limits in Texas medical malpractice (“med mal”) cases often served as de facto caps on recoveries in both tried and settled cases. We also found that physicians faced little personal exposure on malpractice claims. Out-of-pocket payments (OOPPs) by physicians were rare and usually small. Physicians could reduce their personal exposure to near zero by carrying $1 million in primary coverage ― a standard amount in many states. Finally, the real amount of insurance coverage purchased by physicians with paid claims declined substantially over 1988–1999, consistent with physicians learning over time how low the OOPP risk was and deciding to carry less coverage.We now revisit our findings, using an extended dataset (1988–2005) that lets us study policies purchased through 2003, which encompasses the period during which Texas experienced a med mal insurance crisis (1999–2003) and adopted tort reform to limit med mal lawsuits (2003). Our updated findings are largely consistent with our original findings: policy limits continue to cap recoveries; physicians still rarely make OOPPs; most OOPPs are modest; and real policy limits continue to shrink. We also find evidence that, at the end of the extended period, physicians often purchased less coverage (i.e., policies with limits of $100,000–$200,000 instead of $500,000–$1 million).Our findings have important policy implications. If physicians carry less real coverage over time, lawsuits should become less profitable. This will make it harder for injured patients to find plaintiffs’ lawyers willing to handle their cases; shift the cost of medical injuries away from providers and toward patients and first-party health insurers; weaken liability insurers’ incentives to monitor providers; and diminish the (already modest) deterrent effect of tort law. If these findings are representative, they may help explain the nationwide decline in med mal claiming that we document elsewhere. Finally, our findings raise questions about the explanatory power of Baker’s “blood money” norm, at least for med mal litigation.