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.

Manufacturing Equality: Title IX, Proportionality, and Natural Demand

Abstract: This paper poses the following question in the context of civil rights in education — is proportionality synonymous with parity? Since 1974 the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has determined that in order for an educational institution to be in compliance with Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, educational opportunities must be proportional to male/female demographics. In this paper, my empirical research shows that in fact interests are not proportional among men and women in many areas of education. In some areas, male interests are stronger than female interests, and in other areas the reverse is true. In support of my argument, I present a collection of studies that measure male and female demand in areas of sports and STEM, as well as demand for protection against sexual harassment. These studies cast light on the reality behind civil rights for both men and women in education, a reality that, I argue, civil rights theoreticians and advocates don’t want to see or cannot see. In September of 2015 President Obama issued an Executive Order to encourage the use of behavior science in lawmaking. The question remains as to why OCR continues to operate under the assumption that the interests of males and females are equal in all areas of education.

Adolf Berle During the New Deal: The Brain Truster as an Intellectual Jobber

Abstract: Thirty-seven year old law professor Adolf Berle had a career year in 1932. His book published that year, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (written with Gardiner Means), framed the fundamental twentieth century change in understanding modern corporations. Berle’s exchange with Merrick Dodd on the purpose of the corporation that played out that spring on the pages of the Harvard Law Review launched a still fierce debate over the role of shareholders and other stakeholders. His service as a brain truster for Franklin Roosevelt during the fall election gave voice to the transformative economic policies of the New Deal. This article looks at what came next, particularly Berle’s career development and policy impact during the twelve years of the Roosevelt administration. Somewhat surprisingly, he didn’t join the government for its first five years, and when he eventually moved to Washington it was for a job in the State Department. This exploration of his role between 1933 and 1945 reveals a driving force of these career choices—his strong affinity (evidenced not just in this period but in the time before and after) to work as a brain truster. What that meant to Berle was to be an intellectual jobber and free-lancer, taking on a series of important tasks, often suggesting big ideas, before moving on to the next challenge. Part II takes a deep dive into the planning for post-war international economic policy that commenced immediately after World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, not long after Berle had joined the State Department, and in which he was assigned a key role. This examination provides a fuller picture of the process leading to new international institutions in trade, monetary policy, and assembling global capital while at the same time illustrating the familiar characteristics of Berle as an intellectual jobber.

A Critique of the American Bankers Association's Study on Credit Card Regulation

Abstract: This Critique takes issue with four of the main assertions of the American Bankers Association's Study on Credit Card Regulation. First, this Critique addresses the ABA Study's claim that credit card pricing is risk-based and demonstrates that only certain elements of card pricing are marginally risk-based; overall, credit card pricing is not risk-based, and risk-based pricing does not explain card issuers' abusive and manipulative billing practices such as unilateral term changes, two-cycle billing, universal cross-default, and retroactive application of higher interest rates. Instead, these practices are merely rent extraction devices that allow card issuers to take advantage of cardholder lock-in. Second, the putative benefits of risk-based pricing?lower costs of credit to creditworthy consumers, and greater availability of credit to subprime consumers?are either illusory or attributable to other causes. To the extent that credit card interest rates have declined over the past two decades, it is attributable to issuers' decreased cost of funds, and overall, credit card pricing may not have decreased for any consumers. Greater subprime access to credit cards is attributable to issuers' ability to pass off risk and increase lending capacity through securitization, and increased credit card access is hardly a boon absent ability to repay debts. Third, this Critique shows that contrary to the ABA Study's claims, credit card debt now supplements, rather than replaces other forms of consumer debt. And fourth, this Critique exposes the flaws in the ABA Study's conclusory assertion that there is no basis for credit card price structure regulation. Instead, seven of the eight standard independent reasons for regulation apply squarely to credit cards, making regulatory intervention in the credit card market a question of how, not whether.

The Importance of Being Standard

Abstract: Contract standardisation in the sovereign debt market saves time and money in preparing documents and endows widely-used terms with a shared public meaning, which in turn saves investors the costs of acquiring information, facilitates secondary market trading and reduces the scope for mistakes in the judicial interpretation of contract terms. Sovereign debt issuers and investors claim to value standardisation and list it as an important contractual objective. Issuers generally insist that their bond contracts are standard and reflect market practice. Variations from past practice and market norm must be explained in disclosure documents and through market outreach. Standardisation is not just part of the fabric of market expectations: international policy initiatives to prevent and manage financial crises rest on the assumption that sovereign debt contracts follow a generally accepted standard. Such initiatives would make no sense in the absence of standardisation. On closer examination, however, it turns out that sovereign bond contracts are not nearly as standardised as market participants and policy makers seem to suggest. It is common to see a handful of negotiated terms embedded in a mish-mash of different generation industry models, sprinkled with bits of creative expression that no one can explain, usually attributed to some long-forgotten lawyers. At least some of the variation appears to be deliberate. But to the extent that it is inadvertent, variation can be costly. For example, it can make contracts internally inconsistent, vulnerable to opportunistic lawsuits and errors of judicial interpretation. Variation could also make debt instruments less liquid, especially during periods of market stress. In this essay, I argue that the problem of inadvertent variation would diminish substantially if sovereign debt markets were to adopt a more centralised, modular approach to contracting, whereby a subset of widely-used non-financial terms would be produced by an authoritative third party (a public, private, or public-private body) and incorporated by reference in individual transactions.

From Isolation to Connection: The Practices and Promise of Open Domestic Violence Shelters:

Abstract: Antidomestic violence advocates have begun to question two essential policies that have long defined domestic violence shelters—strict secrecy regarding shelter location and prohibitions on shelter...